Christ in the Old Testament - Pat Abendroth (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today on the show I have something special. Don't forget Cancer's Not Your Shepherd, found on Amazon .com. That's the new book. I was in Alliance, Ohio at Community Bible Church with Pastor John Tucker for the Pillars Conference, and Pat Abendroth delivered a Friday night message that was a home run.

And so today on the show, with Pat's permission and John's permission, I play part one about Christ and the Old Testament. Enjoy.

Good evening, everyone. You all are great hosts. It's fun to stay at the Tucker's house. And other than we usually starve because there's not a lot of food around, the refrigerator's locked, all that kind of stuff.

We feel very cramped being in the city, no wildlife, nothing to do. Just really bored. But the weather. So I think the first time I came three years ago, I had new running shoes, and so I thought I would go run.

And nothing like having new shoes and having them trashed, because the weather was like this. And then last year, John promised me we would ride motorcycles together. And so I was looking forward to spending time riding with John, and guess what?

The weather was like this. So I thought, well, this year, since I'm into cycling, training for an event in San Diego at the end of the month, 130 miles, I'll bring a bike. I don't know how that's going to go, but anyway.

It is what it is. But it's a lot like Omaha, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much about these things. Well, jokes aside, maybe we should open in prayer so we can get down to business. Father, thank you for this evening.

Thank you for this congregation and for the men and women and boys and girls who are a part of it, who love the Lord Jesus Christ, and who love to learn more and love to be further equipped to do life and ministry here in this place.

Encourage us as we spend time this evening and tomorrow and the next day. May it bring joy. May it bring clarity. And may it bring great fellowship, that we can have good conversations, even in between the sessions, and talk about things that will matter forever.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So at the risk of sounding alarmist, I'd like to suggest that we as evangelical Christians, and by that I mean conservative, Bible-believing, Reformed Christians, you get the idea, people who are serious about the Bible, that we are facing a crisis.

And that crisis is having to do with the Bible. The fact that we have Bibles, so that's not the crisis. Heaven knows we have lots of Bibles. We profess to believe the Bible, so that's not the crisis. We say it's inspired, it's inerrant, it's infallible, and all of those good things that we should say.

So that's not the crisis. We study the Bible. I mean, Christian book sales, commentaries, hundreds of thousands of dollars are made every year, because Christians like us, we buy study tools, we buy commentaries.

So that's not the crisis either. But I would like to suggest to you, and we'll talk about this this evening and throughout the weekend, that the crisis has to do with the fact that we don't treat the Bible like it's a Christian book.

And I realize that might sound really strange. The crisis is that we don't treat the Bible like it's a Christian book. In particular, the Old Testament. I even heard one scholar, one dean of a seminary, super conservative, committed to things like expository preaching, verbal inerrancy, infallibility, sufficiency, all of those good things, all but come right out and say that he did not think that the Bible, or does not think that the Bible is a Christian book.

Now, most people aren't that brazen, right? But still, you see it. If you look for this idea, this concept, this reality, that Christians don't act like the Bible is a Christian book, I do think you'll see it.

We teach the Bible and we turn the Bible into something other than a book about Christ. Think about all of the sermons and Bible studies and books that somehow imply that the Bible is about something other than Christ.

Building character from character studies in the Old Testament. That's what it seems to be about when you listen to lots of sermons. Learning leadership skills. Maybe the Bible is about learning leadership skills when you listen to a lot of sermons and read a lot of Christian books.

Or maybe it's a guidebook for everything you'll need to know about life. It sounds good. You've heard something like that before, haven't you? The answer to every question you'll ever need to know is in the Bible.

We'll talk about whether or not that's actually true and whether the Bible actually wants you to read it that way. Or we say things like, well, we're mining the Bible for timeless truths and principles.

I may have even said that before in my life. And not that there aren't nuggets or kernels of truth in some of those things, but I would like to argue in this session and get you thinking so we can have some good discussions.

I would like to argue that the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, is a Christian book. That it is about Christ and that historically Christians, not altogether, but by and large, have generally believed that the Bible is a Christian book.

