Basics of the Old Testament - Lesson 6

Welcome to the final lecture for Basics of Old Testament, produced and brought to you by our good friends at Biblical Training. This is going to be the final lecture and what we're going to do in this particular lecture is we're going to provide you with the bullseye in the target of biblical interpretation. That is, when you're reading the Old Testament, what are you really looking for, all right? So it's an important thing, right? If you get in the car and you just start driving without knowing where you're going to go, right, you're probably never going to get anywhere.

Does that make sense? And you may frustrate yourself and everyone else in the car with you. Or think about this. Think about trying to drive from one coast to another.

Right after my wife and I got married, we drove across the country to begin grad school. And could you imagine if we didn't know where that grad school was or if we didn't take a map, all right? And so we would have been met with massive amounts of frustration. Well, what I want to do in this lecture, what I want to do in this lecture is I want to provide you with the bullseye on the target for biblical interpretation when it comes to the Old Testament.

Now, I've hinted at it a lot in the previous lectures, but I want to say this. The purpose of this lecture is to identify and understand Jesus as the theological center or the bullseye of the Christian Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Now, in this lecture, we're going to focus on the Old Testament.

And I'm going to say this. It is perhaps clear to us that Jesus is the theological center or at least the main figure in the New Testament. But my intent in this lecture is to demonstrate that both Jesus and the apostles understood the center of the Old Testament or the theological bullseye on the target to be the same person, Jesus.

All right? So here's my working thesis. Let me read it to you. Here we go.

Jesus is the theological center for all biblical interpretation, both Old and New Testaments. Jesus is the very heart of the canonical body, that which gives life to the whole. He is the living force of the canonical word as the incarnate word.

The canonical structure, covenant, and the thematic framework, kingdom of God, would represent severed and lifeless body parts without the living force of the theological center, Jesus Christ. He is the goal and the fullness of it all. He is the unchallenged ruler over the kingdom of God as expressed in his canonical covenantal kingdom word.

I love those hyphenated designations. Okay? One scholar, Graham Goldsworthy, put it this way, the hub of the church and of the life of the believer is Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord. He is not only the interpretive or hermeneutical center of the whole Bible, but according to the biblical testimony, that is the evidence in the Bible, he gives ultimate meaning to every fact in the universe.

He is thus the principle, the first principle for all reality, providing the center that holds everything together. That is a huge statement and one that is fundamental to our understanding of the Old Testament. All right? Think about it this way with me.

In our last lecture, we talked about at the beginning of it that of all the players in the Old Testament, Adam and Eve and Noah and Abraham and David and Solomon and Ezra and Nehemiah and Ruth and Esther and all that stuff, the number one player, the number one speaker throughout it all was Yahweh, the God, the creator of heaven and earth, Israel's covenant God and Redeemer. We also know that if you did the same kind of word count in the New Testament, Jesus would function in the same way, that the number one proper name in the New Testament is Jesus. Okay? So you have Jesus in the New Testament and Yahweh in the Old Testament.

But what if I told you in a brief way now, but perhaps you can go on and study this later in the other classes, that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the Yahweh of the Old Testament. Let me say it this way. The Yahweh of the Old Testament is primarily the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, not the Father.

All right? The Father makes himself known to us through the second person of the Trinity, Jesus. And therefore, Jesus is the one in the Old Testament who shows up to make known who the Father is and what he's done. Think about this with me.

In the book of Exodus, Yahweh reveals his name to his people and then delivers them out of their slavery and bondage in Egypt. Okay? Yahweh. Yahweh.

Recounting this miraculous act of salvation, it is stated in the book of Jude. At Jude 5, he says this, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed all those who did not believe. This is a remarkable statement by Jude to say that the person who delivered Israel out of Egypt and then destroyed the unbelieving generation in that wilderness experience, who was Yahweh on every front, was Jesus.

I put it this way. When Moses showed up at the burning bush and saw the angel of Yahweh there, who was Yahweh, right? That is the second person of the Trinity. When Moses ascended Mount Sinai and spent 40 days and 40 nights with Yahweh, that was the second person of the Trinity.

The angel of the Lord who shows up over and over again in the Old Testament is the second person of the Trinity. In fact, you can think of it this way. The angel of the Lord who appears periodically in the Old Covenant or the Old Testament is what's called a Christophany, kind of an early appearance of Jesus in bodily form, right? One scholar, Vern Poitras from Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, calls the incarnation of Jesus in the New Testament a permanent theophany from the Old Testament.

