Survey of the Old Testament - Lesson 3

I. Claims Of Jesus

Now that we’ve argued a little bit that Jesus Christ is a major player in biblical revelation in both the Old and New Testament I’m going to argue that he’s the center. I’ve done it by talking about some various scholars and the word counting game and stuff like that. Now I want to give you some actual biblical evidence that in the New Testament, Jesus himself and the apostles understand the Old Testament is about Jesus, that he is the center of it. This is not me trying to convince you of it, I am trying to set before you the testimony of the New Testament, when it’s talking about the Old Testament. I’m going to let the New Testament be the authority here. We’ll begin with Jesus. Jesus himself claims that the Old Testament finds its ultimate meaning in him.

A. Disciples on the road to Emmaus

We’re going to go to the famous account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, where Jesus gives his first post-resurrection crash course in biblical interpretation on the road. He says in Luke 24:25-27, responding to these guys, “Oh, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” Notice he said, “all that the prophets have spoken.” “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things, and enter into his glory and beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.” Now by sheer force of repetition, there are three “all,” all in this text: all the prophets have spoken; all the prophets and all the things in scripture concerning himself. Notice it says this, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.”

So notice again like Paul in the book of Acts at the end, he’s using his Old Testament to describe everything about him. Even more, he then said to them about 20 verses later in verses 44 and 45. This is Luke 24:44-45. He said to them, “this is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled. That is written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. He opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.” This is an amazing statement. They had a hermeneutical conversion on the road to Emmaus.

They had the Old Testament, but they didn’t get the Old Testament. How do they get the Old Testament when he enlightened their minds, and when he opened their minds, so he could say “all that is written about me in, the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

The content is Jesus and the means is divine illumination. So you have to have hermeneutical interpretive conversion and that’s really what I had in my life when I was confronted with this fact and the light went on. I felt like I had been converted again. Now I know, now I understand. You get that moment of “Thank you Lord, for helping me know that.” That’s what that is.

B. John 5:36-40

In the gospel of John chapter five there’s some great statements here. This is verse 36-40. Jesus says, “I have testimony weightier than that of John the Baptist for the very work that the Father has given me to finish in which I am doing testifies, that the Father has sent me and the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning Me.”

“You have never heard his voice or seen his form nor does his word dwell in you. For you do not believe the one he sent.” This is it right here, verse 39 and 40, “You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them, you possess eternal life,” and these Pharisees knew Scripture well. They knew their Bibles frontwards and back. Every commandment law, date, name, they knew it. Then he says, “These are the scriptures that testify about me. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

So you study hard to know the Scriptures. You have them, but you don’t get them because the only way you can understand them is if you understand that they testify to him. He is the key to making sense of the Old Testament. You want to know why our theology of the Old Testament’s always so discombobulated and ram-shackled? It is because we refuse to take this statement seriously.

We’re sinners and we’re never going to do anything perfect, but we can still work to do a better job. “You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them, you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me.” “If you refuse to come to me to have life…” meaning you can study the word, and study the word, but it just hits you like a brick every time. It never gets inside of you until you recognize that really what’s in that brick is the testimony of the personal work of Jesus on behalf of you. Once you accept that reality, the brick turns into a marshmallow and goes in. I don’t know how you can eat the marshmallow. 

C. John 5:45-47

That was verses 39 and 40. I was giving you the context and then John 5:45-47 says this, “Do you think that I will accuse you to the Father?” Okay, Jesus there’s going to be judgment day, “Do you think I’ll accuse you to the Father? There is one who accuses you already, Moses on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” Now I could think of Isaiah and all the suffering servants. It would be about Jesus or maybe like the Messianic Psalms would be about Jesus, but Moses? He just broke some clay tablets and made a Tabernacle. He went to war and he struck people dead. I have never heard any Messianic things in there. So specifically saying here, “Moses wrote about me,” that’s an amazing statement. 

