Studying the Scriptures and Finding Jesus — Albert Mohler

Let's pray together. Father, we thank You for bringing us to this place. We thank You for all the provisions and providences that stand behind and underneath and around us. Father, we thank You for the vision that has brought us here, and we pray that the words we have just sung will be the solitary passion of our hearts to see the earth filled with Your glory.

Amen. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. All right. It's fair now to admit it. We're glad we're here. One of the issues with a conference like this is you look forward to it for a long time, and then all of a sudden, it's here, we're in this room, and I'm thankful to God to be with you.

I want to express appreciation to Don Carson and Tim Keller for their vision for the Gospel Coalition, not only for this meeting but for all that the movement represents. I'm honored to be a part of the council and to be with such Gospel-centered colleagues.

Preaching Jesus From the Old Testament

And I'm particularly thrilled that we are gathered here today with the theme of this conference as preaching Jesus and the Gospel from the Old Testament. This ought to thrill us for any number of reasons, and at least one impish reason ought to be to lead so many people who might for the first time see a theme like that and scratch their heads and wonder what in the world we're talking about.

And then we're chastened by the fact that far too many members of our own churches might wonder what we're talking about. We meet with a sense of urgency and hope. We recognize that even as we're meeting together, something has gone wrong.

Why Young People Are Leaving Evangelical Churches

Drew Dike in his new book Generation X Christians writes of leavers, and these specifically are young people who have left evangelical churches. He provides a typology. There are the postmoderns who think that our message is just too narrow.

There are the recoilers who've had some bad experience and thus have written off the church. There are the modernists who have bought into an anti-supernatural worldview and they simply want nothing to do with biblical truth.

There are the neo-pagans who are playing around with various sorts of spirituality. There are the spiritual rebels who insist on their own autonomy, and then there are the drifters who simply have drifted away from the church.

The church has always had those who have simply disappeared from us, but it's interesting that in this day, we as evangelicals recognize that a frighteningly large number of young people are leaving. And we have to ask some fundamental questions, most importantly the question of why.

Christian Smith and his team in the two books now published Soul Searching and Souls in Transition have described the spirituality of… of young people in America looking at a larger sample, but particularly also with a focus upon evangelicals, speaking of adolescents and now young adults, speaks of these emerging adults as they're now defined.

And going back to their very first study, doing this massive investigation and research project on what these young people actually believe, they came down to define that actual belief system in terms of three words which should be classic now in our imagination, and they are moralistic, therapeutic, deism.

These young people basically believe that God wants His creatures to behave, that He wants them to feel good about themselves, and that He does exist but doesn't intend to be involved in individual lives.

Kinda Creasy Dean, doing further research out of this same project in her book, which is entitled Almost Christian, suggests that many of these young people really aren't Christians at all, not by any normative biblical or theological definition.

They are Christian-ish. And that is a severe indictment as we recognize that Christian-ish describes more than this younger generation. We wonder how did this happen? How do we do this to ourselves?

And very quickly, when you actually look at what these young people believe, you encounter the fact that they have evidently never actually been taught the gospel of Jesus Christ. The absence of biblical preaching, the absence of gospel preaching explains how we have created a generation in so many of our own churches of moralizing, therapeutic, practical deists.

No wonder they leave. What's to keep them? We understand at the same time that we meet even as there is much to encourage us. The very fact that this room is filled with so many people, representing not just one but two or three different generations of those who are committed to the gospel, a young generation in particular of those who are confessional and convictional, representing a wave of energy for planting gospel churches, for reforming and recovering congregations, a missional generation driven by a missiological vision.

This is real reason for hope, genuine reason for encouragement. You have no idea what an encouragement it is and ought to be to stand in a place as I now stand and look out at you. This is a miracle, a real reason for hope.

Protestant Liberalism and the Gospel Metanarrative

We meet with the context of very real challenges, even as we are now in the first… the first years of the 21st century with Protestant liberalism now something like two centuries old. We recognize that it's back.

