Five Ways Jesus Changes Our Relationship to the Old Testament

00:00:00.000 | Well, how does Jesus change our relationship to the Old Testament?

00:00:08.600 | It's a question we get all the time.

00:00:11.400 | Here's two recent examples, Micah in Buffalo, New York.

00:00:14.680 | "Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:15.680 | What role did the Ten Commandments play in the life and ministry of the New Testament

00:00:18.680 | Church?

00:00:19.680 | If these commandments are part of God's conditional covenant with the nation of Israel, which

00:00:24.000 | was broken, is there any abiding use for these commands in evangelism or moral instruction?"

00:00:30.800 | Here's another version of the same question from a listener named Pat.

00:00:34.200 | "Pastor John, are there any helpful rules of thumb for interpreting which particular

00:00:38.760 | commandments in the Old Testament apply to Christians today and why?

00:00:43.760 | For example, Leviticus 18 and 19 contain various commandments against sexual immorality and

00:00:48.920 | child sacrifice.

00:00:49.920 | I think it's safe to say that most listeners of the show would agree that these commandments

00:00:54.400 | apply to the Christian today.

00:00:56.760 | However, the same chapter is worn against wearing a garment that is made of two kinds

00:01:01.480 | of material, rounding off the hair on your temples, and forbidding tattoos.

00:01:07.240 | Are there any helpful ways to approach the Old Testament that would help make sense of

00:01:11.120 | these various commandments?"

00:01:13.440 | Pastor John, how do you come at these questions like these from Micah and Pat?

00:01:18.240 | The question I am trying to answer is basically how should New Testament Christians who believe

00:01:26.560 | in Jesus Christ, the Messiah, appropriate Old Testament laws in our day?

00:01:34.800 | I would start by saying even the writers of the Old Testament would agree that it would

00:01:42.140 | be contrary to the Old Testament to appropriate Old Testament laws after the Messiah has come

00:01:50.320 | as though He hadn't come.

00:01:52.400 | Amen.

00:01:53.480 | Even Old Testament authors would say that.

00:01:56.800 | And the Messiah has come.

00:02:00.120 | Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and therefore we dare not simply appropriate the Old Testament

00:02:09.000 | laws for our lives as though He had not come.

00:02:14.700 | So let me point to four ways that the New Testament talks about the change in how we

00:02:23.300 | use the Old Testament laws since Jesus has come.

00:02:27.800 | Here's the first one.

00:02:30.000 | The simplest way to see the massive implications of His coming is to realize that when He died,

00:02:37.460 | when Christ died for our sins, He put an end to the entire sacrificial system of the Old

00:02:43.740 | Testament because the sacrifice of all those animals and the performance of all those rituals

00:02:51.520 | in the temple or tabernacle were pointing toward a great final sacrifice described in

00:03:00.060 | Isaiah 53 when the Messiah comes.

00:03:03.160 | So hundreds of commandments and rules regarding animal sacrifices and priestly activity are

00:03:10.560 | brought to an end, fulfilled, as Jesus says in Matthew 5:17, by Jesus' life and death

00:03:17.920 | as our final sacrifice and our final high priest.

00:03:22.040 | This is what the book of Hebrews is written to show.

00:03:24.620 | For example, Hebrews 7, 27, He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices

00:03:32.140 | daily, first for His own sins and then for those of the people, since He did this once

00:03:39.900 | for all.

00:03:40.900 | That's one of the most important phrases in Hebrews, "once for all," when He offered

00:03:46.040 | up Himself.

00:03:48.100 | That phrase "once for all" is so important.

00:03:50.820 | Track it down in all of its uses in Hebrews.

00:03:53.260 | So here's the second massive change that came about with the coming of Jesus that points

00:04:00.420 | to a change in how the law is used.

00:04:03.380 | Jesus is forming a new people of God made up not only of Jews but of all the peoples

00:04:12.940 | of the world who believe in Him.

00:04:15.060 | So at the end of the book of Matthew, "Go make disciples of all nations," Jews and all

00:04:21.060 | the other thousands of people groups on the planet.

00:04:25.140 | So the time is past for God's focusing primarily on Israel as His redeemed covenant people,

00:04:35.140 | which He did for 2,000 years.

00:04:37.140 | The new covenant has been inaugurated with the blood of Jesus, Luke 22, 20, which includes

00:04:43.840 | everyone who believes in the Messiah and has a new heart.

00:04:48.580 | So Jesus spoke these ominous words in Matthew 21, 43.

00:04:54.580 | He said, "The kingdom of God will be taken away from you," addressing the Jewish leaders

00:05:02.760 | as representative of Israel.

00:05:04.580 | "Will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits."

00:05:11.380 | That's the church, which includes any Jews who believe.

00:05:14.660 | So all the nations and all the Jews who believe are the new fruit-producing people, and the

00:05:19.260 | shift has happened from the focus on Israel to the focus on this new people of God.

00:05:25.340 | The implication this has for the appropriation of the Old Testament laws is that all the

00:05:32.660 | laws which had as their design a ritual distinction between Israel and the nations have come to

00:05:40.980 | an end because those nations are now being folded into the very people of God, and the

00:05:46.780 | cultural stumbling blocks are being removed, like circumcision, like food and dietary laws,

00:05:53.340 | like the weaving together of two different fabrics that you're not supposed to wear in

00:05:57.020 | order to show that there's a distinction between Israel and the nations.

00:06:00.620 | And Jesus says explicitly in Mark 7, 19, "All foods are now clean for you."