I’m going to read it again for you, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me, but if you do not believe in his writings, how will you believe my words?” They’re the same, you have to put these exegetical texts on a three by five card and review them every day to remind yourself of this reality, because it is a life changing reality. When you approach the Old Testament in light of this. When we go through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy and we don’t come out with saying, “This is how you know, it points to the person and work of Jesus every time,” we’ve failed to complete the task. He is the true and better Adam. He is the true and better Noah. He brings us through the true and better flood, judgment, ordeal. He is a true and better tabernacle, the true and better temple, the true and better Moses, the true and better Exodus. All these things testified to Him. You can just see Jesus walking through the Old Testament.

Let’s begin with the creation of man. Let’s look at the fall and the promise of redemption. Let’s look at the flood, judgment, and ordeal. Let’s look at the call of Abraham. Let’s look at the call of Moses. Let’s look at the Exodus. Let’s look at the Judges. Let’s look at kingship and prophets and just walk them through and say, “I’m the true and better this, that, and the other. I’m the fullness.” 

II. Apostle Paul 

That’s the testimony of Jesus and we could stop right there and I’d be darn convinced. But let’s go on and see if the apostles agree with Jesus or if they want to nuance it for us. One of my favorite texts in this area in terms of apostolic testimony comes from Romans 1:1-3, which is the introduction to Paul’s letter to the Romans, you wouldn’t think high level Christology is going on here.

Paul speaks of the Old Testament as the gospel promised beforehand. So you could call the Old Testament, the gospel promised beforehand, which is the subtitle of our biblical theological introduction. You could call the New Testament the gospel fulfilled. The gospel promised and the gospel fulfilled. In two parts because of the MVP rule of two.

Listen to what Paul says in Romans 1:1-3, and think of it in terms of Jesus being the key to the Old Testament. “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.” What gospel of God? The gospel “he promised beforehand.” We’re going to have three propositional phrases that will change your life through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his son. “Through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, regarding his son as to his human nature, He was a descendant of David.” That’s an Old Testament anchor, a Davidic covenant, meaning he’s the king. Note the description of this pre-promised gospel with these three prepositional phrases. 

We have first through his prophets. We’ll call that the vehicle of gospel revelation. How did we get the Scriptures? He worked through the prophets. Where is this gospel revelation in the Holy Scriptures? Note that the text is inspired, not the author. This is an important thing when you’re talking about inspiration. It’s not that the author was inspired, he was filled by the Spirit. The God read things, actually the book that’s an important thing. Then it says concerning his son and that’s the content of gospel revelation. The vehicle, the prophets; the location, the Holy Scriptures; and what’s the content he says concerning his son. The gospel promised beforehand through his prophets concerning his son. 

So Paul calls his Old Testament, the gospel promise beforehand and it has as its content, the son of God who is as in terms of physical descendant was the seed of David, which of course goes back to 2 Samuel 7, and the Davidic covenant. That’s so important. Psalm 89 comments on that. How about some other things? How about 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For no matter how many promises God has made.” How many did he make in the Old Testament? There are truckloads of promises. They are yes, in Christ.

Through him, the amen is spoken by us to the glory of God. There is a recent book by a colleague of mine at RTS, Charlotte. Richard Belcher, who has a book called The Fulfillment of the Promises of God, an Explanation of Covenant Theology. It’s a great book. We can also use O. Palmer Robertson’s book, The Christ of the Covenants. Even in the title, that all of the promises, all the covenantal promises, that God has pledged to make to his people are yes and amen in Christ.

Every one of them, it doesn’t say “most of them.” It doesn’t say “all the ones that weren’t fulfilled,” it says “all of them.” So the promise for David to have an heir on the throne of the kingdom forever is fulfilled. Ultimately, not in Solomon. He’s stage one mega-failure and Jesus is the anti-type of that, stage two the anti-type success.

