The Old Testament Preaches the Gospel | Theocast

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There is a famous movie, and everyone pretty much knows the end of the movie, it's Braveheart, where he yells freedom.

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I've seen it probably a hundred times, but you know one thing I've never seen? I've actually never seen the movie, which that movie doesn't have that much of a draw for me because I just don't really know the story behind it.

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And that's how most people read their Old Testament. They know it's supposed to be about Jesus and they've read the new, but they're just disconnected from the old.

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And today's podcast is our attempt to give you the reasons of why you should read your

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Old Testament, and in doing so, see the wonder and glory as it defines for us grace and leads us to Christ.

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Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. Have you ever felt like the

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Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy? That you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what

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Christ has done for you. It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

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Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

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We have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it. And we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism.

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Reform theology, really, how it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

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Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest. What does that look like? You can download it on our website.

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Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed pastoral confessional perspective. We'll throw in some law gospel, covenant theology, supernatural, and humor, whatever we feel like today.

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Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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And I'm John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Justin, this is our second recording for the day.

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For those that don't know, we try and double up to give ourselves some time in between our recordings. So I'm going to let you talk because I need to cough for a second.

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So say hello to the folks. What's up, fam? Good to be with you again. Yeah, we record usually every other

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Wednesday. Just got to pull in the curtain back here. So this is our second one today. It's been that way for day one.

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Yeah, we've always recorded on Wednesdays. We've always recorded on Wednesdays. We started doing this every other week thing. I don't know how long it's been, but it works for a year because it allows us to get other pastoral work done, things like that.

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Some people aren't tuning in to know those things, though they do care about us and we're grateful. As you also know,

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John and I are pastors. So we're preaching on Sunday mornings, and a lot of times the conversations that we have on here are birthed out of things that are on our minds and hearts as a result of what we're preaching.

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So last week, John has been in First Peter, and so last week we were talking about deliverance from Satan, effectively, the deliverance from the kingdom of darkness.

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Not deliverance ministries. And not deliverance like Appalachia craziness either.

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But deliverance from the kingdom of darkness and from bondage to Satan. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and check it out. This week, we're pivoting to the

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Old Testament. So I'm preaching Exodus, and I'm in the early chapters, and John and I were talking before we hit record today about things, and wouldn't you know it, that the gospel being preached and defined by the

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Old Testament came up. And so that's effectively our conversation today. Let me tee it up this way. There are a lot of ways that many of us have been taught to read the

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Old Testament that are less than helpful. So if you're out there and you're newer to redemptive, historical,

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Reformed Christianity, great. Or maybe you've been in it for a while, I still trust this is going to resonate with you.

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For many of us, if we're honest, like growing up or cutting our teeth, reading the Bible, the Old Testament was kind of scary, like we didn't know what to do with it.

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It kind of seems like a wasteland, like maybe there's an occasional oasis here or there. There's a promise. There's a prophecy about the

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Messiah. There's some grace over there. But generally, the Old Testament is hard.

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It's law. It's scary. It's fire and brimstone and judgment and frightening.

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Can we say weird? Or weird. That's one way. There's weird stuff in the

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Old Testament. You know, and like you guys have heard, you know, God was different back then. He was harsh.

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It was all wrath and judgment. Flooded the world. Yeah. Or another way that many of us have been taught to read the

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Old Testament is with a law -centered mentality. This is where we go through and we mine every text for what we're supposed to be doing.

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Like, I need to know my instructions. What am I supposed to be doing? And we're going to the text with that in mind.

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And oftentimes, because so much of the Old Testament is narrative or poetry or just God's commentary on the history, i .e.

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the prophets, we're going to introduce and create laws where there aren't any. Kind of a thing we do.

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Another way that we misread the Old Testament. This one is very common. This one is what I like to call the flannel board approach.

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This is where we moralize the Old Testament. So this is following around the Old Testament saints and we're trying to figure out how to be like them.

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You know, how to dare to be a Daniel or how can we be like David or whatever. And we tend to heroize all the characters in the

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Old Testament. We don't really talk about their sin and their failure, their weakness, though they are just like us.

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And we turn the Old Testament into a collection of moral tales or like Aesop's fables kind of thing.

