Why Read the Old Testament? (1)

This is the result of a recent chat with a dear friend.

 

Dear Friend,

 

As I’ve pondered our recent conversation, I want to affirm your faithfulness to Scripture and our Lord Jesus. I so rejoice that you find fellowship with our Lord Jesus in His Word – from Genesis to Revelation. On the other hand, I am sorry that you continue to find resistance to reading the Bible among professing Christians, and that some professing Christians tell you that there is no reason to read the Old Testament.

 

I am reminded of something that Eugene Peterson wrote to the effect that if we tell people what is in the Bible that they won’t need to read the Bible. A measure of his point was that if we aren’t emphasizing that we must read and eat the Book, and if we are not demonstrating how to eat the Book, but rather are focusing on telling others what is in the book – that people will think that they need not read the Book because they know what is in the book – even though they haven’t read it.

 

As you, and others, have testified, there is no substitute for reading the Bible, for eating the Book…the entire Book. Martin Luther was concerned that so many books were being published that a time would come when people stopped reading the Bible. If he could only see us now what would he say? We would rather be entertained and distracted than live – and this includes being religiously entertained. We would rather have our sovereign selves catered to than submit ourselves to the True and Living God. There is lead in the water and we don’t know it…even though we are dying.

 

Well, enough of that, for now. Let’s ponder why we should read the Old Testament.

 

We read the Old Testament to meet Jesus Christ, to touch Him, to be touched by Him, to be drawn ever deeper into relationship with Him. The Scriptures are a place of communion with the Trinity and with one another – and all Scripture points to, and reveals, Jesus Christ. Whether I am reading Leviticus or Malachi or Proverbs or Colossians, I expect to see Jesus. When I am pondering Psalms, I am eagerly listening for the Voice of Jesus.

 

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” (John 5:39 – 40).

 

Now of course “the Scriptures” that Jesus is referring to is what we term the Old Testament, what was known as the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings or Psalms (we’ll look at this in a forthcoming reflection – Luke 24:44).

 

What is Jesus saying about the Old Testament? Please give this some thought before you answer. Read the context of the statement, and ponder what Jesus is saying – what is His point?

 

If we think that Jesus is referring to passages such as Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22 or Micah 5:2, we have missed the mark. That is, if we think that the Old Testament’s testimony of Jesus Christ is primarily to be found in passages regarding His birth and crucifixion, if we think the nature of this testimony is primarily evidentiary (in the sense of events taking place), then we have missed the message of the Old Testament. This is not to say that the evidentiary is not included in the testimony, of course it is – we see this over and over again in the Gospels and beyond; but it is to say that the Old Testament testifies of the Son of God in a manner that envelops and transcends the evidentiary elements of time and space and folds us into the Divine from ages past to ages future. (Consider that Proverbs Chapter 8 was a key passage for the Fathers in pondering the Divinity of Jesus Christ and the Trinity).

 

Now I realize that this may be a new thought to many folks in our day and age, but it is anything but a new thought historically, in fact, it is the way Christians used to think as a matter of course, it is the way Christians, including the writers of the New Testament, read the Old Testament – it was the natural way to read the Old Testament because it was the way Jesus and the Holy Spirit taught us to read. It is only in the past 250 years or so that we have lost the natural way to read the Old Testament, and indeed the New Testament as well – for to read one section of the Bible humanistically and naturalistically is to read the other section of the Bible humanistically and naturalistically.

 

Hopefully this will become clear as we ponder reading the Old Testament. To return to John 5:39 – 40, what does Jesus mean in this passage? What can we learn from this passage? How can we better see Jesus in and through this passage?

 

Jesus’s audience, the religious folks, were reading the Old Testament because they thought that “in them you have eternal life.” Yet, regardless of how well the religious folks knew the Bible of their time, what we term the Old Testament, now matter how well they could quote the Bible, no matter how well they knew interpretations of the Bible; somehow, someway, they were not reading, seeing, and hearing the Bible – they were missing the Bible, they did not know what they thought they knew.

 

Jesus says, “these [the Scriptures] testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” They were searching the Scriptures because they thought that would give them eternal life, and yet they were missing the very Eternal Life that the Scriptures were speaking of and revealing.

 

In 5:37 – 38 Jesus says, “And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form. You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.”

 

They have been searching the Scriptures, reading the Scriptures, pondering in some fashion the Scriptures, and yet the Word of the Father is not abiding in them.

 

This is along the line of what Paul said in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, “For those who live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, recognizing neither Him [Jesus] nor the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled these by condemning Him.” (Acts 13:27). Even though people heard the Scriptures read every Sabbath, they did not recognize the voices of the prophets! We can read and yet not see, we can listen and yet not hear.

 

We are called to meet Jesus Christ in the Old Testament; to see Him, to touch Him, to have the Word of the Father (Jesus) abide in us, to see the form of God, the image of God (Jesus) in the Old Testament.

 

Peter writes that God has given us “His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4). These promises that Peter was speaking of were most certainly found and centered within the Old Testament – for obviously the New Testament was still in the process of formation. In other words, by partaking of what we call the Old Testament Peter tells us that we become partakers of the Divine Nature.

 

So my friend, the people who tell you that they do not read the Old Testament are, in effect, telling you that partaking of the Divine Nature does not interest them. They are telling you that the testimony of Jesus Christ, the unveiling of Jesus Christ, is of no concern to them.

 

In addition to this, sadly those who do read the Old Testament, but who read it humanistically and naturalistically, and this includes using historical – critical and historical – grammatical methods as primary and controlling methods, are also missing the unveiling of Jesus Christ in much of what they read – for Jesus must always be our interpretive lens, the Holy Spirit must always be our teacher…as individuals and as God’s People. If we are not seeing Christ Jesus and hearing His Voice, then we are reading and hearing and teaching amiss.

 

Now I imagine that few of us are accustomed to reading the Old Testament in expectation of meeting Jesus Christ, of touching Him and of being touched by Him. Well, it is never too late to begin, and as you know, once we begin, the journey takes on a life of its own.

 

To be continued…