It comes back again and again and again. Open denials of inerrancy, open refutations of essential doctrines, and now even the metanarrative of the gospel being rejected in a call for a new kind of Christianity, a Christianity that doesn't begin with creation and then move to fall and then to redemption and to consummation and new creation, but rather tells an entirely different story, that story supposedly being captive to Greco-Roman philosophy and not to the Scripture.

But of course, in order to change the metanarrative, you have to deny a great deal of Scripture, and thus the relevance and even the urgency of our conference theme. I want to invite you to turn with me to the text, John chapter 5, beginning in verse 31.

And as we read this text together, we will understand immediately why it is chosen as the first text for the plenary session of a conference on this theme. John chapter 5, beginning in verse 31. If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not deemed true.

There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John, and he is born witness to the truth, not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved.

He was a burning and a shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.

And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

Thanks be to God for his word. Thanks be to God for this text. Thanks be to God for the opportunity we have to consider it and to look to it. The background to this text, of course, even in John chapter 5 is the Christological declaration and revelation that has taken place already.

It begins with the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda. You have Christ asking the question, do you want to be healed? And then his command, get up, take up your bed, and walk. And at once the man was healed.

Then Jesus declares his own authority in verses 19 and following, having already demonstrated it through this work, John tells us, so Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.

For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he is doing, and greater works than these will he show him so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.

The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

He does not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

Hearing and Believing Lead to Eternal Life

Jesus here in this text offers a straightforward promise. Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. The crucial issue of hearing and believing is absolutely central to this text.

He speaks to those who will refuse to hear. He says those who hear will live, and then he declares there will be a day when even the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God. Hearing and believing lead to eternal life.

The Four Witnesses to Christ

Now our specific text, beginning in verse 31, begins as Jesus is speaking of the attestation of his ministry, the witnesses to his ministry. As he begins, he acknowledges the fact that there must be witnesses, a reality that is confirmed in the Old Testament, in the Scriptures.

It must be attested. The prophet's word is to be tested. There must be witnesses, and here Jesus sets out for those who have seen his works and have heard his words and have rejected him, refusing to believe and to receive him.

He sets out these witnesses. Like an attorney setting forth to make his case, he brings forth these four witnesses to make clear that they are not without adequate witnesses. As a matter of fact, they have more than adequate witnesses.

They simply refuse to see what is put before them. They refuse to hear the very witnesses whom the Father has sent. First he mentions John the Baptist. He describes John as a burning and a shining light.

In John chapter 5, he speaks of John the Baptist in these most positive of terms. He speaks of those who sent for him. Not only did they hear John the Baptist, they sent for him. They wanted to hear from him.

They demanded to hear from him, and he bore witness to the truth. Now in verse 34, Jesus makes clear that he did not receive his self-identity from John, but rather what John represented was the gift of the Father to the people that they would know the identity of the Son.

John, a burning and a shining light. Of course, in the prologue to John's gospel, we remember those words. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. The background to this is almost assuredly Psalm 132, verses 13 through 17, where the psalmist writes, for the Lord has chosen Zion.

He has desired it for his dwelling place. This is my resting place forever. Here I will dwell, for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provisions. I will satisfy her poor with bread. Her priests I will clothe with salvation, and her saints will shout for joy.

There I will make a horn to sprout for David. I have prepared a lamp for my anointed. Jesus said, the Father prepared the lamp. You saw the lamp. You sought him out. You even enjoyed him for a moment, but you did not receive his witness.

You refused to understand, even as the Scriptures had explained his role, even as you should have been expecting the one who was not the light, but would point to the light, the true light that saves.

Jesus points to John the Baptist, the burning and the shining light, and says, he was ignited. It's as if the Father ignited him to give off the light, to announce the coming of the Son of Man, and you would not see it.

There's a necessary Old Testament background to understanding John as witness. But the very people who should have recognized John the Baptist as the lamp prepared for God's anointed, they failed to recognize him, and worse.

