Who Needs the Old Testament Anyway?

Hello, everybody. First, I'd like to apologize, number one, for my extremely ugly sweater. I just happen to be wearing it. I didn't know what to change into. And so I'm wearing this green atrocity. Also, my glasses.

I'm not wearing cool shades. I have those, like, transitional things just came from outside. And so it kind of looks dark and intriguing. So I do apologize if folks are offended by my appearance, which I'm sure no one is.

Why the Old Testament Matters for New Testament Believers

Well, hopefully. In this video, I want to cover the question of why should the Old Testament be important to New Testament believers? OK, now, we live in the context of New Testament belief. We live in kind of the aftermath of what Jesus came and accomplished on the cross and what all of that means.

And I think for a lot of Christians today, the Old Testament has kind of been a closed book. We know bits and pieces of the stories and things like that. And so in a sense, we kind of tip our hat and we admit, of course, the Old Testament is important, yada, yada, yada.

However, I think a lot of Christians have felt very uncomfortable reading through the Old Testament because it just seems so foreign to a lot of people. And I think that that's true. It is, again, even though the New Testament took place, you know, the events of the New Testament took place a really long time ago.

And in a lot of ways, in a world that's very different than our own, the Old Testament, the events of the Old Testament took place even longer, you know, further in the past. And again, in a context that is largely unknown to us, a culture that's unknown.

There are customs and ideas and themes that I think folks who are not familiar with that world, so to speak, they can find very difficult to kind of wrap their heads around. But in this brief video, I want to really emphasize the importance of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament as the Foundation for Understanding the New

You cannot get away as a Christian with merely reading the New Testament. If you don't have that foundation in the Old Testament, the New Testament is going to be very difficult to understand. OK? When we take a look at, say, a verse like 2 Timothy 3 .16 where it speaks about all Scripture being breathed out by God, you have to understand that the Scripture that is primarily in view, and of course I think the New Testament Scripture is inspired as well, but the Scripture that is primarily in view there is the Old Testament.

The Old Testament was the Bible of the early church. And it was only until later when the New Testament books were being written and promulgated and then kind of established, you know, the Old Testament was really the context in which many of the early Christians understood the meaning of the work of Jesus.

For example, on the road to Emmaus in the Gospel of Luke, you know, after Jesus was raised from the dead, he kind of appears to these people that are walking, you know, on the road to Emmaus, and he begins to open up the Scriptures to them and to show them through the Old Testament why the Messiah had to suffer and die, you see?

The Resurrection in Light of the Old Testament

So the suffering and dying of the Messiah is a New Testament theme for sure, but it's a New Testament theme that only has meaning and context within the backdrop of the Old Testament. In like fashion, when we speak of things like the resurrection of Jesus, OK?

The resurrection of Jesus didn't happen in a vacuum, OK? You know, if someone were to say, you know, Jesus rose from the dead, you know, so that proves that he's, you know, the Messiah. Well, not necessarily.

If you take the resurrection in isolation as an event that occurred, then the isolated event really doesn't have any meaning without that broader context that fills the event of the resurrection with its meaning, right?

What is the resurrection and what does it mean and what does it prove, if anything? Well, you can't answer that question without the broader context of the Old Testament in which the meaning of the resurrection is given significance and weight and kind of a commentary as to what is it that the early church actually experienced.

And you can't really understand that without the Old Testament context. And of course, the New Testament giving us a more robust and fuller exposition as to what the meaning of these events were. So the Old Testament is really, really important to give context to the events of the New Testament.

Types, Shadows, and the New Testament Fulfillment

And in vice versa, the New Testament sheds light on what was presented in kind of ambiguous ways in the Old Testament, right? These types and shadows, so to speak, these things that were vaguely seen in the Old are given fuller and more robust meaning in the New.

And in order to understand the New, you need to understand that scriptural backdrop of the Old Testament as well, which gives context and significance and meaning to what is happening in the New Testament.

So all this to say in kind of a very basic way, the Bible is important. If you want to understand the New Testament, you need to have a foundation in the Old. And if you want to have a clear understanding of the Old, you need to be looking at through the lens of what Christ has accomplished on the cross and all that other stuff that the New Testament entails.

All right? So super, super important. Christians, read your Bibles and make sure that while you're also reading the New Testament, you're also availing yourself of the 39 books of the Old Testament, which are just as inspired as the New Testament.

All right? So let us not run away from the Old Testament. Let us embrace all of the revelation of God and try to understand really the essence of our faith in a fully robust and systematic fashion in which we consider all of what Scripture has to say.