Why Read the Old Testament? (2)

 

 

Dear Friend,

 

Have you ever been so familiar with something that you didn’t see what you were looking at or understand what you were hearing? In business we call this occupational blindness. We are particularly susceptible to this in religious and spiritual matters because we tend to imprint on what we’ve been told and retain those early images, which are not easily modified or replaced.

 

Let’s consider two vignettes on Easter Sunday in the Gospel of Luke, accounts that many of us are familiar with, and therein is our challenge, for we may be so familiar with them that we miss what we see.

 

The first is Luke 24:13 – 35, what we know as the Road to Emmaus. Cleopas and his companion are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and as they walk they talk about the things “which had taken place,” concerning Jesus. Then Jesus approaches them and walks alongside them, “But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.”

 

Jesus listens and then asks, “What are you talking about?”

 

Cleopas responds, “Are you the only one around here who doesn’t know what has happened?”

 

Jesus asks, “What things are you talking about?”

 

Then the two travelers tell Jesus about Jesus; about His life, about His death by crucifixion, about their hope that “it was He who was going to redeem Israel,” and about the report, early that morning, from some women who said His body is missing and that they’d seen angels who said Jesus was alive.

 

This must have been a sight, to see Cleopas and his companion telling Jesus about Jesus. I wonder what Jesus thought about their account of Himself. I wonder what He thinks when we tell one another about Him. I wonder what He thinks when we tell others about Him. Do we speak as men and women who know Him as our Lord and Friend, or do we speak as if our information is second or third hand?

 

The two travelers are despondent, they have had the shock of their lives. All that they have hoped in has been seemingly destroyed, even though there has been the strange account of the women.

 

Jesus, who is still a stranger to them at this point, does not coddle them. He says, “O foolish [dull, senseless] men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” Jesus is not employing group hug therapy. Jesus is not telling Cleopas and his companion “Don’t worry, be happy.” Jesus is challenging them and chiding them.

 

Their minds are dull, their hearts are slow. What is my heart like today? What is your heart like today? What is the heart of our congregation like? What is our heart like as the People of God? What are our minds like?

 

Recall what Paul said about the people of Jerusalem in Acts 13:27, that they did not recognize Jesus nor the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath. The people of Jerusalem had dull minds and slow hearts, all the Scripture they heard week after week had no fruitful effect. In fact, in one sense it was like Pharoah and the miracles of Moses – the more Pharoah saw, the harder his heart became. How else can we account for a people who professed a reverence for Scripture crucifying the One to whom all Scripture testified? The One who was (and Is) Scripture?

 

This is a warning to all of us who profess a high view of the Bible. We can read the Bible and not see Jesus. We can read the Bible and not know Jesus on our journey to Emmaus. It is also a warning to those who think that only part of the Bible applies to us, for as Jesus makes clear – He reveals Himself in what we call the Old Testament. Therefore, to reject the Old Testament is to reject the revelation of Jesus Christ, the unveiling of Jesus. Would we be so foolish?

 

Note that Jesus speaks of “all that the prophets have spoken.” When Jesus speaks to us of what we call the Old Testament, He speaks comprehensively. That is, He speaks of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings in their totality, as a holistic unity, an integrated whole.

 

When Jesus and the New Testament writers quote and refer to elements of the Old Testament they do so in a holistic fashion. This is also true, I think, when we read the Fathers; they are able to range and romp within the full scope of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, because that is the way they read Scripture, that is the way they read the New Testament documents (as an extension of the Old Testament), and that is the way their people have been taught to read and receive the Word of God. This is the Way they think and believe – but it is seldom the way we think and believe. And here is our challenge – our minds are dull and our hearts are slow and we have done this to ourselves.

 

When we read “all that the prophets have spoken!” Or when we read, “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27). Or “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Like 24:44), what do we think? What do we picture in our minds?

 

We tend to think of specific evidentiary verses, usually those that point to the birth and crucifixion of Jesus. That is, out of the ocean of the Old Testament, we tend to gravitate toward a key number of verses such as Genesis 3:15, Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and Micah 5:2. But is this what Jesus is speaking of?

 

Now to be sure, throughout the Gospels we see both the Gospel writers and Jesus referring to specific Old Testament passages to affirm and interpret events and teachings – there are many specific prophecies and promises which Jesus fulfills and is fulfilling. But what we often fail to appreciate is that these specific elements are woven into a broader and deeper fabric of testimony – a fabric that continues to be revealed – and that if we fail to see the tapestry as a whole, that we will fail to “see” the individual elements in their Divine and holistic setting.

 

“All that the prophets have spoken” speak to us of Jesus Christ. We filter out the import of what Jesus is saying. We think He means something other than what He is saying. We think He means that within “all that the prophets have spoken” we will find some prophecies about Him, and this means that we can ignore everything else in the Old Testament – this is not only untrue, it is dangerous and opposes what Jesus taught and how the New Testament writers read the Old Testament and wrote the New Testament documents.

 

If we do not see Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in all that the prophets have spoken, the deficiency is our fault, it does not lie in Scripture nor in the will of God.

 

But of course, how can we possibly see Jesus in all that the prophets have spoken if we do not read all that the prophets have spoken?

 

To be continued…