00:06:07.140 | A third way to see the change that Jesus has brought about is that he now goes behind the

00:06:17.980 | Old Testament mosaic laws to God's original design in creation, and argues that the law

00:06:28.260 | in some cases was a temporary compromise with sin, but in the beginning it was not so.

00:06:38.620 | It was different.

00:06:40.460 | That's the way he deals in the Old Testament, for example, with the laws of divorce.

00:06:45.300 | I think the same thing with polygamy.

00:06:48.100 | He says the law permitting divorce was "owing to your hardness of heart."

00:06:56.580 | And then he reaches back to Genesis 2, 24 to say, "When God made man one flesh, let

00:07:04.260 | no one separate this union," Mark 10, 4 through 6.

00:07:09.940 | So there's this creational dimension which in the coming of Jesus takes precedent over

00:07:18.260 | the legal compromises in the Old Testament.

00:07:21.700 | Here's the fourth and last thing I'll say.

00:07:26.340 | The fourth way to see how things have changed with the coming of Christ is to realize that

00:07:32.860 | Christ by his death and his indwelling Spirit have put our relationship with God on a new

00:07:42.100 | footing.

00:07:43.100 | The mosaic law doesn't have the same standing for those who have died with Christ and risen

00:07:49.060 | to walk in newness of life.

00:07:50.900 | The key passage here is Romans 7, 4 and 6.

00:07:54.540 | It goes like this.

00:07:56.420 | You have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another.

00:08:05.700 | So once you belong to the law, now you belong to another, namely to him who has been raised

00:08:10.660 | from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.

00:08:15.180 | In other words, there's a new footing, a new way to pursue righteousness, and it isn't

00:08:20.860 | list keeping or law keeping.

00:08:22.620 | It's bearing fruit because you belong to Jesus Christ.

00:08:26.980 | Now verse 6, "Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive,

00:08:33.460 | so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, not in the old way of the written code."

00:08:41.940 | This doesn't mean that commandments have no place in the Christian life.

00:08:47.700 | For example, 1 Corinthians 7, 19, "Neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision,

00:08:54.020 | but keeping the commandments of God," which is a puzzling text because circumcision was

00:08:59.300 | a command, right?

00:09:00.540 | So he's making some kind of distinction there of what commandments are still binding and

00:09:05.300 | which aren't.

00:09:06.380 | Or 1 John 5, 3, "This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments

00:09:12.920 | are not burdensome."

00:09:15.660 | So last question then is, within this fourth way of looking at the change, what criteria

00:09:23.980 | does the New Testament give us for appropriating God's abiding commandments?

00:09:30.620 | And let me mention just three.

00:09:32.220 | One, love.

00:09:33.780 | I'm thinking of Matthew 22, 40, "On these two commandments, love God and love your neighbor,

00:09:40.860 | depend all the law and the prophets."

00:09:45.700 | Or Matthew 12, 7, "If you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,'

00:09:53.220 | you would not have condemned the guiltless."

00:09:56.020 | In other words, there are mercy and law commandments which sum up the entire legal, moral code

00:10:07.540 | and become a guideline for us today.

00:10:10.780 | Number two, sound doctrine in accord with the gospel.

00:10:14.100 | I'm thinking of 1 Timothy 1, 8, "Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully,"

00:10:21.980 | and gives a list of commandments and says, "Whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine."

00:10:29.340 | So that's what laws are for.

00:10:31.020 | What is contrary to sound doctrine?

00:10:33.220 | And then he adds, "In accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God."

00:10:39.860 | What laws accord with this?

00:10:41.740 | And finally, third, what is rooted in nature as God created it.

00:10:48.460 | That's how he argues in 1 Timothy 2, 13 as it relates to woman's authority over man,

00:10:54.180 | and that's how he argues in Romans 1 with regard to homosexuality.

00:10:58.340 | Now there are more pointers in the New Testament for how to appropriate the Old Testament laws,

00:11:03.100 | but these may suffice to point the way.

00:11:06.340 | And I think if I were helping a child—I want to try to make it real simple now as

00:11:10.340 | I close—if I were helping a child read the Bible, I would say something like this, "Honey,

00:11:18.420 | some things commanded in the Old Testament are not what we are supposed to do today.

00:11:27.620 | They were right and what God's people were supposed to do in that day, but now Jesus

00:11:34.180 | has come and important things have changed."

00:11:38.420 | And you might take a month helping your kid understand what that is.

00:11:42.220 | And then I'd finish like this, "Now, in our day, the safest way to know what's

00:11:48.020 | right and wrong is to make sure that the New Testament commands it or forbids it."

00:11:55.300 | Very good counsel on how to make sense of the Old Testament now that we are in Christ.

00:12:00.180 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:12:01.820 | Well over at our online home, you can explore all 1,250 or so of our episodes.

00:12:06.340 | You can scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even send us a question

00:12:09.660 | of your own.

00:12:10.660 | Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:12:14.780 | And to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor

00:12:18.060 | John Podcast and favorite podcast app.

00:12:20.900 | Should we ever take an action that we don't have peace about?

00:12:24.300 | It's a great question from a listener and it's the question we begin the week with on

00:12:29.660 | the other side of the weekend.

00:12:30.660 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:12:31.660 | We'll see you then.

00:12:32.660 | [End of Audio]

00:12:33.660 | 1

00:12:33.660 | you

00:12:35.720 | you

00:12:37.780 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Five Ways Jesus Changes Our Relationship to the Old Testament

Chapters