But in practice, it seems like we're not doing a very good job of acting like the Bible is a Christian book. And so what I would like to do in this session would be to offer some guidelines, some suggestions that I think are distinctly Christian, that are historically Christian, for this matter of recovering a Christ-centered perspective of the Old Testament.

So this session will have to do with the Christ-centered nature of the Old Testament. We could do with the New Testament as well. I think that's necessary. But for our conference this weekend, I want to talk about the Christ-centered nature of the Old Testament.

Yes, the Old Testament is a Christian book. It's not only Matthew through Revelation that's a Christian book. I think this will help you. It'll help you read your Bible better. It'll help you to maybe be aware of some of the dangers so you can be more discerning.

I even think it'll help you to have more fun reading your Bible. Is it okay to say that in this church, John? Okay, we're going to say we can even have fun. It's exciting to read the Bible when you know what, or maybe I should say who, to be looking for.

And to see what God designed the Bible to be so that we can be excited about it and not try to find things that were never meant to be in there in the first place. In so many ways, it just makes me excited and it makes me motivated.

This session will motivate me to want to go home and read the Old Testament in hopefully a better way. And I hope that happens in your life because God is all about, and He is in the business of glorifying His great Son.

And when you see the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ from Genesis to Revelation, that glorifies God, and I know it's good for us to do what's right, which glorifies God. So I have a top 10 list here.

This won't be exposition. I'm going to do an expositional message tomorrow. But this opening session, it won't be so much of a sermon, if you will, but it will be a discussion for us to work through some guidelines, some Christian guidelines that have to do with recovering the Christ-centered nature of the Old Testament.

None of them are original. I don't want to be original. I want to borrow them from the Christians who've gone before us. Number one, first guideline for recovering the Christ-centered nature of the Old Testament would be, remember the pactum.

Remember the pactum. I don't mean the podcast. I don't mean publishing. I don't mean conferences. It's not self-promotion. I do love myself. I'll have to admit that's a big problem in life. No, I mean the pactum.

And in theology, we use pactum. It's a Latin word, but we use it as shorthand. It means covenant. And in Christian theology, Christian theologians for years now have been using it as shorthand for the pactum, the covenant of all covenants.

So to use, again, more Latin, the pactum salutis. I promise, no more Latin. The pactum of salvation. And it's what we learn about in Ephesians chapter 1, which I would like to draw your attention to. The pactum is this intra-trinitarian.

So we've got the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This intra-trinitarian covenant. Covenant means formal agreement. Think of the word that we all know, pact. You're making a formal agreement. You're making a pact.

It's a pactum. And God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, according to Ephesians chapter 1, formally agreed, covenanted to have Jesus come into this world to provide perfect redemption.

Perfect redemption for those that had been predestined by the Father, if you will, in Ephesians 1. And that work of redemption by Christ would be supernaturally applied by the Holy Spirit. Remember, remember, remember the pactum if you want to read the Old Testament the right way, because when did the pactum happen?

Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3, Genesis 4, Hebrews. When? It happened before the foundation of the world, before time. So if that's true, there was already something in place before Genesis 1 -1. Newsflash, therefore, even in Genesis 1 -1, not to mention Genesis 3 -15, we should be thinking about this thing that happened even before then that is going to unfold, that is going to be a reality, that is by design, and the centerpiece of it all on planet Earth would be none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.

So let's go ahead and take a look at it. We'll just kind of do the flyover. But this intra-Trinitarian covenant of redemption in Ephesians chapter 1, how about verse 4? In Ephesians 1 -4, it says, Even as He, the Father, chose us in Him, the Son, before the foundation of the world.

So before time begins, you've got the Father, you've got the Son, and we'll go fast because we have ten of these. By the time we get to verse 13, we do have the sealing with the Holy Spirit, so we have the work of the Spirit as well.

So all three members of the triune Godhead, He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. Pre-Genesis 1 -1, last time I checked. That we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ.

Oh, we're getting into some important matters here as if we hadn't been already. End of verse 5, look there. According to the purpose of His will. According to the... God has a will, God has a plan, God has a purpose.