Jesus even makes clear that John's witness was for the benefit of the people. The point is that the witness testified, and they would not receive his testimony. Of course, it's not just John the Baptist.

Christ's Works as Witnesses

Jesus says, secondly, that his own works testify of him. His own works are, in effect, witnesses, the miracles, the signs, these… these things that happened right before the eyes of those who said, give us a sign.

They refused to see them for what they were. These acts and signs were intended to underline and reveal Christ's identity, and thus his authority to authenticate his message. They would not hear. They were to bear witness that Jesus is the Christ, the very Son of God, the Davidic King, the Lord's anointed.

Note that in the very next chapter, in John chapter 6, we find that miracle which most of us learned among the very first of the miracles of which we ever heard, the miracle of the feeding of the 5 ,000 of this vast multitude.

And what Jesus has to say about his works here in John chapter 5, well, it's illustrated just one chapter later. After the feeding of the 5 ,000, those who come to find Jesus and cross the lake in order to find him, they address him by saying, then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you?

What work will you perform? This is the day after the feeding of the 5 ,000. After that miracle, after that sign, after that work, they refused to see it. They asked Jesus what sign he would give, what work he would perform, as if nothing had ever happened, as if there had been no man healed of the pool of Bethesda, about which they complained because it was done on the Sabbath.

Jesus said, my works are witnesses, but they are not the final witness. There is a third. The Father himself bears witness. Here in this text, Jesus speaks of the Father, the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me.

His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his Word abiding in you. There are several indictments and rebukes found within the passages we've been reading, but here is one of the most stark and direct.

He tells them that they do not have God's Word within them, that they have actually never heard. Now contrast that with Deuteronomy chapter 4, where Moses is speaking to the children of Israel, and he reminds them that they have not seen, but they have heard the voice of the Lord.

God's people are identified by the very fact that they are those who have heard. Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire and survived? But now Jesus speaks to them and says, you've actually never heard.

They wouldn't even hear when Jesus spoke in the baptism of Jesus. This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. And remember those next three words, listen to him. This text also surely refers to the Father's internal testimony, the abiding Word in the believer, even as the abiding Word is confirmed in the very next verse.

Scripture as the Climactic Witness to Christ

So the first witness is John the Baptist, a burning and a shining light. The second witness are the works of Jesus himself. The third is the Father's witness to the Son. And the fourth, climactically, in Jesus' progression of argument, is the Scriptures.

Moses, the text is hauntingly clear. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

It is they that testify about me. You search the Scriptures. By the way, that's a very good thing. Jesus here certainly does not counsel not searching the Scriptures. Searching the Scriptures is what we do.

Searching the Scriptures is what we are taught to do, it is what we rightly do. But the horrible recognition in this text, the humbling realization that should come to us is that it is perfectly possible, and in this text actualized, that people can study the Scriptures and devote their lives to searching out the Scriptures and can spend all of their days studying the law and miss the point and not be saved.

You search the Scriptures, a very good thing, but it is they that bear witness of me. Speaking of the entirety of the Scriptures, it is they, speaking specifically of the Old Testament, it is they that bear testimony of me.

You cannot read those words without reading of me. You cannot read the law without reading me. You cannot read the history without reading me. You cannot read the Psalms without reading me. You cannot read the prophets without reading me.

These are they that testify of me. This climactic confirming witness, the final witness is Scripture. These are they that testify of me. A people who are trained in the Scriptures should have been ready for Christ.

They should have been anticipating Him. They should have been looking for Him. They should have been driven by the very Scriptures to look for, to await, to anticipate, and to be ready for the coming of Christ.

They should have been not only ready for Christ, they should have been looking for Him and yearning for Him. And we also should look to the Old Testament and find a constant, continual, cumulative, consistent testimony of Christ.

We do not look back to the Old Testament merely to find the background to Christ and His ministry, nor even only for references and anticipations of Christ. We are to look to the Old Testament and find Christ.