It's one that never goes away, okay? Think about this. In John 8, when Jesus was answering questions from the Jews, we read in verses 56 to 58, he said, so the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. And so, that's a reference to the divine name from Exodus 3. And so, Jesus is claiming that he is the Yahweh of Exodus 3. And if you don't believe that, listen to what the Pharisees did right after Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am.

It says, so they picked up stones to throw at him, right? To stone him for blasphemy, it says. But Jesus hid himself and went out to the temple. The Jews wanted to stone Jesus because he had just identified himself as the Yahweh of Exodus 3, the man of the burning bush.

Think about Exodus 14 to 17, that's reflected upon in 1 Corinthians 10, 1 to 4. Listen to what it says here when it's reflecting on the events of the wilderness experience in Exodus 14 to 17. For I do not want you to be unaware or ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and passed through the sea. Remember the cloud over the Red Sea? And they were all baptized in Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and they all ate the same spiritual food.

And they all drank from the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. Right? Now in Exodus 17, Israel enters into a lawsuit against Yahweh for covenant infidelity because they're about to die of thirst in the wilderness. And Yahweh tells Moses, I'm going to go stand on that rock, and I want you to strike the rock, right? And then water's going to flow through it for the people to drink.

And what Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 10 is that that rock that was struck was Christ. Christ was struck for Israel so that it might live. So the implication, if you can understand with me for a second, that the Yahweh of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New Testament, that these are the two main characters in the Christian Bible, then you are on the right path to understanding that Jesus is the theological center and the significant one for studying, teaching, and preaching the Bible.

Whether you were the one delivering the message or the one receiving it, the Old Testament is about Jesus. Right? The Yahweh of the Old Testament is primarily the second person of the Trinity. Jesus in the New Testament is declared to be the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, and they're the same.

Which means this, gang, the God of the Old Testament is not mean and angry and grumpy and the God of the New Testament is kind of a happy hippie from the 1970s. All right? It's the same guy. Right? And the God of the Old Testament is this, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, giving grace and mercy to a thousand generations of those who love him.

And the Jesus of the New Testament in the Apocalypse is coming back with a sword strapped on his thigh to destroy his enemies as a warrior like none other. Right? So both the Old and the New Testament have the same person, the same God, the same thing at work. Well, let's consider further evidence so I can convince you that this is true.

Because if you can think about this, here's what I like about it. Here's what I like about it. The way in which I was brought up to read the Old Testament was this way.

You read a story or a narrative, and you try to identify with one of the characters in that narrative. Right? So how am I like David? You know, am I a man after God's own heart? Am I slaying my Goliaths? Right? Am I doing God's will and singing songs and building a temple? How am I like Abraham? Or how am I like, you know, one of the judges? Right? Am I like Samson? Right? Am I struggling to do God's will in the midst of my sin? If God can use someone like Samson, who appears to be a corrupt individual, then God can certainly use someone like me. Okay? I call this the Where's Waldo approach to biblical interpretation.

Are you familiar with that book, Where's Waldo? Waldo is this book, Where's Waldo is this book, where you have a picture of a thousand different individuals on the page. But there's one little Waldo picture, and your goal is to find Waldo in each page. And that's how I was trained to interpret the Old Testament.

You open up a page, you read the story, and you find yourself in it. It was the Where's Miles approach to biblical interpretation. But what I want to do to you today is to kind of pull the rug out of that kind of Bible study method and say, when you open the Old Testament, gang, you are not looking for Waldo, and you are not looking for Miles.

Right? And you are not looking for your favorite pastor or for your favorite hero. You are looking for Jesus Christ, the creator of heaven and earth, by whom all things were created, for whom all things were created, and through whom all things were created. He is the sum and substance of the Word of God.

And by finding Him, you will find salvation and grace and peace. So let's put away the Where's Waldo book, and now let's get into the Where's Jesus book in my Old Testament. Okay? Let's think about the claims of Jesus Himself.

What did Jesus say about Himself in relationship to the Old Testament? Okay? I love this. This is Luke 24, verses 43 to 45, and it's kind of a crash course in biblical theology. In Luke 24, 25 to 27, Luke begins this way.

He said, recording the words of Jesus, Oh foolish ones, and slow of heart, this is Jesus talking, to believe all that the prophets have spoken, that is all the guys in the Old Testament who wrote the Bible, was it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory? That is, they told us about this. And then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures, in all the Old Testament, the things concerning Himself. All right? Note, for Jesus, the scriptures were the Old Testament alone at this point.

Then, a few verses later, in 24, Luke 24, the 24th chapter, verses 44 and 45, yes, a huge chapter, Jesus said to them, this is what I told you while I was still with you. Listen to this. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms.