God has, you could even use the word decree. Because if He's the all-powerful, all-knowing God, His purpose, different from my purposes in life, different from yours, will no matter what, absolutely, positively come to pass.

So something is going to happen, it's redemption, and it's going to happen in Christ no matter what, according to divine decree. It's exciting. It's exciting to be thinking about this. This happened before Genesis 1 -1, and it would center upon Christ.

He talks about redemption in verse 7. So that's why we call it the covenant of redemption sometimes, the pactum. And for the sake of time, how about if we work our way down to verse 9? Making known to us the mystery of His will.

So we learned about the will of God in verse 5. According to the mystery of His will, in this context, it would be decree. It would be a certain will no matter what. According to His purpose, overlapping idea there, that's decree talk.

Think king. When a king makes a decree, it's going to happen. Well, a lot of the time. But when the king is the sovereign, all-knowing, all-powerful God of the universe, it is most certainly going to happen.

Then it says in verse 9, which He set forth in Christ. So see, it is in Christ. He's the centerpiece of it all. Then it says in verse 10, as a plan, overlapping concepts and ideas so we don't miss them.

That's purpose talk. That's decree talk. It's going to happen if it's God's plan as a plan for the fullness of time. Then in verse 11, we see partially through that verse, predestined according to the purpose.

There it is again. Of Him who, oh, let me slow down. Don't miss this. Who works all things according to the counsel of His will. Do you think all things refers to all things? I think it's all things. All the things that are going to happen from Genesis 1 -1 onward.

The God that we know and believe and worship who might make us nervous because He's not like us, but that's okay. He is the God who works all things after the counsel of His will. So everything that's going to happen, Genesis 1 -1 and onward, have to do with the will of God unfolding, and that unfolding will is going to center around who?

The Lord Jesus Christ. Redemption in the Lord Jesus Christ. So when I say number one on the list, and there's no particular order, but I think this is a great place to start because it's this aha moment.

If this is true, then we can expect to see history moving in a certain direction. We can expect to see clues. We can expect to see figures, to use other words that we'll get into later, but I'll just preview.

We'll expect to see shadows, expect to see types. We should even expect to see Christ show up in different sorts of ways that are pre-incarnate before He becomes a human being, before Matthew, yes. We're seeing this happen.

It's not like all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Matthew shows up with plan B. But sometimes we read our Bibles that way because, in other words, if you want to use other language to be provocative, we read our Bibles like Arminians, like people who don't believe in the sovereignty of God.

They don't believe in predestination. They don't believe God has a decree or a perfect will, and that's crazy in light of Ephesians 1, apart from titles or labels. We're people who believe in the sovereignty of God, and He has a will, and He works all things after the counsel of His will.

We should be able to take note, to read the Bible like Christians. It's such a game changer for me if I can keep this in mind, centerpiece of it all, culminating plan of it all is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it makes it, like I said earlier, it makes it fun. We're not looking for things when we read Genesis to that famous Italian theologian Malachi. We're not being subjective, fanciful, trying to make things up when we're reading Genesis to Malachi, looking for how this shows us Christ, or anticipates Christ, or shadows Christ, or typifies Christ.

There's lots of different ways we look at it, but we're not being fanciful. We're just knowing that God is sovereign, and He has a decree, and it centers around His Son, and He works all things after the counsel of His will.

And we're not looking for, and I don't want to get too far into the weeds, but I'm having fun doing this. But we're not looking for some kind of hidden meanings. We're not trying to find Jesus where He isn't.

Somehow, everything that's been working is working after the counsel of His will. So Christ might not be in every word, but every word has to do with pushing the narrative forward, with getting us ready, with showing us something about Him.

And I'm being somewhat careful with my words there. We're not talking about some kind of allegorical, fanciful, we're just making this kind of stuff up, because no, let's step back. We believe in the pactum.

And so we should be able to see which is exciting, which is amazing, which is sometimes fun. Sometimes it's just hard work, but sometimes it's fun. So I hope you're motivated by that. Number two, a second guideline for recovering a Christ-centered or the Christ-centered nature of the Old Testament would be listen to Jesus.

