Why Read the Old Testament? (7)

Dear Friend,

 

Now let’s ponder Psalm 22 as it relates to Luke 24:26, “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?”

 

When we read Jesus’ cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mt. 27:46; Mk, 15:34), what do we think? What do we see?

 

At one level, we may read this cry as a Messianic fulfillment of Psalm 22. That is, we can say that Psalm 22 is a prophecy of the Messiah’s death by crucifixion. This is like looking at Micah 5:2 and seeing it as a prophecy of the Messiah’s birth in Bethlehem. When we look at passages such as Micah 5:2 and Psalm 22 in this fashion we are looking at them as evidence that Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies and that therefore Jesus must be the Messiah, the Christ.

 

I have seen lists of Old Testament verses that Jesus fulfilled and that are used as evidence that Jesus is the Messiah. Is this the best way to read the Old Testament? Is this even reading the Old Testament, or is it rather using the Old Testament, picking this verse and that verse, or at times using elements of this extended passage or that passage (such as Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53)? How did Jesus and the Apostles read and “see” the Old Testament?

 

Another way to read Jesus’ cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” is to read it theologically. We ought to be comfortable with the words “theology” and “theological” because they have to do with how we think about God, how we “see” God, how we read the Word of God, how we share our understanding of God with others and how we receive the understanding of God that others share with us.

 

We all do theology, whether we want to use the word theology or not. Our theology may be slovenly or it may be well formed, it may be thoughtful or it may depend on our changeable feelings, it may be childish or it may reflect maturity – it may be built upon a solid foundation or upon shifting sand.

 

This cry of Jesus on the Cross, in the context of darkness enveloping the land, speaks to us of the mystery of the Atonement, of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36; Rev. Chapter 5). Veiled from our view is the holy and terrible transaction of which we read in 2 Corinthians 5:21:

 

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

 

Yet, there is more to see, more to see theologically, more to see holistically. If we limit our reading of Psalm 22 to the evidentiary (in the usual sense of the word) we have not read the Old Testament as Jesus and the Apostles read it, we have not taught it as they taught it.

 

For when Jesus cries, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” He is invoking not simply Psalm 22:1, He is invoking the entirety of Psalm 22 – He is calling to mind all of Psalm 22 – and if we do not know the entire Psalm we will not experience what Jesus is doing – and if we are content in not knowing the entire Psalm then we will never experience the depth and breath and height of the cry, “My God, My God.”

 

If we only read the Old Testament in an evidentiary fashion, we will not understand what Luke means when he writes, “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:27). That is, if we isolate certain Old Testament passages as “Messianic” rather than seeing the entire Old Testament as Messianic, we will miss so much of Jesus Christ in both the Old and New Testaments that we will fail to have a Biblical interpretive lens for all Scripture – for that lens is Jesus Christ, always Jesus Christ. Jesus must always be our hermeneutic.

 

Let’s try to illustrate this.

 

If I say, “When in the course of human events,” or “We hold these truths to be self – evident, that all men are created equal,” what am I doing? I am invoking the American Declaration of Independence. In previous generations there would have been a reasonable expectation that my listeners would have known both the text of the document and the historical context of the document. I would not have needed to take the time to read the entire document or to set the historical context of the document, for my audience – from farmers to shopkeepers to doctors to mechanics - would have understood the basics of the Declaration of Independence and the historical context surrounding the document.

 

Similarly, if I say, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,” or “Fourscore and twenty years ago,” or “Yesterday, December 7, 1941,” or “I have a dream,” or “Ask not what your country can do for you,” there would have been a time when the average American would have immediately known that I was invoking the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the Day of Infamy speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial, and John Kenney’s inaugural address – and they would have known the historical contexts – they would have known the stories and the substance of the documents.

 

One morning around 2018 I was in an adult Sunday school class that was in the book of Exodus. The passage that morning was Chapter 12, the Passover. The Sunday school curriculum was published by a denomination that professed a high view of Scripture, and this series of lessons was written by a Ph.D. within the denomination. As I read the Sunday school material I was shocked that there was no mention of Jesus as our Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). I listened to the class discussion, hoping that someone would mention Jesus, expecting that someone would mention Jesus, anticipating that someone would mention Jesus. After all, the leaders of the congregation were in the class. After all, most members of the class had been in the congregation for years and years. After all, the pastors who had preceded me had loved Jesus and the Bible.

 

Finally, when it became apparent that no one saw Jesus and the Gospel in Exodus Chapter 12, I intervened as pastor and reset the lesson – focusing on Jesus. Of course, I suppose we could say that there was a greater lesson to be learned – that we had become so utterly dumb with respect to the Bible that we could no longer see Jesus…but I think that lesson passed us by.

 

Why should we read the Old Testament? So that we may see Jesus as Jesus chooses to reveal Himself.

 

The Lord willing, we’ll continue with Psalm 22 in our next reflection.