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And it's just not helpful. So those are just a few of the ways that we've been taught to approach the Old Testament that does not do us any service.

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There is a much better way to read the Old Testament. And it is the way that the apostles and Jesus himself understood it.

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And it is a testimony about God's plan of redemption that is accomplished through Jesus Christ.

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And so we're going to be talking from Exodus a little bit today and inevitably from other places in the Old Testament. But John, I'm going to tee us up with what we both agree.

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Genesis 3 .15 occurs obviously very early in a very large book.

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So just two or three pages into a massive book, we get this promise, this pronouncement from God to Adam and Eve.

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They have sinned. The devil has deceived them. They have sinned. They have broken

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God's covenant. And God pronounces what he's going to do. He says to the serpent,

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I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, between her offspring and your offspring.

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You will bruise his heel. He will bruise your head. And we understand that to be

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God's pronouncement, the promise of a Redeemer who is going to come and right all these wrongs and save the human race.

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And we obviously understand this is a prophecy and a pronouncement about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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And so, of course, John, wouldn't you think that if that is stated by God in Genesis 3 .15,

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that the rest of the big book that's called the Bible is about that promise and it's about the accomplishment of it?

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Wouldn't you think that? Yeah. Yeah. As you were saying this, I had something come to mind. I've been listening and engaging to people that I don't agree with because it helps me.

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I might be wrong. Yeah, I might be wrong. As a matter of fact, I was wrong for many years. That's why

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I ended up where I am today. You know, I started to rethink. I was a dispensationalist, rethinking covenant theology.

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And I'm like, wow, there's a lot of points here I can't argue with. So as you were saying this, Justin, I think about my brothers in the dispensational world who will say things like, well, there's no such thing as the covenant of grace because no one doesn't even say that.

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And so how can you say that there's like this overarching covenant because the Bible never really defines it? I said, well, all right, let me give you an example.

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Genesis 3 .15, it does something. It does something to the reader. And it's very important to understand this because this is going to flow into Exodus, it's going to flow into the rest of the

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Old Testament. It gives you a concept without giving you the word. It actually defines it without giving you a word.

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Here's the concept, grace, right? Genesis 3 .15, without ever saying the word mercy and grace, gives you the concept of it.

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That's right. Now, later on, we learn the word and we use Genesis 3 .15 as the way to define it.

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Because the reason this is a really important part of this podcast that Justin and I wanted to do is that one of the things

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I'm realizing is that we're not allowing the Bible to define its terms. This is part of what today is about, is allowing the narrative of the

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Old Testament to define terms. As you're reading, first of all, we learn from Genesis 1 that God is above all other gods.

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We learned this in Exodus, right? That there are other gods. So God is above all other gods. Why? Because He's the creator and sustainer of the world.

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That He created humanity. He set the terms. And the moment that they broke the terms, what are they faced with?

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Gospel. They are faced with grace and that grace is defined as God's act wholly and man receiving completely.

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That is the definition of it. So that's the first interaction that we have with sin and grace in the

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Bible. And then you have to ask yourself, okay, well, how does grace work then?

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Then how does the gospel work? And that's where you keep reading. You keep reading the unfolding promise of the

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Messiah. The war. The war between the seeds, really. So true. So you've kind of said this.

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I just want to repackage it. Because I think it's an observation worth making. Genesis 3 .15

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in theological terms is often referred to as the Proto -Ewangelion, meaning the first pronouncement of the good news.

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And it is really, really important. We agree with that. And it's really important that we see, like you said,

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God doesn't tell Adam and Eve anything to do. He doesn't give them a command. He doesn't put requirements on them in any way, shape or form.

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He actually requires nothing of them at all. He just says, promises, pronounces what

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He is going to do. And if that is true from Jump Street, in terms of the first time the good news is uttered, then it's going to be true throughout.

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We've said this before, and it, again, sometimes gets people worked up and upset with us, that the gospel contains nothing in it whatsoever that we are to do or to contribute.

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It is completely a message of what God alone does through Jesus Christ for us and then gives to us.

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We receive it by faith, not by words. You know, it's by grace, not by merit. Where the law demands everything and gives nothing.

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It's an exacting standard. There's no mercy in the law. It's, you either keep it perfectly or you are condemned.