Not here and there, everywhere. Christ validates a serious study, the searching of the Scriptures. But we are clearly warned that the most serious student of the Scriptures can miss the entire point. Jesus is not speaking here to Scripture illiterates.

He is not speaking here to people who take the study of the Scriptures with a lack of seriousness. He's not speaking to those who do not devote themselves to scholarship. He's not speaking to those who take the Word of God frivolously.

He's speaking to those who read the Word of God and study it and devote themselves to it and miss the entire point. Now Jesus doesn't say this is an intellectual problem. It's… it's not a lack of knowledge.

When He rebukes those in this passage who refuse to see, well, He offers a rebuke that makes very clear that the problem is not merely intellectual, it's moral, it's theological, it's spiritual. It is a refusal to see.

In verse 40, He speaks to those who refuse to come to Me. In verse 43, He says, you do not receive Me. In verse 44, He says, you do not seek the glory that comes from the only God. This is an indictment.

It is an accusation. Christ incites Moses and He says that Moses will be their accuser. The very one they cite as their authority, the one to whom they ascribe Torah, it is He who will be their accuser.

Moses is ascribed as the one on whom you have set your hope. But Jesus makes clear in this passage that Moses has set his hope upon Christ. If you do not believe on the authority of His writings, that is the writings of Moses, how will you believe My words?

In other words, Jesus is accusing them of refusing to hear what Moses is telling them. Jesus is here indicting them for their absolute refusal to hear and to believe what the Scriptures have told them, taught them to be ready to see and to believe.

When Jesus speaks to these four witnesses, it is not that the witnesses were lacking. It is not that the witnesses were hidden. The witnesses were right before them. But the witnesses came and the witnesses testified, and they would not see, and they would not hear, and they would not believe.

Moses, Abraham, and the Old Testament Witness to Christ

In John chapter 9, after Jesus has healed the man who was blind from birth, when the Pharisees accuse Him, and He is present for His second interrogation in verses 28 to 29, the Pharisees say to the man who is now healed, you are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.

We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from. And again, they simply validate exactly what Jesus said of them in John chapter 5. You think you have set your hope upon Moses, but Moses set his hope upon Me.

It is Moses who wrote of Me. You claim to be those who are the sons of Moses, but you betray the fact that you are not. When they ask the question, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.

And they ask this man where Jesus has come from. They betray not an ignorance, but a willful rejection, a willful blindness, a willful deafness. We often hear of New Testament Christianity, and we understand what is meant by that, but we need to be very clear that we are called to biblical Christianity.

Christ Himself declares there is Old Testament Christianity, that the gospel is found in the Old Testament, that He is present in the Old Testament. Not when speaking of Moses just in a text like Deuteronomy 18, 18, but in all that Moses wrote, in all that the prophets have said, in all of the Scriptures.

And John's gospel is not just they claim, of course, to be the sons of Moses, they claim also to be the sons of Abraham, to be Abraham's children. In John chapter 8, verses 53 through 58, Jesus is asked, are you greater than our father Abraham who died, and the prophets died?

Who do you make yourself out to be? Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, He is our God. But you have not known Him. Just like He says in John chapter 5, you have not heard His voice.

His word does not abide in you. Here He says, you do not know Him. I know Him. If I were to say that I do not know Him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know Him, and I keep His word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.

He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and you've seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him.

But Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. Before Abraham was, I am. Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus offers the rebuke to those who should know, who should see, who should hear, who should believe, and simply will not.

These words, especially from John 5, rebuke those who will not hear the Scriptures, who will not believe, and who will not be saved. But in all honesty, we have to admit that these words are also a clear rebuke to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in our generation for our neglect and misuse of the Old Testament, in our own way committing the same insult to both Christ and to the Scriptures.

Errors in Reading and Rejecting the Old Testament

For many, the Old Testament is simply a problem. It's not new to describe it that way. Throughout the Christian church, there have been those who have struggled to understand what to do with the Old Testament.

