What Old Testament Promises Are for Me?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Today's question is one I can certainly relate to myself. I read my Bible in the morning.
00:00:09.000 | I come across a promise or a text in the Old Testament.
00:00:12.000 | I write it out in a notebook. I take that text or that promise into my day.
00:00:17.000 | But later in the day when I return to the text, I'm left wondering if I lifted the verse out of context
00:00:22.000 | and maybe it doesn't really apply to my life like I first thought it did that morning.
00:00:27.000 | Many texts to me feel more and more remote as the day goes on.
00:00:32.000 | Has that happened to you? Well, it certainly happened to me and it's happened to Maureen.
00:00:37.000 | She writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, thank you for the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:40.000 | How do I know which Old Testament verses are for me as a Christian today?
00:00:45.000 | Sometimes I select a verse that is meaningful to me from my Bible reading in the morning,
00:00:49.000 | but then later in the day as I later reflect on it, it feels like I lifted the verse out of context
00:00:54.000 | and misapplied it to myself.
00:00:57.000 | How, Pastor John, do I know which Old Testament promises are for me?"
00:01:03.000 | Well, I'm tempted to say, even though I know it's an oversimplification, all of it.
00:01:10.000 | All of it is for you. All of the Old Testament is for Christians.
00:01:14.000 | Romans 15.4 says, "Whatever," underline that word,
00:01:19.000 | "Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction,
00:01:25.000 | that through the endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures,
00:01:29.000 | we would have hope." All of it.
00:01:31.000 | 2 Corinthians 1.20, "All the promises of God find their yes in Christ."
00:01:36.000 | Jesus said in Matthew 5.17, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.
00:01:44.000 | I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
00:01:47.000 | For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota, not a dot,
00:01:54.000 | will pass from the law until all is accomplished."
00:01:58.000 | So, even though it's an oversimplification, it's true. It's true.
00:02:04.000 | In a wonderful way that all of the Old Testament is for those who are in Christ Jesus.
00:02:12.000 | He came. He came to confirm and fulfill all of it for his people.
00:02:20.000 | 2 Timothy 3.16, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable."
00:02:29.000 | That's important. It's all profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
00:02:35.000 | and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be completely equipped for every good work.
00:02:41.000 | It's practical and profitable.
00:02:44.000 | But the reason it's an oversimplification to say that it's all for us is that, yes,
00:02:54.000 | some very profound changes in the way we use the Old Testament Scripture
00:03:02.000 | took place when Jesus came into the world, was rejected by Israel,
00:03:09.000 | established a new covenant by his blood, different from the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant,
00:03:15.000 | and said, "Now I will build my church." He did not say, "Now I will restore Israel."
00:03:24.000 | So, maybe what would be helpful for Maureen and for me, and maybe others too, I hope so,
00:03:35.000 | is to list the differences between the people of God, the church today,
00:03:40.000 | and the people of God, Israel, in the Old Testament, and how God relates differently to each.
00:03:49.000 | These points can then function as a kind of filter.
00:03:54.000 | At least this is the way I function in reading the Old Testament.
00:03:58.000 | I have a filter, and I put things through this filter to know how I embrace them,
00:04:04.000 | how I apply them in my life.
00:04:07.000 | So that's what I hope will happen now as I walk through these points of difference
00:04:12.000 | between Israel and the church, because we're the church,
00:04:15.000 | and we need a filter to know what proper use to make of Old Testament teachings.
00:04:21.000 | So, number one, Israel was an earthly political nation-state among other political nation-states,
00:04:29.000 | but the church is not.
00:04:31.000 | It is a people whose citizenship is in heaven,
00:04:36.000 | and who are sojourners and exiles here scattered among all the nation-states.
00:04:42.000 | Christians are not first citizens of earthly states,
00:04:46.000 | but only secondarily citizens of nation-states.
00:04:51.000 | We are more closely related to Christians of other political countries
00:04:56.000 | than we are unbelieving fellow citizens in our own earthly country.
00:05:01.000 | Number two, Israel was an earthly government authorized by God as a theocracy
00:05:07.000 | to carry out God's punishments for those who broke his law,
00:05:11.000 | including capital punishment for idolatry and various other sins.
00:05:16.000 | The church is not a civil government and is not authorized as a church
00:05:22.000 | to carry out God's punishments.
00:05:25.000 | Excommunication from the church through church discipline
00:05:31.000 | replaces execution through the judicial processes.
00:05:37.000 | Number three, Israel was basically one ethnicity, the Jewish people,
00:05:44.000 | but the church is made up of all ethnicities.
00:05:47.000 | So the kinds of food laws and circumcision, for example,
00:05:52.000 | and other practices that were designed to separate Israel from the surrounding peoples,
00:05:58.000 | ethnicities, have been done away with as requirements for God's people.