Thus Christ is the purpose, the goal, the meaning, and the significance of every Old Testament promise you can see, even in Kaiser’s book, The Promise Plan of God, Christ’s fulfillment of every Old Testament expectation, shadow, type and hope. Getting another formative book, getting us back on track in the mid 20th century. 

Then we have other miscellaneous apostolic testimony, John 1:1-14, you know these verses “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.” 

This is Alec Mocheir’s speech, “The word of God was validated and made known to us, truthfully existentially when the word of God showed up in the incarnation.” So now we have the word of God and the son of God together, as one, it’s an amazing thing. The person who authored the word became the living incarnate word. 

If you think “thus sayeth Yahweh” and Jesus is Yahweh. He’s here to tell you, “Yes, this is what I said. I’m setting myself at the cost of my life to testify to its truth and to fulfill its promises. It’s an amazing thing. 

III. Other Apostles

It’s worth bearing in mind concerning salvation. 1 Peter 1:10-11, the “prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.” So it’s the spirit of Christ who makes it Christ-centered in it. 2 Peter 1:21, “Above all you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture ever came about by the prophet’s own interpretation,” but that’s not the best translation of that word. By the prophet’s own loosening from λύω (luō) and by the prophet’s own origination. For prophecy, never had its origin in the will of man, “but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Then you can just think of this. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father except through me. Now, if you think about that, that’s a very wisdom oriented saying. The way of wisdom and the way of folly, he’s saying, “I am the way of life.” I’m the way of wisdom. He’s the truth. He’s the testimony that what has been said is correct and accurate. Therefore, once that invades your life, it becomes a source of life. The Law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

IV. Homiletical Impact

What is the homiletical impact of this? I teach at a seminary, it’s at Reform Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi and my job is to train pastors. I’m really big on getting these pastors to preach Jesus from the Old Testament every time they preach in one way or another.

That’s a great challenge and a great gift at the same time. I have ways of encouraging them by loading guilt on them at some points. I have this quote from Stuart Olyott, he’s a pastor in Wales and the director of the Evangelical Movement of Wales. He wrote a book called, The Preacher and Biblical Preaching and I know not everyone here’s a preacher, but all of you probably hear preaching.

This can either be a form of encouragement if you are preaching, or it can be a warning to protect yourselves if you’re under bad preaching, especially from the Old Testament or the New Testament. He’s talking about a series of features that are key for preaching. He says, one of the key features is Christ centeredness.

He says, “…it has to be. This is because a preacher is our Heralds of the Scriptures and all the Scriptures are about Christ, explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly. Every single part of the Bible points us to him. There is no page in the whole book, which is an exception.” Then he explains it was a Spirit of Christ that moved every Old Testament author to write about it. Then he explains what we just went through. Then his concluding paragraph is, “The Lord Jesus Christ is the sum and center of all that God has revealed in his word. He is the focus of the Bible’s storyline. He is the heart of every writer, unveiling himself to their mind and so guiding their pen. He reveals himself through the Bible’s pages to every person that he’s personally commissioned to preach where He is not preached, there’s been no preaching at all.”

I tell my students at the seminary, if you’re not going to preach Christ from the Old Testament, think about a job change because where he’s not been preached, there’s been no preaching at all. I really like that particular way of putting it. There is significance for the interpretation and it mentions it a couple of times in the New Testament. So what does this mean? What therefore, do we do with so much of the Old Testament stuff that we have? 

Think of this example, every time I hear Jonah preached, I hear that Jonah is a type of us, that he is really reluctant to fulfill his mission in God, he’s reluctant to obey God. Even when he has to obey God, he’s really angry about it, and isn’t that us? Can’t we see that Jesus is good, repent of it, and like our mission? That’s almost universally how he contrasts Jonah to running away from God, and at the end of chapter one, the sailors have been converted. Nineveh repents at the message of Jonah and Israel won’t repent from the prophets preaching. There’s this thing going on here. We’re thinking, “That’s me and I’ve got to repent.” 