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The gospel actually demands nothing of us and gives us everything. And that is true from Genesis 3 .15

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onward. Yet that's a difficult concept for us as human beings, because we're always wanting to introduce ourselves into the equation somehow.

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We're always wanting to introduce works and merit and these kinds of things into the gospel and weave it into the fabric of salvation.

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Can't do that, guys. It's a collapsing of categories, and you really, you give it all away when you do that.

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So as you trace the story from Genesis 3 .15 onward, I mean, you have all kinds of things that,

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I mean, we could spend a long, long time, I mean, surveying the Old Testament. I mean, a little shout out to our friends,

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Chad Byrd and Daniel Emery Price on their podcast, 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. We'd encourage you to go check that out where they kind of walk.

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They really do walk through the Old Testament and are showing you Christ throughout. It's a good, good podcast.

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Chad has a book called The Christ Key. Yeah, excellent. We would wholeheartedly commend that as well. Sam Renahan's book,

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The Mystery of Christ's Covenant in His Kingdom is also really helpful on some of these subjects as well.

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But as you even follow the book of Genesis, these themes repeat themselves. God is calling people to Himself who don't deserve it and who weren't seeking for Him.

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I mean, He calls Abram out of paganism. He preaches the gospel to him. He says He's going to make a people out of him. And then,

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I mean, even, you know, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, my goodness. I mean, we could talk about Jacob's life for quite some time.

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I mean, these people are just like you and me, John, and they're just like every listener out there. They're weak, they're sinful, they're frail.

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They have no righteousness of their own. And it is completely and only what God does for them that results in their salvation.

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And they are trusting the promises of God that are realized in Jesus Christ. And as we fast forward through the book of Genesis, people are familiar with the remarkable providences of God that result in Joseph going down to Egypt to effectively function as a savior, as a type of Christ, to deliver

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God's people from famine and from certain death, right? And so then, as the people are in Egypt, you know,

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Joseph and that whole generation dies. There's a new king in the land, and he is oppressing the people of Israel because he's afraid of them.

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They've become many in the land. And what if a war breaks out, he says, and they side with the enemy? This isn't going to be good.

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So he enslaves them and, you know, makes all these, like there's black ops, you know, like we're going to kill all the

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Hebrew male children. And when that doesn't work because the midwives don't listen to him, it's like, all right, well, we're just going to throw all the

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Hebrew male children into the Nile River to their death. You know, these kinds of things are happening. So God raises up a deliverer in Moses, and his life is miraculously preserved through his own ark, right?

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That the basket that he's put into is literally the same noun that shows up only in one other place in scripture, and that's in the account of the flood.

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Just like Noah and his family are brought safely through water in an ark, so is Moses. And the

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Lord uses three, like several women to preserve Moses's life.

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This is something the Lord will do over and over again as well, where, you know, even Pharaoh's own daughter is an instrument in the

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Lord's hands. And many are familiar with the story. I mean, Moses ends up murdering a man when he's 40 years old.

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He has to flee the land of Egypt into the desert, and he's there for 40 years. And then the

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Lord appears to him in a burning bush. And we're going to get to some of these things in Exodus, and then we'll just use this as a launching off point.

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Many people are familiar with the account of the burning bush. One thing that I was never taught when I was young, John, I don't know about you, is who it is in particular that comes to speak to him.

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It's the angel of the Lord. He's the messenger of Yahweh. He identifies himself as Yahweh.

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He speaks as Yahweh. And we understand, along with many through history, that this is the Son of God.

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So it is appropriate to say that this is Jesus speaking to Moses from the burning bush, and he says to Moses, I have heard my people's cries, and I have come down to deliver them.

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What a word that is. Go ahead. And that is such a powerful thing. You and I are going to do a whole pod on the angel of the

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Lord here very soon. Yeah, it'd be great. For Christ in the Old Testament. But, you know, the people hear the word angel and they're like, there's no way

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Jesus can be an angel. And it's like, well, that's because we don't have our titles correct here.

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That's like saying that a human being can't be a mailman. It's like, well, that's just a description of a job.

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But the reason why this is important is that the angel of the Lord shows up a lot in the

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Old Testament for very important reasons. And it's always Jesus. That's right. And so it's important for us to understand that.