00:06:04.000 | Number four, Israel had defined geographic borders
00:06:09.000 | and a geographic religious center where the tabernacle or the temple was.
00:06:15.000 | The church has no geographic borders or religious center
00:06:21.000 | where the people of God are gathered in the name of Jesus.
00:06:24.000 | There is the center. There is Christ in the midst.
00:06:28.000 | Five, people were born into the Jewish people,
00:06:34.000 | but people are born again into the church.
00:06:38.000 | The new covenant is entered by the miracle of God's forgiving sins through faith
00:06:45.000 | and through God's writing the law on our hearts.
00:06:49.000 | That's the new covenant.
00:06:51.000 | Six, the Old Testament religion was mainly a come-see religion,
00:06:56.000 | while the New Testament religion was mainly, is mainly, a go-tell religion.
00:07:03.000 | There was no great commission to go reach the nations in the Old Testament.
00:07:09.000 | God's focus was on blessing Israel among the nations
00:07:13.000 | so that the queen of the south came and had her breath taken away
00:07:18.000 | by Solomon's wealth.
00:07:20.000 | But God never said to Solomon, "Use your wealth to evangelize the nations."
00:07:26.000 | But that is precisely what he says to us in the New Testament.
00:07:31.000 | Seven, the people of Israel maintained their fellowship with God
00:07:36.000 | by regular sacrifices, ministered by a select Levitical priesthood.
00:07:42.000 | But that entire system was done away with when Jesus fulfilled it
00:07:47.000 | by becoming the final sacrifice and by acting as the final high priest.
00:07:53.000 | In the new covenant people, we get right with God and maintain our fellowship
00:07:59.000 | with God by trusting the substitutionary work of Christ
00:08:06.000 | and by depending on his daily intercession for us in heaven.
00:08:11.000 | And I think number eight is the last one.
00:08:14.000 | The people of God in the Old Testament did experience the working of the Spirit of God,
00:08:22.000 | but they did not experience or know the Spirit as the indwelling Spirit of the risen Christ.
00:08:33.000 | Today we know the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ.
00:08:37.000 | He works in his church, therefore, in a way that he did not work in the Old Testament
00:08:43.000 | because the church is his body, the body of the risen Christ.
00:08:48.000 | So my hope for Maureen and all of us is that with this filter, these eight points,
00:08:56.000 | we can take any text in the Old Testament and make it our own
00:09:03.000 | by treating it as fulfilled in Christ with the necessary changes implied in those points.
00:09:11.000 | For example, Psalm 51 ends like this.
00:09:14.000 | It's kind of a surprising end to a psalm that we love until we get to the last paragraph,
00:09:20.000 | which goes like this, "Do good to Zion in your good pleasure.
00:09:25.000 | Build up the walls of Jerusalem.
00:09:28.000 | Then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings.
00:09:35.000 | Then bulls will be offered on your altar."
00:09:38.000 | We come to the end of Psalm 51, just exalting, "This is mine, this is mine."
00:09:42.000 | And then you read those words and say, "What? What am I supposed to do with that?"
00:09:47.000 | So how are we to embrace that text as ours?
00:09:52.000 | Zion was the geographic center of God's people, standing for the presence of God among his people.
00:10:01.000 | And today, we would embrace that commitment to God, to his people, and say,
00:10:07.000 | "Do good to your church, O Lord.
00:10:11.000 | Wherever it is gathered in your holy name, build up the body of Christ
00:10:17.000 | and make your presence felt everywhere that your people are centered on you."
00:10:23.000 | And then we would come to the end and we would conclude with,
00:10:26.000 | "Oh, how I delight in the one great final sacrifice for sin that your Son offered.
00:10:34.000 | We glory with you in that final fulfillment of every bull that was ever offered on your altar
00:10:42.000 | and we give ourselves to you as a living sacrifice for your glory."
00:10:49.000 | Very helpful grid here and helpful example as well.
00:10:52.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:53.000 | I want to reiterate at the end the importance of those two texts that you mentioned at the very start,
00:10:58.000 | Romans 15.4 and 2 Corinthians 1.20.
00:11:02.000 | Absolutely essential texts in framing this entire discussion.
00:11:05.000 | If you haven't spent time getting those two texts really clear in your own mind,
00:11:09.000 | I would recommend that you rehearse them, memorize them,
00:11:13.000 | get them deep into your mind and your heart and your soul.
00:11:16.000 | Romans 15.4 and 2 Corinthians 1.20.
00:11:20.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for joining us today.
00:11:24.000 | If you want to ask Pastor John, email your question to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:11:30.000 | Next week we talk about joy.
00:11:33.000 | Joy. Is joy a choice we make or is joy a feeling that sometimes comes and goes?
00:11:40.000 | That's the question.
00:11:42.000 | Up next time, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. See you Monday.
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