Listen, how Jesus talks about this in Luke 11:29-32 in terms of how Jesus uses the Old Testament. Now we’re just not talking about statements that Jesus made concerning this. We’re talking about how we see Jesus using the Old Testament in the New Testament. Luke 11:29, “As the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘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,’” meaning you’ve already had a ton of signs. “For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the south will rise up with the men of this generation at the judgment and condemn them because 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.”

So Jesus is using two Old Testament figures, Solomon and Jonah to say, “I am the greater Jonah. I am the greater Solomon.” Jonah is a type of Christ, Solomon is a type of Christ, even though they’re imperfect, flawed, and sinful. God in his providence chose to use particular offices, prophets and kings, and particular times in their ministries to illustrate what Jesus would be doing in the future. Three days in the belly of the fish, come on, we get it. Solomon was the greatest with wisdom and wealth. Solomon had all the wisdom, wealth, and opportunity to obey. Jesus had none of the wealth, none of the opulence, no secondary features to obey, but he did. There’s this big contrast, the true and better.

Jesus is the true and better. The true and better Solomon, the true and better Jonah here. So note how Jesus used both Solomon and the prophet Jonah as types of himself in declaring himself to be the true and better one, or the greater one. Jesus calls his audience to identify with the queen of the south and the wicked inhabitants of Nineveh. So if you want to find Waldo in the Old Testament, find the wicked people that need saving. Don’t identify yourself as a savior, identify yourself as a person needing saving because we don’t want to have anyone having a Messiah complex. That’s why we send people to counseling. 

The Bible is clear, there are saviors and people in need of saving in the Old Testament. Israel was in 400 years of harsh bondage in the house of slaves and slavery. We need saving. We’re not Moses. Moses is a type of Christ, we’re a type of Israel. Typology is good. We can find ourselves in Scripture, but it’s usually with the bad people who need saving, not with the heroes. Jesus is the hero of the story. You’re the damsel in distress. That could be physical distress or spiritual distress because of your sin. 

Let’s move on to Hebrews 11-12, where we have that big hall of faith passage and he begins with Abel, then he goes to Abraham, Moses, then Red Sea people, then he says “I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets through faith…” 

This is the famous hall of faith. It is commonly referred to in discussing the appropriateness of using Old Testament, characters and narratives as examples for Christian living, live like these guys. Chapter 11, rehearses their lives. Now Cain and Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac Jacob Esau, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel and the prophets. It’s a pretty good hit list. A lot of them appeared on the board. The author of the book of Hebrews then refers to this group of individuals, as “a great cloud of witnesses.” Notice he does not say they are “a great cloud of examples.” Now, they were all people who had faith and lived in their life.

What did they have faith in? They’re a great cloud of witnesses from which the author encourages perseverance. This means of perseverance made explicit in Hebrews 12:2. How are we to use these witnesses? To think about the Old Testament by this, it says by fixing your eyes on Jesus the author and perfector of your faith. So Abraham and his faith is calling you to fix your eyes on Jesus. Moses and his faith is calling you to fix your eyes on Jesus. Gideon, Barak, Rahab, Moses, Joseph, Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, their faith is serving as a witness that is true and good to fix your eyes on Jesus. That’s the right object of your faith. 

V. A Christocentric Approach to the Old Testament 

Notice how the author of Hebrews is using the Old Testament and all the Old Testament characters to cause you to fix your eyes on Jesus. That’s how the apostles are using this. So let me conclude this kind of Christocentric, Christotellic, Christopantic approach by just a couple of verses which summarize what we’ve looked at. We’ve looked at verses where Jesus says, it’s about him, verses where the apostles have said it’s about him. Now, I’ve seen examples in the New Testament about them using it that way in Luke and in Hebrews. 

Now listen to some of the things that people say in terms of the importance of Jesus for not just faith in life, but for understanding everything. In Matthew 11:27, “All things have been committed to me by the Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” That is always by the power of the Spirit, through his word, never in any other way.