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But specifically in this particular area, you have these what's called Christophanies, right, where Christ is showing forth.

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And it's this pre -incarnate state. It's what it is, right?

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And when you start reading, when you actually allow the

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Old Testament to be what it is, a buildup of vocabulary and theological concepts for the gospel, that's exactly what it is.

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I mean, literally when Jesus shows up, he's like, well, the Old Testament's about me. You should have had a

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Christology based upon the Old Testament. I showed up a bunch. It's so true, man. I showed up a bunch. I showed you.

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And you know what's encouraging about that, John, is that I think a lot of times we wouldn't say it out loud like this.

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It's kind of what we think. It's like, well, way in eternity past, way back when, before the world was a thing and time and space were a thing,

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God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit planned redemption, praise the Lord. And then it's like, all right, creation happens.

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And it's like God the Son is just kind of waiting. Yeah. I'm waiting for my time. He's just kind of waiting for his time.

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But it's like, I'm not going to get involved. I'm not going to get engaged until it's my time to go down there, like in becoming incarnate by the

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Holy Spirit via the Virgin Mary. Until then, I'm uninvolved. Could not be further from the truth.

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It's like Jesus, God the Son, has been intimately involved all along.

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And I think when you have the eyes to see this and you start to read the Old Testament and see how often he shows up and is speaking to people.

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I mean, dude, I can't wait to get to... Shows up to Abraham. Shows up to Abraham. Yeah, Genesis 18. I cannot wait to get to Exodus 33 and 4 when the

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Lord, literally in 34, 6 and 7, which is where famously many people know these verses, where he reveals his name.

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Again, he kind of defines it, the Lord, the Lord of God, merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

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Well, right before that in verse 5, it says the Lord came and stood next to Moses and then says this.

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Well, who do we think that is? It's God the Son. It's Jesus coming down to define his own name.

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And all of this, John, thinking that Jesus is the one who says in Exodus 3, when

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Moses asks, what's your name? He says, I am who I am. And then in Exodus 34, the

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Lord, the Lord of God, merciful, gracious, slow to anger, makes it hit all that much more when Jesus shows up in the gospels and starts to say things like before Abraham was,

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I am, or when he catches up to the disciples on the Sea of Galilee in Mark 6 and he means to pass by them like he did

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Moses in Exodus 33, and he says, take heart, it is

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I. Literally, it says, take heart, I am, right? Like this is Yahweh incarnate.

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And you see it so vividly, and this is so exciting to me and I noticed to you, you see it so clearly in the

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New Testament when you're rightly reading the old because the Old Testament is all about him too.

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That's right. Yeah. Well, it's not only about him, it's about the gospel. That's what he would come and do, right?

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This is why, this is why a covenantal supernatural reading of scripture allows the

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Bible to be what it is, right? And we kind of make fun of this word. I know Pat likes to make fun of this word journey, but as you journey, everybody's on journey, we all on a journey today.

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That's right. But as you plow through scripture, however you want to say it, you're gaining, you're gaining theology, you're gaining, like you said earlier, vocabulary, but more importantly, it's this,

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Justin, when Jesus raises from the grave and finally fulfills, like it's like the pinnacle of the story and all those times, then later on,

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John goes, look, I wrote these things that you might see and believe and in believing have eternal life.

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That's the whole point, guys. The whole point of the Bible is for you to see God is sufficient.

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He is sufficient to save. The Exodus is the greatest example, the Old, the

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New Testament uses as the sufficiency of God's power to save his people. He did what he did physically.

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He does spiritually. That's the point. What I did in the Exodus physically, I'm doing spiritually because out of Egypt came my son and who is the son?

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Jesus. Amen. And even in the transfiguration, when Jesus is speaking to Moses and Elijah, he literally is talking about, in our

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English, it often comes across, it's rendered departure, but the literal word is Exodus.

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He is speaking to Moses and Elijah about the Exodus that he was going to accomplish.

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Dude, it's shot through scripture, these themes of deliverance and redemption and rescue and God bringing his people out of bondage, like we talked about last week, into a land that he is going to give them eternally.

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This is not a New Testament idea. This is all through the scriptures when you have eyes to see it.