Then, He opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. Two things to note here. Note, number one, that Jesus declares Himself to be the primary subject and content of the Old Testament.

Number two, we need Jesus' help to understand that. We need divine illumination or interpretational conversion, all right? Because if the disciples who lived with Jesus couldn't pick up on their own, then we do not have the ability on our own to do the same. We need the help of the Holy Spirit, right? And the testimony of Scripture that is confirmed by the Holy Spirit in order to understand the significance of this.

And gang, you will spend the rest of your life, I hope, trying to see the wonders of Jesus from the Old Testament, okay? John 5, 36-40 says this, especially with some focus on verse 39, Jesus says, I have testimony weightier than that of John the Baptist, so his cousin, for the work that the Father has given me to finish and which I am doing, testifies that the Father sent me. And the Father who sent me has testified concerning me. You have never heard His voice or seen His form, which of course in the Old Testament, we see His form and hear His voice all the time, but that's Jesus' voice in form, not the Father's.

Nor does His word dwell in you, it says, for you do not believe the one He has sent, Jesus. Then listen to this line. You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life.

But then Jesus says, these are the scriptures, or this is the Old Testament, that testifies about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. Now gang, here's what I'm telling you. Jesus in John 5 is saying that the Old Testament testifies to Him.

These are the scriptures that testify to me. And just a few verses later in verses 45 to 47 of the same chapter, John chapter 5, Jesus says, hey, don't think that I'll accuse you to the Father for not believing in me. There is one who will accuse you, Moses, on whom you put your hope.

Then it says, for if you believed Moses, you would believe me. That's what it says, for he, that is Moses, wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? Now think about this.

Dang. I can think of the prophets Isaiah writing about Jesus and the suffering servant. I can think about the guy who wrote the Psalms talking about the Messiah who's to come.

Leviticus about Jesus? Numbers about Jesus? Exodus about Jesus? That seems like a big step to take. And it is a big step because we live in a culture, an evangelical Christian culture, that's kind of had that eclipsed for them over the last several hundred years. And so I want to return the centrality of Jesus to the interpretation of the Old Testament as the life-giving force of the Word of God, which will encourage and enliven you.

Remember, the Old Testament was written, according to Romans 15, to provide encouragement and hope and perseverance for the believer. And if I read the Old Testament and I'm trying to slay my own giants, that's not encouragement and hope, right? Because I will fail to slay the giants of my life. In fact, I fail daily.

But the Old Testament is written to let you know that someone is going to slay the giant for you. And that's what we're about in this particular lecture. Think about what Paul says.

Paul speaks of the Old Testament. I love this expression, right? If you don't know this, Paul is one of the apostles in the New Testament, and he's one of the primary authors of the New Testament. He was called by God in the book of Acts on the road to Damascus to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.

And perhaps his most significant theological work is the book of Romans. And he begins the book of Romans this way, calling it the gospel promise beforehand. Hear God's word from Romans 1. He says, Paul, a servant of Christ, Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.

The gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding or concerning his son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, the king that we talked about in this class. Note the description of the pre-promised gospel with the three prepositional phrases in Romans 1 to 3. It says that God promised this gospel through the prophets. That is, they are the vehicle of gospel revelation.

Remember, the spirit of Christ in them, according to 1 Peter, helped them to write this stuff down. That material is deposited in the Holy Scriptures. That's the location of gospel revelation.

And then it says that the prophets in the Holy Scriptures wrote, ready, concerning his son, the content of gospel revelation. So, in these three prepositional phrases, or with these three prepositional phrases, the gospel promise beforehand came through the prophets, the vehicle, in the Holy Scriptures, the place, and concerning his son, the content. The apostle Paul picks up on the words of Jesus and declares them to be the same and authoritative words that Jesus is the sum and substance of the Old Testament.

Listen to what Paul says later in 2 Corinthians 1.20. He says, for no matter how many are the promises of God he has made, they are yes in Christ, and so through him the amen is spoken to us to the glory of God. Now, consider this. Think of the Old Testament and all of the promises that God makes to his people in the covenants that he sets before him.

Remember, there's the covenant of grace, there's the covenant with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, with David. All of those covenants, all of those covenant promises are fulfilled, right? They are yes in Christ. And so we can say the amen, or it is true, to the glory of God.

As such, Christ is the purpose, the goal, the meaning, and the significance for every Old Testament promise, right? You can think about Walt Kaiser's book, The Promised Plan of God, that Jesus Christ fulfills all of those promises. Christ is the fulfillment of every Old Testament expectation, shadow, type, and hope. That's why I encourage you to go to the New Testament and read the book of Hebrews because the book of Hebrews says Christ is the fulfillment of every Old Testament expectation, shadow, type, and hope.

