This week we welcome guest blogger, Kirk Marks. Kirk retired from a long career in pastoral ministry, denominational leadership and theological education. He now works in global fair trade.
Is it worth it to read the Old Testament? As we learned in the previous post, the Old Testament is sometimes so strange to us that many people, myself included, have raised the question, “Is it worth it?” For months on the blog, we have been studying the Life of David in 1st Samuel, and we have months yet to go, as his life story continues in 2nd Samuel and 1st Kings. We have encountered many weird episodes that seem ancient or foreign. We will encounter many more. Is it worth it?
You and I are trying to be followers of Jesus. We’re trying to be his disciples. In our church families, we’re trying to follow Jesus together, and the purpose of our coming together is to worship our God and to work together and learn together how to follow God and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Aren’t there better ways to learn how to do that than studying this weird Old Testament stuff?
Some months ago, the previous blog series was through the Gospel of John. In that series we heard all about Jesus. We heard about his life. We studied his teaching. That series helped me be a better follower Jesus. Isn’t that what we should really care about? Being a follower of Jesus? Studying Jesus and his teaching certainly helps us to do that, so why don’t we just focus on Jesus? Why do we go into all this Old Testament stuff and deal with all its complexity and weirdness?
As a young Christian, I really struggled with that. As a pastor, I struggled with it sometimes in my teaching and preaching ministries. In this post, I would like to share with you three good reasons for why we do this, why we study the Old Testament, why it is good and helpful for us.
Number one is what I call the seminary answer. I was taught in seminary that we cannot fully understand the New Testament without understanding the Old Testament. Jesus didn’t just fall out of the clouds or drop off of a turnip truck.
Jesus came into a context, into a people group, into a culture, into a world that was already in place, and into a place where God had already been working with people for thousands of years. Jesus came to the people of Israel. There’s a whole history behind that, and as Jesus spoke and taught in that culture, people were steeped in that history.
Those New Testament-era Jews knew their Old Testament history. Remember a few weeks ago on the blog when we talked about Pharisees confronting Jesus and his disciples because the Pharisees caught the disciples gathering and eating grain on the Sabbath? The Pharisees accused the disciples of breaking the law. Jesus says to the Pharisees, “Remember in our history when David was on the run, and he went into the priest and ate the consecrated bread?” Jesus was drawing their attention to the story from 1 Samuel 21. Did the Pharisees he was talking to say, “Oh yeah, we sort of remember that story. I think I learned that in Sunday school.”? Did they say, “I have to go home and read my Bible and check that out.”?
No, they knew the story. They were immersed in that history. The people Jesus is talking to and teaching in the New Testament are people who learned and heard all of the Old Testament stories. Jesus is teaching in that well-informed context.
Therefore, we understand Jesus’ teaching better when we understand the Old Testament. That was drilled into my head in seminary, but there is another reason why studying the Old Testament is valuable to us.
Second, the Old Testament was, for the people of Israel, their family history. They were the descendants of Abraham. The Old Testament tells the history of what happened to people they descended from. Think about the people Jesus was speaking to. King David could have been their great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. The Old Testament meant something to them because it was their family history.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul says that now we as Christians, we as people who have accepted Christ as our Savior, seeking to be God’s people, have been grafted in to that people of Israel (Romans 11). From a certain point of view, the Old Testament is our family history, too. We as God’s people are reading and studying about how God’s people who went before us heard from God, experienced God and lived their lives trying to follow God. That is our family history that we’ve been grafted in to.
I’m fascinated by my family history. I’m very much from a Pennsylvania German background. The ancestors of my family came to the United States in the early 1800s in the German immigration. Because of that, I’m intrigued by German things, Pennsylvania German culture, the German language, and German theologians. I just love all that.
Years ago we adopted Margaret into our family. Margaret looks different than the rest of us. Margaret, biologically, is a full-blooded Mayan, a very different culture and ethnicity than us. But she’s been grafted into Pennsylvania Dutch culture. Margaret loves the German language. Margaret loves Pennsylvania German food. On Labor Day, Margaret’s going to make a Pennsylvania Dutch corn pie for our family get-together, and you should see that girl make and eat shoo-fly pie and pot pie. She loves it. She’s as Pennsylvania Dutch as we are because she’s been grafted into that.
You and I, as followers of Christ, as people of God, have been grafted into the history of ancient Israel. The Old Testament is our family history.
But there is a third, even more compelling, reason why I think studying the Old Testament is valuable. We study the Old Testament because of the teaching of Jesus himself.
I want to follow Jesus. I want to be his disciple. Jesus said his disciples baptize other people into the kingdom, and we teach them to obey everything he’s commanded us. Remember something that Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount about the Old Testament. He said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 5:17)
When Jesus mentions “the law and the prophets,” he’s using catchphrase. He doesn’t just mean the parts of the Old Testament that are law and the writings of the prophets. He means the whole thing. All the law, all the history, all the poetry, all the prophecy, everything that’s in the Old Testament. He says, “I haven’t come to abolish those things. I’ve come to fulfill them. And I tell you the truth, not one stroke of a pen nor the least letter shall in any way pass away from all of that till all things have been fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
All things haven’t been fulfilled yet, so Jesus is saying that the Old Testament is still important. He went on to say that, “Anyone who breaks the least of those Old Testament commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but the one who practices and teaches these things will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:19)
I am not striving for greatness in any way, but I think Jesus is certainly saying that studying the Old Testament is valuable. The Old Testament remains important to us followers of Jesus because as we learn and study the Old Testament, we are obeying Jesus. We are following his direction.
The Old Testament is helpful to us. Though it might feel like we are slogging through some of the weirdness of it, those cultural differences that are hard to understand, it’s all valuable and helpful to us.
In the next three posts, as we study the account of 1st Samuel chapters 28, 29, and 30, while it is ancient, we’ll find important Old Testament principles that we can apply to our lives.
Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 