Listen to Jesus. He's my favorite Bible scholar, and I hope He's your favorite Bible scholar. Who knows more about how to interpret the Bible, even the Old Testament? Who knows more than anybody? Jesus, the great I Am, the one who knows all things, the one who was involved in the pactum.

So let's do some rapid fire glancing at some text for the sake of time. I'm going to go to John 5, John 1, John 6, Luke 24, Luke 9. And I won't go slow, because then we would make it till tomorrow or something like that.

So if you're new to the Bible, just jot the verses down. If you really want to go for it, go for it. But John 5, verse 46 says,. For if you believed Moses, this is Jesus speaking in John 5, verse 46, If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me.

That's huge when it comes to all of this. Jesus says that Moses wrote about me. Jesus wrote the Pentateuch, the first five books. And you could quickly right now on your computerized iPhone or whatever it is, you could do a word search in the Pentateuch for the word Jesus.

And I haven't checked lately, but I bet you're not going to find the name Jesus. But Jesus wasn't lying. So maybe we'd have to do some work. In what sense was he speaking about him? But he for sure was speaking about him, because Jesus knows all things.

Moses wrote about me. That's amazing. John 1, verse 45, Philip found Nathanael and said to him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

So what's interesting is Jesus knew this, but also other people who were living when Jesus was alive, they also knew this. Philip and Nathanael knew it. John 6, verse 41, Jesus says, I am the bread that came down from heaven.

In Exodus? I've got a lot of questions about that. You might too. Ask Pastor John Tucker. We're not here to solve all the problems today, but we are here to solve some of the problems. Luke chapter 24 is the classic one, the road to Emmaus one.

Luke 24, verse 25 says,. And he said to them, Jesus said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken. So Jesus expects them, even as those who had been part of the old covenant, to have known that these things were speaking about him.

And how much more us? Then he says in verse 26, Was it not necessary that the Christ, the Messiah, should suffer these things and enter into his glory? Implied answer is of course. And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures, these things concerning himself.

We won't take the time to go to the Sermon on the Mount, but it's not by accident that the Sermon on the Mount resembles Mount Sinai. And Moses resembles Jesus. This stuff is built in. It's built in because God works all things after the counsel of his will is why it is.

John chapter 2, temple as well. We could go there, we won't. John chapter 10, verse 45, Jesus says, I will give my life as a ransom for many. That depends upon a connection to the Old Testament. That's lamb talk.

That's substitutionary lamb talk. And Jesus says, I'm that lamb. I'm the fulfillment of Passover. The connection is there. It's meant to be there. It has always been there. How about if we have a pactum, that connection is built in Exodus according to divine design because before the foundation of the world, he chose us in him, and he's working all things after the counsel of his will, so it's not a foul to read Exodus and read about the Passover to say, I know who this is about.

I definitely know who it's about. And Jesus expects you to know that because when he shows up on the scene historically, he says, I'm the one. I'm giving my life as a ransom for many. That's substitutionary atonement.

That's lamb talk. It's amazing. It's so exciting. Luke chapter 9 is one other one that I'll look to, and then we'll move on to the third guideline. Luke chapter 9 also makes the connection between the old and new, and it's a good one.

I remember the first time I saw this, I thought, wow. It's like the Old Testament and the New Testament go together, and it's like it's according to plan is what it's like. Luke chapter 9, verse 28, it's the transfiguration account, and it says in verse 28, now about eight days after these things, after these sayings, he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray, and as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white.

Here we go. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah. How about the representative Old Testament figures who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure. Greek word, exodus. Moses is there with Elijah talking to Jesus about Jesus' exodus.

Things that make you go, hmm, that's pretty cool. Then it says, it gets cooler. It doesn't say that, but it does get cooler. It says, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. The Lord Jesus Christ is going to accomplish his exodus.

He is the better Moses. He's the greater mediator. He is the one who perfectly leads his people through in redemption, not out of Egypt, but out of this Egyptian, Babylonian, corrupt, perverse kind of world, if you will.

