If we wanted to know what the Old Testament was all about, we should be on pretty safe ground if we asked the author, don’t you think?
“But how can we ask Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc?” We can’t. And we don’t have to. Because the Old Testament also had a divine author, and he came to this world and told us what the Old Testament was all about. He said it was all about Himself. And, as we shall see later this week, those who spent the most time with Him, said the same.Take for example, what the resurrected Christ said to his still-mourning disciples on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24:25-32). Having patiently listened to their sob-story, Christ eventually rebuked their foolish ignorance and unbelief: “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” (vv. 25-26). Jesus told them that their account of Christ’s life and death exactly matched the predictions of the Old Testament prophets. They had believed some of the prophets’ writings – the parts that spoke of the Messiah’s glory. But they had not believed all that the prophets had spoken – especially the parts that spoke of the Messiah’s sufferings and death. Having rebuked their foolish ignorance, Christ then gave the disciples a full interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures in the light of recent events. Notice that! It’s absolutely critical. Christ used New Testament light to interpret the Old Testament Scriptures. He used the light of New Testament events to preach from the Old Testament. As Graeme Goldsworthy says:
Christ entitles His sermon, The Things Concerning Himself. He took a big text – Moses, all the prophets, and all the scriptures (v. 27; cf. v. 44). And it had two main points – His sufferings and His glory. In other words, the whole Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, concerned Himself, specifically His sufferings and His glory.
And this note didn’t just emerge at the end of Christ’s ministry. Right from the start He presented Himself not as a contrast to the Old Testament but as its climax (Matt. 5:17-18). He described Abraham’s faith as something more than general theism. It was Messiah-centered: “Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (Jn. 8:56). When did that happen? When did Abraham see Christ’s day with joy? He began to see it when God called him out of Ur. That call is often portrayed as something “out of the blue.” However, it must be remembered that it came in the biblical context of the promise to Eve of a Redeemer that would arise out of her seed and bless the world by defeating Satan (Gen. 3:15). God was building upon that Gospel promise when he called Abraham to leave Ur: “In you all families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). But, how can we be sure that Abraham saw the good news of Christ in this promise? Well, because the Apostle Paul tells us:Genesis 12:1-3 was not the whole Gospel, but it was enough of the Gospel to enable Abraham to not only obey God’s call (Heb. 11:8-9), but also to see Christ’s day and be glad. Iain Duguid goes further and sees more of Christ promised in verse 7 of Genesis 12.
If the Holy Spirit revealed the Gospel meaning of “your seed” to Paul, surely it’s very likely that the Holy Spirit also revealed this meaning to Abraham, the original hearer of the words and receiver of the promise. If God gave Paul hindsight, could He not have given Abraham foresight, a foresight that was extended and clarified by further covenant promises in Genesis 15, 17 and 22.
So when we ask Jesus what he thought the Old Testament was about. His answer is, “Me!”What about asking those who knew Jesus best? What did the Apostles think the Old Testament was all about? We’ll hear Peter’s answer tomorrow.
I fondly recall sometime in the recent past months hearing a James Boice sermon from Romans 4, dealing with Abraham’s faith. With tongue in cheek, as a picture of how God’s call of Abraham did NOT happen, Boice described God’s use of a computer in searching for a man on earth with a “little bit of faith”, someone with whom He could start to redeem fallen humanity (it helps to dial back to the second half of the 1980s when PCs were in their infancy and large supercomputers were used in such number-crunching exercises as oil exploration or weather forecasting; that was the mental picture I conjured from Boice’s description). The computer labors for a while and eventually spits out its answer of “Abram of Ur in the Chaldees”, bringing forth a response of surprise from God. Still being somewhat new to theology, it made an impression on me of God’s sovereignty in granting saving faith through the same Gospel in the Old Testament as He does in the New Testament.
Great Post! I loved the sermon outline you give about Christ’s Words to the two on the road. I never thought about Christ’s Words as a 2 part sermon before.