Some of the sources of the problem are ideological and theological. The first of these is seen in, for instance, the habit of labeling the Old Testament as the Hebrew Scriptures. Now, even in a context of political correctness in the academy, to refer to the Scriptures as the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures.

The Christian cannot accept that for what it insinuates. It insinuates that the Old Testament is someone else's book, that it's foreign territory to the church. Second, of course, historically is the Marcionite impulse to reject the Old Testament as revealing a different deity.

And it is frightening to see how many, for instance, evangelical children and young people just assume that this is indeed the pattern. They pick that up in one way or the other, and they simply are little tiny Marcionites, and you wonder where do they come from, and then you talk to their parents.

There are Marcionites throughout our pews in far too many pulpits, many of them absolutely unknowing. They are practical Marcionites, if not card-carrying Marcionites…. Marcionites. They reflect a second pattern of ideological and theological dismissal of the Old Testament.

Third, we can encounter those who argue that the Old Testament is to be read only on its own terms. Those who suggest even within the Christian church, and even within some evangelical institutions and evangelical faculties, and those who hold evangelical pulpits will suggest that we need to read the Old Testament simply on its own terms, without any reference to the New Testament.

It basically comes down to the suggestion that Christians need to do synagogue readings when we come to the Old Testament. Fourth, classical dispensationalism was right to see epics in development, but wrong to deny continuity.

Fifth, there is now the moral argument against the Old Testament. This is kind of an updated Marcionite temptation. It's not particularly new, but it's particularly focused in the 20th and 21st centuries.

In his Lyman Beecher lectures on preaching, given at Yale back in the early part of the 20th century, Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his book that came out of the lectures entitled The Modern Use of the Bible, spoke of the Old Testament in general, and a very specific text, spoke of the task of preaching them as, quote, intellectually ruinous and morally debilitating.

He said modern people rightly recoil from these Old Testament texts, and it would be an insult to modern morality to try to preach them, or even to try to rescue them in some way, to try to harmonize them, to try to… to try to come to terms with them, just write it off as the musings of an ancient nomadic people and be done with it.

More recently, Kenton Sparks, in his denial of biblical inerrancy, speaks of the Old Testament and of, quote, biblical texts that strike us as downright sinister or evil. Brian McLaren has recently described the story of Noah, for instance, as profoundly disturbing and an example of accounts in the Old Testament that fall short of human conceptions of morality.

But these ideological and theological dismissals of the Old Testament are not the main problem in our midst… in our midst, in our circles, in our pulpits, in our Sunday school classes, in our Bible study groups.

The biggest problem is the ignorance and neglect of the Old Testament. Let's admit it. A good many evangelical preachers and Bible teachers simply have no idea what to do with the Old Testament. Leslie Pohl's Hartley, in his novel of 1953, The Go-Between, no one really remembers the novel, they just remember its opening line.

The opening line is this, the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. Well, to many Christians and to many pastors, to many preachers, and all too many Christians, the Old Testament is a… it's a foreign book.

They do things differently there. And they certainly do. Burning bushes and staffs that turn into snakes, arks and animals in a menagerie afloat, dead animals and hewn bullocks, rams and thickets, slavery in Egypt, bronze serpents, manna in the morning, pillars of fire and columns of smoke, convoluted history of conquests and kings, intrigue, adultery, murder, incest, and frankly, a preoccupation with bodily fluids.

Bears who eat boys, boys who kill giants, prophets who taunt idolaters, prophets who throw fits, and prophets who sit by gates and weep. Poetry that reads like praise and poetry that reads like existentialist philosophy, Persian writing on walls, foreign kings who roam like wild beasts, and a prostitute who hides spies.

Spies who lose heart, women who summon courage, donkeys that talk, and a strong man who commits suicide. Stuttering leaders, naked patriarchs, and majestic praise. Predictive prophecy, lamentation, law, statue, and ordinance in all of its glory.

And all of it revealing Christ, every bit of it. They do things differently there, and that's the point, isn't it? These things are all anticipating Christ, all looking forward to Christ, all rightly making us yearn for Christ.

