What Value Is the Old Testament to the Christian Life?
00:00:00.000 | Hello everyone.
00:00:05.320 | Well, it's, it's certainly not easy to apply all of the New Testament to our
00:00:09.020 | lives, but it's certainly easier than trying to apply to our lives all the
00:00:13.140 | things that we read about in the massive Old Testament.
00:00:15.600 | So what role does the Old Testament play in our Christian lives?
00:00:20.040 | That's the question today.
00:00:21.260 | And it comes from a listener named Sarah.
00:00:23.080 | Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:24.640 | Thank you for your ministry faithfulness over the years to this podcast and for
00:00:28.320 | fielding my question, generally speaking, the Old Testament is still very valuable
00:00:32.880 | to us, obviously, but to what extent now that the new covenant has arrived, God
00:00:38.260 | doesn't require animal sacrifices for our sins.
00:00:40.620 | So what are the best uses of the Old Testament for giving shape
00:00:44.120 | to our Christian lives today?
00:00:46.040 | Let me begin with the recommendation of a book.
00:00:49.400 | Jason Deroushi, D-E-R-O-U-C-H-I-E, published a book called How to
00:00:56.280 | Understand and Apply the Old Testament.
00:00:58.840 | It has a huge section in it on the practical uses of the
00:01:05.000 | Old Testament for our day.
00:01:06.960 | Jason is the professor of Old Testament at Bethlehem College and Seminary, and I
00:01:10.920 | just listened to a message of his just a few days ago about how the Old Testament
00:01:17.680 | is not just turned into useful Christian scripture for our own Christian living,
00:01:23.520 | but was intended by God and by the authors themselves of the Old Testament
00:01:29.960 | to be used that way beyond their own day in the distant future, including our time.
00:01:35.160 | You can probably find that message, by the way, at the audio or video section
00:01:39.440 | over at Bethlehem College and Seminary website.
00:01:42.080 | This is a huge issue that Sarah raises, but I think I can say just two or three
00:01:49.400 | things that will help her feel how precious and wonderful and useful the Old
00:01:56.120 | Testament is for our Christian life today.
00:01:59.280 | The first thing to say is that when Jesus Christ came into the world as the long
00:02:05.240 | expected Messiah of the Old Testament, a profound and dramatic change happened in
00:02:13.280 | the way we handle Old Testament scripture.
00:02:15.320 | And this is because Jesus was the fulfillment.
00:02:19.120 | That's the key New Testament word, the fulfillment and the goal of so much Old
00:02:24.480 | Testament religion.
00:02:26.240 | For example, Jesus was the fulfillment of all the Old Testament animal sacrifices,
00:02:31.880 | which were offered as a temporary way of pointing to the way God covers sins.
00:02:38.000 | So the entire sacrificial system comes to an end in Jesus.
00:02:44.160 | Doesn't need to be done anymore because Jesus was the decisive sacrifice of
00:02:48.440 | himself.
00:02:49.040 | He also is the high priest, the final, decisive, finish it high priest who
00:02:56.600 | mediates between man and God so that the sacrificial system and the priestly
00:03:02.680 | ministry of the sacrifices go away.
00:03:05.680 | We have a high priest that takes us right into the throne of grace personally.
00:03:11.280 | And that means that the ceremonial laws surrounding that entire system also
00:03:17.240 | undergo a dramatic change because Mark says in his gospel, Jesus declared all
00:03:22.840 | foods clean.
00:03:24.360 | So you can see how the ceremonial law that we're attaching to those processes,
00:03:30.400 | those ceremonies, are also altered.
00:03:33.600 | And when the gospel spills over to the banks of the Gentile world and not just
00:03:40.240 | ethnic Israel, so that the Gentiles are now included in the Abrahamic people of
00:03:46.480 | God, that ethnocentricity and earthly political theocentric approach of the
00:03:53.400 | civil government in the Old Testament, that undergoes a dramatic change because
00:03:57.720 | the church today is not one ethnicity with an earthly homeland with its own
00:04:05.000 | form of civil government.
00:04:06.760 | Instead, the church is a scattered people who are exiles and sojourners among all
00:04:13.600 | the nations of the world, functioning as refugees in all kinds of alien political
00:04:19.080 | systems, as representatives of the true heavenly citizenship.
00:04:24.400 | That's a radically different form of being a people of God than the Jewish
00:04:30.920 | people were in the Old Testament.
00:04:33.280 | So you can see from just those few examples, and there would be others, that
00:04:38.920 | when we read the Old Testament, we are, by its own intention, as Jason Deroshi
00:04:45.560 | showed me so well a few days ago, we are making the necessary changes of
00:04:51.360 | application for our day.
00:04:52.600 | But nothing I've said in all that should be construed to imply that the
00:04:58.560 | Scriptures are not profoundly useful today.
00:05:01.520 | All of them.
00:05:02.160 | All of them.
00:05:03.280 | Second Timothy 3.16, all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for
00:05:10.080 | Christians, he says.
00:05:11.120 | Not just a few scattered nice points like Isaiah 53.
00:05:14.880 | All of it is profitable.
00:05:16.760 | And there are two reasons for that that I'll mention.
00:05:20.360 | There are others, lots of others, probably.
00:05:22.120 | One, God has not changed.