1 Corinthians 2:2, how does Paul summarize all of his preaching? For “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Christ Jesus and him crucified.” Now Paul knew a lot about Jesus and talked a lot about other things, opponents, circumcision, baptism, feasts, Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, but he’s summarizing all that business as Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That means everything that came out of his mouth was for that reason and that purpose in all of its diversity. 

In Galatians 6:14, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” In Philippians 1:15 it states, “It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of good will, the former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I’m in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from true or false motives Christ is preached and because of this I rejoiced.” Their text is the Old Testament, that’s what you have to keep in your mind, they don’t have the last 25%. 

In Colossians 1:27, these are verses that you can go back to and reflect on the significance of this, “To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles, the glorious riches of his mercy, which is Christ in you. The hope of glory in him, we proclaim. Admonishing and teaching everyone without wisdom, so we can present one perfect in Christ.” It’s all over the place, once you start looking for this, as you read, it’ll just keep slapping you in the face and you be thinking, why did I never see this before?

Hebrews 1, “In the past, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets at various times and in various ways, but in these last days he’s spoken to us by his Son through whom he, or whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the universe. This Son is the radiance of God’s glory.” These act as representation. 

A couple of quotable theologians at the end will help us with this. John Owen, Communion with the Triune God, kind of a puritan guy, “There is not the least glimpse of God’s love for sinners that can possibly be discovered, but in Christ,” both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, I’m adding that last part. Geerhardus Vos, when talking about Paul and what he’s doing, remembers he’s using the Old Testament, “The gospel on the grandest of scales from beginning to the end of man’s salvation appears not merely to be associated with Christ, but capable of description only in terms of Christ.” Vos, The Theology of Paul.

Here’s a great one by C.S. Lewis, he just gets to the point, in Mere Christianity, “Jesus is what the Father has to say.” That would be going back to John 1:1, Hebrews 1:1. We’ll finish our session with this last quote from Dane Ortlund, who wrote an article in Themelios, I don’t have the reference here. He argues that the Trinity is Christocentric. He is arguing that it’s not Christomonoism but Christocentricism. I’m going to read this quote from Dane Orotund in ThemeIios, “Christocentricism…” What we’re talking about now that Jesus is a theological center of all this, “…is the necessary prerequisite for Trinitarianism, the bold statement from our perspective, the Trinity itself is Christ centered.”

Jesus says in John 15:26, “that when the Spirit comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father he’ll bear witness about me.” There are three persons of the Trinity. Here all three persons of the Trinity are referenced and both the Father and the Son more precisely the Spirit, as he proceeds from the Father are described as intentionally, drawing attention to Jesus. I’m adding for our benefit, a major theme of John’s gospel as well as first John is the Spiritual in witnessing Jesus. The spirit will, “glorify me, said, Jesus,” John 16:14. Paul wrote that no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere, the apostle Paul speaks of those who worship by the Spirit of God as being the very ones who glory in Christ Jesus. In Philippians 3:3, in short, the Spirit himself is Christ centered.

A fundamental role of the Spirit is to magnify Christ. Not only does the Spirit proceed from Christ and the Father rather than Christ from the Spirit, but one crucial mission of the Spirit is to spotlight Christ. So if the Spirit thinks it’s important to highlight Christ for all of life, then we need to think similarly about highlighting that person. We’re going to be boldly Trinitarian; God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Three in one, but having specific roles in redemptive history, one is the sender, one is the witness, and one is the one who does the work.

We are about the person and work of Jesus and so this is going to be very important because now, the whole rest of our time together in these lectures is going to be looking at the Old Testament, through the lens of Jesus Christ at theological center. If you’re not convinced at this point, then it’s not going to be as beneficial for you, or maybe if you’re not convinced you’ll hang on and you’ll let me show you kind of book by book, section by section, how that might be true.