They should all help us to recognize the Christ. These are they that testify of me. So what do preachers nevertheless do? Well, in the first place, many of them simply avoid it at all costs. I've actually heard some preachers state as a matter of principle that they preach from the New Testament because it's the Christian book.

And as I said, practical Marcionites, and how they are robbing their people of the knowledge of Christ from the Scriptures. How impoverished is that preaching? How undernourished are those congregations?

Fosdick said back in his Beecher lectures that speaking of the Old Testament, all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot pull many preachers back to preach the Old Testament. Secondly, there are many evangelicals who will actually preach an Old Testament text.

They will get to it. They will teach it. They will read it. And they'll say to… they'll say a few words about it. But mostly as background, as if there's… if this is a different story before you get to our story, the real story.

You kind of need to know this story because it's the background to our story, you know. What Christ is saying in John chapter 5 and what the Lord reveals consistently in the New Testament is not that the Old Testament is the story we have to know before we know the real story.

It's all one story, and the gospel is in all of it. And of course, the third way preachers deal with the Old Testament customarily is to moralize. And we know we ought not to do that. It's bad to moralize, but it's second nature to us.

God made us moral creatures. We moralize when we don't want to moralize. We'll moralize about moralizing. And by the way, the only alternative to a moralizing creature is a sociopath, but for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Moralism Versus Redemptive-Historical Interpretation

The problem starts really early. We're raised to hear the Scripture, especially the Old Testament, in terms of moralizing. That's how we are taught it from the very beginning. You look at the Bible story books.

Most of the Bible story books, not all of them, thanks be to God, but you look at many of them. No, most of them written for children, and they are just dripping with morality tales. It's as if the Old Testament is our Jewish Christian form of Aesop's fables.

Do this, don't do that. So it starts at the parent's knee, and then it's ratified in Sunday school and vacation Bible school and all the children's programs of the church where all of our stuff, and we've updated it from flannel graph to PowerPoint, but it's still moralizing.

And then we arrive, of course, at the period of adolescence, that period that Christian Smith and his colleagues were studying when they discovered that basic belief system as being moralistic, therapeutic deism, and we said, well, that's what they got from us.

That's not what they got just from the preaching of the Old Testament, by the way. That's what they got from virtually all the preaching they heard was moralizing. And if there is any period of life that tends toward moralizing in the most eccentric ways and intensive ways, it is adolescence.

And that's what most Christian youth ministries do. In some of our churches, they just kind of update and add new subjects to the moralizing. That's just not what the text is about. That's not exactly true, is it?

More precisely, we should say, that is not the redemptive purpose of the text, how it testifies of Christ. There are moral lessons there, and we're actually wrong to ignore the moral lessons that are there.

Even in the New Testament, there are citations of the Old Testament in terms of moral lessons we should learn. That is not wrong. It's just wrong to think that that's the main point, and it is tragic to end there.

Those rebuked by Jesus in John chapter 5 would have agreed with every moralistic point made by any Christian preacher, and they would have agreed probably with a great deal we wouldn't even think to make.

It is not wrong to see David as a boy who demonstrates courage because of his faith in God. He thus kills a giant when others cower. The problem is in missing the greater point, the redemptive content, that David is God's anointed, the king whose dynasty will never end, who points directly to King Jesus seated on David's throne, the one who is prophet and priest and king.

Moralism is the default for preachers. It comes second nature to us, but it horribly misinforms the congregation. It horribly malforms their understanding of the gospel because it tells them what they basically really want to hear, which is by moral improvement they can please God.

It makes the issue behavior, which is familiar and safe territory because we think it's under our control, but of course moralizing cannot save. We must do better than this. We must do better than all of this if we are to escape the rebuke of Christ.

If you believed Moses, Christ said, you would have believed me. You look at the history of the Christian church and the history of biblical interpretation, and the Old Testament has been a difficult challenge for the church, not only in recent centuries but going all the way back.