00:05:25.040 | Therefore, wherever we rightly understand His character and His ways in the Old
00:05:32.720 | Testament, we are learning something true about the God and Father of our Lord
00:05:39.120 | Jesus Christ, who loved us and sent Christ to die for us.
00:05:42.480 | Number two, when Christ died, His blood secured for us a joyful participation, a
00:05:53.880 | full participation as Gentiles in all the promises of God in the Old Testament.
00:06:01.880 | This is one of the most important truths that Sarah, in asking this question,
00:06:06.160 | should take hold of with all her might.
00:06:09.680 | It's certainly the one that means most to me.
00:06:12.440 | Here's the way Paul expresses it in 2 Corinthians 1.20.
00:06:17.120 | All the promises of God find their yes in Jesus.
00:06:21.680 | That is why it is through Him we utter our amen to the glory of God.
00:06:30.360 | That is an absolutely glorious, amazing, wonderful, stunning, precious sentence.
00:06:36.720 | When you read the Old Testament, there are promises upon promises upon promises
00:06:42.960 | made to God's people, and in Christ they are yours.
00:06:48.320 | You're now grafted in, in Christ, into the seed, Paul says in Galatians 3, and as
00:06:54.880 | the seed of Israel, you benefit from all the promises made to Israel, you become
00:07:00.960 | part of the Abrahamic hope of the world.
00:07:03.560 | Here's one example, maybe two examples of how this works.
00:07:09.920 | So Hebrews 13, verses 5 and 6 says, "Keep your life free from the love of money.
00:07:16.280 | Be content with what you have."
00:07:18.640 | And here's how he argues.
00:07:20.920 | "For He has said," and then he quotes Joshua 1.5, words given to Joshua, "I
00:07:30.360 | will never leave you or forsake you."
00:07:32.960 | And then he continues, "So we can confidently say," and then he quotes
00:07:37.920 | Psalm 118, verse 6, "The Lord is my helper.
00:07:42.200 | I will not fear.
00:07:43.160 | What can man do to me?"
00:07:44.120 | Do you see how he's doing this?
00:07:46.080 | This is what we do.
00:07:47.280 | We hear the command, "Be content, keep your life free from the love of money."
00:07:53.200 | But how can I answer, "Go to Joshua, go to the Psalms, and you'll hear promises
00:07:59.360 | that will steady your heart and make you peaceful."
00:08:02.400 | That's amazing.
00:08:04.160 | Here's one more example from Romans 12, 19 and 20.
00:08:08.400 | Paul is arguing that Christians should not return evil for evil.
00:08:13.720 | How does he argue?
00:08:15.120 | Here's how he does it.
00:08:17.000 | Verse 19 of Romans 12, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves.
00:08:21.600 | Leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written."
00:08:26.960 | Where?
00:08:27.720 | Deuteronomy 32, verse 5, "Vengeance is mine.
00:08:33.680 | I will repay, says the Lord."
00:08:36.480 | Then he continues, only this time without even telling us.
00:08:39.720 | He's quoting the entirety of Proverbs 25, 21, and 22.
00:08:44.240 | "To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.
00:08:47.000 | If he's thirsty, give him something to drink.
00:08:49.600 | By so doing, you'll reap coals of fire, burning coals upon his head."
00:08:55.760 | And on and on it goes in the New Testament.
00:08:58.480 | So my limited, but I hope significant and helpful suggestion for Sarah is that two
00:09:06.400 | glorious uses of the Old Testament today are these.
00:09:10.640 | One, meeting God for who he really is so that we can know him and worship him since his
00:09:18.440 | character was revealed as truly in the Old Testament as in the New.
00:09:22.640 | That's first one.
00:09:23.560 | And two, letting the hundreds of promises in the Old Testament wash over you as your
00:09:30.840 | blood-bought birthright in Christ Jesus so that every day you set yourself free from
00:09:39.720 | sin by the superior pleasures of the promises of God.
00:09:46.120 | Amen.
00:09:47.200 | Amen and amen.
00:09:48.280 | Thank you, Pastor John, for modeling this earnest reading of the Old Testament over
00:09:52.400 | the years and for seeking to find glimpses of God's revealed glory in Scripture and so
00:09:58.240 | often capturing the promises and then sharing those things with us all on Twitter,
00:10:02.760 | where a lot of those discoveries find a home.
00:10:05.320 | Thank you for modeling this very approach to the Old Testament.
00:10:09.040 | And thank you for listening and making the podcast a part of your week.
00:10:11.680 | You can subscribe to our audio feeds and you can search our past episodes in our
00:10:14.920 | archive, even reach us by email with a question you may be having, even questions
00:10:17.880 | related to better understanding our Bibles and how to read them with better profit.
00:10:22.200 | Like this very good question today from Sarah.
00:10:25.640 | You can do all that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:10:30.720 | Well, we're going to return on Friday and I'm not sure what we're going to be
00:10:34.880 | talking about, but we'll be talking.
00:10:36.200 | We'll be fielding another one of your very excellent questions.
00:10:38.920 | Please keep those questions coming into us.
00:10:40.880 | We appreciate each and every one of them.
00:10:43.480 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:10:45.000 | We'll see you on Friday.
00:10:45.840 | Bye.
00:10:46.040 | Bye.
00:10:51.040 | [BLANK_AUDIO]