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I just want to jump in here too. I think Exodus is one of the greatest examples since you're going through it right now.

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It's a great example between the wars between the kingdoms because it starts in Genesis three. And then who is

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Moses coming to? Because Pharaoh asked him, well, what God are you representing? Because there's multiple gods.

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When Pharaoh himself would have understood himself to be an incarnate deity, an incarnate God. So what does

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God do? He shames the rest of the gods. He utterly ashamed them. With seed warfare too.

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Right. And he doesn't do so saying you don't exist. He acknowledges their existence and utterly shames them by using plugs to shame them.

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And then what does he do when he pulls them out? He's like, all right, I just proved to you I am the supreme Elohim.

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I am the supreme God. Right. Therefore you will have no other gods before me. It's the first command.

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Right. So all of this should help us in our narratives when we get to the new and all of a sudden Jesus is like, well,

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Satan is the God of this world. And we're like, what? Well, that shouldn't shock you. If you're a

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Job and if you've read Exodus, this is not a shocking situation. And then Paul's like, hey, just so you know, as you proclaim the gospel, there are going to be other entities out there that don't like this.

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Well, we know that. Look, Justin, what I think is interesting. You were talking about the children being killed.

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Man, the evil one and that whole force of evil, they have been going after children forever, right?

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Exodus is a great example. Then they start murdering their children to Balak, the Balak or Balaam.

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Then you get into the New Testament. Yeah, Moloch. That was it. Then you get into the

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New Testament. He goes after the children again, trying to kill the Messiah. And he's still doing striking parallels in that and the

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Exodus narratives. Yeah, absolutely. And abortion today is like the evil one has been just utterly destroyed.

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And then this is what Jesus says. He has come to steal our joy and our hope, to destroy our faith and to kill.

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And he is murdering millions of babies right now. And all of this should be for us what we learned about this.

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This isn't shocking. This is part of the narrative all the way back, starting in Genesis, sorry, in Exodus.

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No, you're right. So I'm going to track a few chapters super quick here in Exodus and talk a little bit more about some really marvelous things in terms of how we relate to God and about the gospel for a second.

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So repeatedly, one of the cool things that shows up in Exodus over and over is how the cries of his people, the cries of God's people make their way to him.

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And he hears another thing that is marvelous is that the

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Lord sees the predicament of his people and he visits his people and he knows, like he's intimately acquainted with what they're going through and he remembers his covenant that he made with Abraham to give them a land right into to make them numerous.

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And whenever God says he's going to remember here, he says, I'm going to remember my covenant or I remember my covenant.

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It's not that he's calling to mind something that he's forgotten or it's like, you know, this was kind of in the in the recesses of my brain somewhere.

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And now I'm calling it to the front. It's not that at all. It's that God is now going to act to deliver on the promises that he's made.

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So those things show up over and over again. But Moses goes before Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron, and they just lead off with, thus says the

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Lord. And to you, like you were alluding to a minute ago, I mean, Pharaoh's kind of like, yeah,

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I mean, who, who is Yahweh that I should do what he says? Like, I don't know him. That's right.

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I'm not inclined and I'm not inclined to let the people of Israel go. I mean, that's effectively what he says. And so then Moses and Aaron kind of pivot sort of an interesting pivot, like in their own schemes, in my opinion, where they're like, well, you know, the

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God of the Hebrews has met with us. And if we can't journey out in the wilderness and make sacrifices to him, he's probably going to kill us, which is interesting because Pharaoh's like, you're talking to me about sword and pestilence falling on you.

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I'm the one holding the sword, you know? And I could put a little something on you if pestilence is what you're after.

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You know, it's just, it's an interesting thing. So of course this all results in Pharaoh keeps saying, listen, the people are lazy.

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The people are idle. They got too much time on their hands, which is why they're constantly, you guys are always talking about needing to go and take a vacation out into the desert to sacrifice to your

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God or whatever you need to get to work. And so he makes their lives harder by taking away the straw, right?

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They got to go get their own straw to make bricks with. The Israelite foremen are getting beaten because the brick quota is not being met now because there's a lot more work to do and no time to do it.

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And so this results in the Israelite foreman going to Pharaoh and like, why are you treating us like this?