He is the final Word of God. He's better than the angels. He's better than the temple.

He's the true and better Sabbath rest, right? We all long to enter into God's Sabbath rest. What does Christ say? Come all to me who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus Christ brings into the life of the believer the reality of Genesis 2, 1-3, Sabbath rest.

The Apostle John says this, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

He who authored the Word became the living incarnate Word, right? You can say this, the incarnate Word Jesus testifies to the content of the inspired Word of the Old Testament. He is the authoritative lens through which we must read the Old Testament, all right? It's His Word. In 1 Peter 1, it talks about Jesus Christ and His Spirit.

The Spirit of Christ in the prophets was the one who helped the prophets write the Word. And in fact, it says, concerning the salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with great care, trying to find out the time and the circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing, when you predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. So the prophets were predicting the life and work of Christ.

Let me just bring this lecture to a conclusion by helping you think about the significance of this lecture for how you will approach and interpret the Old Testament, right? I want to dismantle the where's Waldo approach of interpretation in your heart. It's the natural proclivity of our heart, right? We all think life is about us and we're the center of the universe, but I've got some good news for you. It's not about you and you're not the center of the universe and you're no one's savior, all right? So think about this.

Even the New Testament helps us with this. The New Testament, when it's interpreting the Old Testament, interprets it in light of Christ, all right? So let me just give you two examples. One from Luke 11, 29 to 32.

It's a great text and it talks about Jonah, right? And I've always heard these sermons growing up. You know, how are you like Jonah? Are you the reluctant prophet, the one who doesn't want to go and preach the word? Are you angry when God is gracious? Almost every sermon I've ever heard on the book of Jonah is about how we identify with Jonah either positively or negatively. Well, strikingly, the New Testament wants nothing to do with that.

The New Testament identifies Jonah as a type of Christ. Consider this. As the crowds were increasing around Jesus, he began to say, that is Jesus, this generation is a wicked generation.

It seeks for a sign and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so the son of man will be to this generation. The queen of the south will rise up with the men of this generation at the judgment and condemn them.

But she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment and condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. Notice here, two things.

One, that the New Testament authors or Jesus, right, when they're recording this, identify Jonah and Solomon as types of Christ, the true and better prophet, the true and better wise king, not as types of us. And if the New Testament identifies Jonah and Solomon as types of Christ, then when we're reading the accounts of Jonah and Solomon, we need to be reading them as such. Does that make sense? We must follow the pattern of the New Testament as it interprets the Old Testament in order to rightly interpret the Old Testament.

Remember this, the Old Testament is not floating out there by itself. It's anchored to the New Testament and you must interpret the Old Testament in light of its full context, which includes the New Testament. So it's a powerful thing to think about.

Finally, let's think about this. Hebrews 11 and 12 is the famous passage that describes kind of all of the Old Testament figures in what's called the Hall of Faith. All of those who believed in Christ from the very beginning.

The Hall of Faith commonly referenced to here includes people like Cain and Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. So you can think about this if you like want a quick survey of the history of Israel. Hebrews 11.

Okay. Then the author of Hebrews, when he refers to this group, he refers to them as a great cloud of witnesses and not as a great cloud of examples for us to emulate. They witness or bear witness to Jesus Christ, where the author of Hebrews says, these guys help us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

So if you're reading about Abel or Enoch or Noah or Abraham or Sarah or Jacob or Esau, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, and all of the other men and women listed in Hebrews 11, and they don't cause you to fix your eyes on Jesus, then you're reading them the wrong way. If they cause you to fix your eyes on yourself, you're reading them the wrong way. Now, let me put it this way.

The Bible is not about you, but it's written for you. The Bible is not about you, but it's written for you. I have a computer program that allows me to search the Bible.

And I do this every now and then just to make sure it's correct. And I searched for my name in there. And you know what? Every time my name, the search is zero.

The search is zero. My name does not appear in the Bible. All right.

But there's this guy's name who appears in the Bible, Yahweh and Jesus, who is the creator of heaven and earth, the redeemer of his people, and who will bring all things to consummation and make all things new. That's the person that we're looking for in the Old Testament. He is the true and better everything, both person and institution.

And fruitful reading and fruitful interpretation will come by knowing the books of the Bible, knowing the people of the books of the Bible, knowing the history of the people of the books in the Bible, knowing the covenants and how they unfold in the Bible, but then ultimately knowing where all of those people, covenants, and histories have their anchor and goal in terms of identifying the person and work of Christ as the main thing in the Bible that we're looking for when we read it. That is the Old Testament.