He's the deliverer. Moses was a deliverer. He's the redeemer. Moses was a redeemer. So the historic exodus is designed to be, let's see, we've covered Latin, we've covered Greek, maybe a fancier English word.

It's designed to be a motif. It's designed to be a pattern. It's by divine design meant to show us and get us ready for the Lord Jesus Christ. Redeemed out of Egypt, oppression, that serpent of a dastardly fellow with the Pharaoh.

Yep, it was all designed before it ever even happened to be anticipating Jesus so that we would understand and appreciate the Lord Jesus Christ even better. It's exciting stuff. In my notes, I have in the margin, that's money.

It's just like, this is great. This is great. How about a third one? You guys doing okay with this? All right, number three, another guideline. I'm already excited about having conversations even afterward.

The next guideline for recovering a Christ-centered perspective on the Old Testament or its Christ-centered nature, number three, three, avoid enlightenment interpretations or to use the more technical word, avoid enlightenment hermeneutics.

Some people would want to say avoid post-enlightenment hermeneutics, those things that have come and been significant since then. Let me ask you this question. Was the enlightenment a good thing? Right?

Some of you are doing this kind of thing. Trick question. It is kind of a trick question. The enlightenment had some really good things. Enlightenment, 17th, 18th century, is that right? Yeah, 17th, 18th century.

I looked it up in Wikipedia and they know all things on Wikipedia. Just kidding, but I did look it up because it's good to know what Wikipedia says even if it's not always right. 1685 to 1815, so I'll go with that.

The enlightenment did some good things because it questioned authorities. It questioned royalty. It questioned religion because there was a lot of superstition going on. A lot of manipulation and controlling people because you could just say this is God's will for your life.

This is what God says and we know it's what God says because that's what the priest says. The priest would be connected to royalty and so we can control you with religion. Religion can be an awful thing that way.

The enlightenment, we want to be scientific. We want objectivity. Those are good things, fruit of the enlightenment. But what we need to remember is the fact that we as Christians are supernaturalists.

We don't like superstition but we do like supernatural. So what we don't want to do is throw the baby out with the bathwater. We want to say science is good, objectivity is good, manipulating people is bad but according to the Lord Jesus Christ who came to earth, was a historic person, objectively so, lived in the Middle East, was crucified, died and buried, resurrected historically.

He believed the Bible was true. So we believe the Bible is true and that's not taking a leap of faith because we're actually trusting in someone who's a historic person. So all of that to just get you ready to think about this.

Lots of evangelical Christians, lots of conservative Bible believing scholars, commentators, seminary professors, Bible study tools that you might use, follow enlightenment interpretation principles. Even though they're conservatives, they act like they're theological liberals and you just need to be aware of that and it's important that we're aware of that.

They don't believe things like the divine, the enlightenment didn't believe the divine authorship of the Bible. The enlightenment didn't believe if there's a God, He's not sovereign and therefore He does not have a decree and therefore history's not going in a certain direction, working all things after the counsel of His will.

That's post-enlightenment or enlightenment kind of thinking. They didn't believe in a pactum. But I want to encourage you, we as Christians believe in divine authorship of the Bible. We believe in the sovereignty of God.

We believe there and He has a decree and therefore history is going somewhere and it's been going somewhere all throughout human history. And so we would expect to see Jesus, the eternal Son, even before the incarnation.

That's what I'd like you to think about. So when someone comes along and says to you, don't read the Old Testament in light of the new, that's enlightenment hermeneutics is what it is. That's enlightenment hermeneutics.

Because Christians believe in one ultimate divine author who authors all of Scripture and He's sovereign and has a decree and is and has been working all things after the counsel of His will. And so it's legitimate to read the new in light of the old.

That's pretty important. But also the old in light of the new because He's sovereign and there's a pactum. So keep that in mind. Here's a quotation. You tell me if you think this is a good quotation. This is sound advice or not.

The whole canon, all of Scripture, must not be used as the context for every interpretation, good or bad. I think that's bad. That's just enlightenment hermeneutics from one of the most conservative, evangelical Old Testament commentators alive today.

Influencing all kinds of seminary students and pastors and Christians.