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You know, this is unreasonable. And Pharaoh isn't hearing it. He says, you know, you're still not going to get straw and your quota is not going to be reduced to get back to work.

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And so then as the foremen are leaving Pharaoh, they run into Moses and Aaron in the waiting room, right?

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And they say to Moses, may the Lord look upon you and judge you because you have basically ruined our lives and you've put a sword into Pharaoh's hand with which he's going to kill us.

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And really shocking to me is how the Lord then, or excuse me, Moses then turns to God and says very blunt, direct, honest things.

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He says, Lord, effectively this, why do you do evil to this people? Ever since I've come here and I've saying the things that you've told me to say,

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Pharaoh has only done evil things to this people and you have not delivered your people at all.

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It's like, he said, what? He just said to the Lord, you have not done a blessed thing to help your people since I came here and started saying what you told me to say.

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And what's shocking is what the Lord doesn't do. He doesn't drop the hammer. He doesn't strike Moses dead. He then says,

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Moses, just wait and see what I'm going to do. Just watch and see what I'm about to do.

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And then he functionally preaches the gospel to him. This is amazing. This is in Exodus six. I'm not going to labor this long, but it goes this way.

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He says, and I'm saying his name, Yahweh, that is the Lord, right? So he says, I am Yahweh.

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I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will deliver you from slavery. I will redeem you.

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I will take you to be my people. I will be your God. I will bring you into the land. I will give it to you as a possession.

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I am Yahweh. That's how he says it. And it's like, that is who

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I am and who I am means all of that for you. Redemption and deliverance.

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And I'm going to take you to myself and I'm going to be your God. And I'm going to give you a land to be your possession forever. That's who

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I am. And that's what I'm going to do for you. I'm the Lord. What a marvelous statement. Just for our purposes right here, kind of where we started with Genesis 315, how

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God did not require anything of Adam and Eve. There is not a whiff of synergism in Exodus 6.

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Synergism meaning us working with God, us cooperating with God for salvation.

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It is monergistic. There is one person working and it is the Lord. And that is the good news that he is the

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Savior and he does it all. And that's who he is. And he's a redeemer by nature.

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Anyway, just wonderful, wonderful stuff. Man, I think it's awesome. I mean, what's interesting is you fast forward to Israel's unfortunate history and their constant rebellion and turning to because they just they keep turning to other gods is what they just keep doing.

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You eventually get to the book of Hosea and you read Hosea and you just realizing like, what a what a rough book.

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I mean, it's really good. It is. And at the end, he divorces Israel and says,

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I'm done with you. And then at the end, he's like, not really. My heart, his heart won't allow him to.

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That's right. But he divorces her so he can bring her back. Yeah. Right.

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He like turns her over to herself so he can then ultimately redeem her and bring her back. And it is an interesting story.

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And it's got a lot of characters. It's got a lot of movement. And I understand at times as you read your Old Testament, you can get into the weeds and you forget that like, hey, look, sometimes we need set up because that set up becomes very important later on, like the law, a little bit of law and all of that, that that's really important.

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If you're not reading it in light of what it's for, it can become very, you know, like, whoa.

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And the genealogies, people kind of get all wigged out about the genealogies, but they listen. You know why the genealogies matter?

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It's not so we get the age of the earth, right? I mean, not to get into that. Oh, my gosh. Go ahead.

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We need it. Yeah. We have to have a genealogy because there was a promise made.

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Dude, that from the line of Adam that went through the line of Noah, he had to purify the generation

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Abraham. So we know from Noah, Abraham. Yeah. And it wasn't Judah, David.

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Yeah, that's right. And so as you follow this, you have to understand that we're looking for the

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Messiah who becomes the savior of the world. And the whole Old Testament is about God's preservation of his promised

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Messiah through humanity. And he uses Israel as a means to preserve it. The weakest nation in the planet, that's what he ends up using.

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Why? Because all glory goes to the king and not to the kingdom. Word. So genealogies, just briefly,

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I mean, typically Leviticus and genealogies is where people are just like, man, I'm checking out of my Bible reading plan.

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You know, I just can't do this. I just got to skip over this or fly right by it or something. But genealogies preach a word to us and they preach the gospel to us.

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Like you're saying, it allows us to trace how God really does keep his promises in time and space and how he has been faithful through all of these generations to keep working as a redeemer.

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And it also shows us a number of things, something else to me that was striking, even in the genealogy that's there in, sorry,

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I'm leaning away from the mic, even the genealogy that's there in Exodus 6, you know, that zeroes in on the tribe of Levi, because that's where Moses and Aaron come from.

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There are a number of generations that are recorded there. It's like, man, God, God works on his own timetable too.

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And like the Lord is accomplishing through this Moses and this Aaron, right?

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Promises that he had made back to Abraham many, many, many, many generations ago. And so I'm mindful of like Peter's words, right?

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Do not count slowness with the Lord as some count slowness, right? He is not dilly dallying.

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He's not delaying. He's accomplishing all of his purposes and his plans in his time, you know, and genealogy show us that too.

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You know, this is like total comedy at this moment, but it is funny. The two men who never die and don't get to live out their life are, are the two men that are really described as like some of the most righteous men in the old

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Testament. And God's like, yeah, you're too righteous. I can't use you. Whoop up you go. I gotta get the bag.

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I'm using the bad guys and you're too righteous and I'm not going to wait for you to turn bad. So whoop up you go Enoch and whoop up you go

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Elijah. And we're going to use Abraham. Sorry, this is a total joke, but it is funny.

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It's, it's kind of like, all right, I want to become so holy and righteous. God's like, yeah, you're too good. I'm going to take you home.

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The point is he uses broken vessels and draws straight lines with crooked sticks. It's all, it's, it's all he's got to work with, right?

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And it's what he does. I mean, you ever wonder why he just took him home? I mean, he doesn't tell you. He does not tell you, but it is funny.

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It's like, well, he's too righteous. I'm going to take him home. So that's a total side note.

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I just thought of it. That's how my brain works. That's how John's brain works guys. Yeah. So I just wanted to recap it back.

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So Justin, this being said, we find a lot of comfort when we finally get to the new

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Testament and the new Testament writers are looking at the old going, yeah, it's about Jesus. And this is about the unfolding story of redemption, about how

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God's sovereign grace and mercy is brought upon people who can prove over and over again, they cannot earn

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God's favor and God's favor. So God's wrath is revealed and it needs to be revealed because it helps us understand that one cannot be righteous before the

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Lord based upon their own obedience. So God's wrath is revealed and it's good. And it's healthy for us to see that. And the law is revealed also for good and holy purposes.

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Yeah. Right. And the law is wonderful. And this is why we love the law because the law exposes us to the holiness of God in our need of a savior.

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And therefore God never left us hopeless. What I think is interesting, Justin, is that before he gave the law, he gave the gospel, which is interesting.

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I mean, technically you can say, he gave the law to Adam, the first original covenant of works, but the promises of the gospel first came and then the law for clarification.

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I mean, Paul is super clear on this in his letters. Yeah. So we just want to encourage everyone as you read the old

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Testament, that you should engage it. It's, it's a beautiful story. Um, it is ancient.

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Listen, I'm tired of people who are like, they just make it sound like if you don't, if you'd struggle with the

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Old Testament, there's something wrong with your education or there's something wrong with your intellect. It's an, it's a dead language, old book guys.

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It's complicated. All right. It's hard to read. Let's just acknowledge that it's going to take some work.

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It's going to take work to preach it, to understand it and study it, but it's worth it. Right. It's worth the work.

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But I get, I get so frustrated. It's like, it's a fifth grade leading level. Anybody should be able to understand it. And I'm like, and that's why we don't have heresies because it's so easy to understand.

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But this is why I agree. And this is why the Lord and his economy has set it up like where we need the church and we need preachers and teachers and all these things, because I've had a number of conversations with people.

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I'm a, I'm only three sermons into Exodus, but like it's sweet the conversations you have at the back door about the gospel.

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And people are just like, man, this is bomb. Like we're getting Jesus and gospel from Exodus. This is like blowing my brain up in every good way.

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And I'm just so full of joy and hope and peace. And man, the old Testament is just coming to life in a way that never did before.

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That's all wonderful. But like, this is part of what we're saying is we all, you and me included,

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John. I mean, we have needed to be shown this and we have, we need to be taught how to read the old

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Testament this way. And when you have somebody that can plainly break it down and lay it out for you, it can become something where it's like, yeah, okay,

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I get it. I see it. And now I'm able to, to better engage it. When I realized that God gives us in the old

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Testament, effectively, he gives us history, he gives us writings, and then he gives us his commentary on the history and the prophets.

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But then when we realize that this is all about redemption, it's all ultimately, even in revealing

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God's law, he's doing that for good and holy and redemptive purposes when it comes to his people.

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And he institutes all kinds of ceremonial laws that point us to Christ and the work that he would come and do.

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And there's all these things. And then, I mean, I loved, I mean, some of my favorite sermon series that I've ever preached are the Minor Prophets, like just to see how the

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Lord is working and all these dynamics are at play and how he uses even great nations in the history of the world to accomplish all of his purposes of redemption for his people.

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I mean, it's remarkable. Yeah, dude. I mean, it's still, we need to be taught this.

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And when we are, it does pop and things come to life. Yeah. Go ahead. And then I might. Yeah.

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I've got one last statement. I'll throw it over to you. And then we'll close it down. I believe you should read the old Testament answering this question.

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Can God be trusted? That's what it's written for. Can he be trusted? Does he keep his promises?

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And the answer to that is yes. Because then if he can be trusted everything he has said, therefore we should believe without exception.

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So read your Bible that way. Can he be trusted? The other question that I might put alongside that is

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Genesis 3 .15, who is this promised seed? That's right.

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You know, that's another good question to ask. Because he made the promises coming. Exactly. Yeah. And when Jesus rose from the grave, that's the nail in the coffin.

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He can be trusted. Who is this promised redeemer? And the old Testament is getting us there, man.

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And man, it's glorious when you see that God has not changed. The gospel has always been there.

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Jesus has always been present and personally involved with his people as a redeemer. And gosh, it's encouraging.

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So don't ever go back to the old Testament. I mean, listen to good teaching, learn, don't go back to the old Testament with some of those bad frameworks that we talked about at the beginning.

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I got an illustration for you. Read it looking for Christ in every good way. You know, a movie

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I've seen the end of, but never, like I don't have an appreciation for the movie like other people do, but I've seen the end of the movie probably a hundred times, but never seen the actual movie is

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Braveheart. I've seen that scene, right? I know I've never seen, I know, I know it's so bad.

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But what's interesting is your response right there, dude, because the beginning of the movie is what makes it so great.

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But the end is pretty, it's pretty motivated, but I don't really know what's going on. You know, it's just more like, Oh, like that's a really good speech.

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Dude. I almost last week for our podcast, last week we were talking about freedom. I almost did freedom. I was like, anyway.

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But my point is we get to the New Testament often. We're like, wow, this is really great. What Jesus has done. And we're over here going, bro.

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No, no, no. You got to go back to the beginning. You don't understand everything you missed. It's in full color.

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It's got some narrative. It's got backstory. And this is why Jesus says you search the scriptures thinking that in them you find eternal life.

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And it is they that bear witness about me, which is why he says eternal life. That's right. I am the eternal.

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It's so good. It's so good. All right, Justin. Well, we nerded out enough. We got to go, but thank you for listening.

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I pray. This is encouraging to you. Don't be discouraged. Keep engaging in God's word. Look for Christ in all of scripture.

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And I don't mean under the rock where, you know, there's some kind of a, but he is the point of the story. It's building towards him.

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While we wait, we thus hope. So my encouragement to you is being a good church that's preaching to you, the gospel, where you receive the supernatural nature of the word and sacrament and prayer and fellowship.

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Speaking of Justin, we totally could have announced this at the beginning. I forgot, but GRN registration, our conference is open and ready and you're going to want to come this year because we are talking about the means of grace, the supernatural nature of fellowship.

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That's right. Reclaiming the means of grace where myself, Justin, and I are going to be, all three of us, myself,

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Justin, and I are going to be lecturing and preaching on the supernatural nature of the ordinary means of grace.

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And you're going to want to be there for that. So it's a suggested donation of $20. That's it's three days or two days, full two days of conferencing together in Nashville.