Why study the Old Testament

Why study the Old Testament?  It seems so far removed from our lives and our experiences.  After all we are modern and have such technology that they could never imagine life in the 21^st century.  Our lives are so fast paced, they just worried from day to day whether the crops would grow or the rain would come, we have so much loftier things to worry about, like how to feed our families and how to afford to live in a nice home.  Okay, so those really are the same things…oh I know what’s different…relationships…how are we going to have a successful marriage and raise kids that will have a better life than we do….okay, okay….that’s the same too.

Paul gives this admonition to Timothy…

2 Timothy 3:15-17

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁵ and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
¹⁶ All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And what is the Holy Scriptures he is talking about?  He is referring to what we call the Old Testament.  Remember at this time the New Testament is being written and has not been put together in one place.  Whenever we see Paul or Jesus talking about Scripture, we must remember what it is they mean.  They are talking about the very part of the Bible that most modern Christians fail to read, let alone study.

Why do we avoid the Old Testament?  I think it is because deep down the Israelites give us a glimpse of the very worst of our character and we do not like to see it.  Mainly because we know that they will be punished and terrible things will happen to them.  Also, it is discouraging to see how a people that have walked in the very shadow of the Most High keep messing up, they are like the silly teenagers in the movies that keep going into the basement when they hear a spooky sound while we yell at the screen to not go down there in the dark.  They go and they are killed and we sit there and say, “I told them to not go down there!”

So why do we study these people that just don’t seem to have any sense at all?  They keep doing the same thing over and over, they cry out to God, God hears them and delivers them, they worship God, they fall into sin, they are punished for sinning (this always involves either worshipping false idols or making alliances with heathen kingdoms) they suffer, they repent and cry out to God for deliverance and the whole process goes on and on.  They keep going into the dark basement or the dark woods and they keep getting killed.  And we read the stories and we yell at them to stay off the high places and to not go into the heathen temple, to not bring the strange idol into the house that will kill them and definitely avoid the strangers that bring in strange ways of worship but they keep doing it and keep getting killed.

So when we do read or teach the OT we stick with the adventure stories where there is a hero and the enemy is destroyed.  We love David and Goliath or Daniel in the Lion’s Den but avoid Lamentations.  In the prophets we go to Jonah and the whale but avoid the locust plagues, being taken captive to Babylon or Assyria starving and stripped naked, parents eating their own children because the famine is so bad or the fact that the people still preferred the carved images to the LORD God who had rescued them over and over again.

We judge them for being so short sighted, for not understanding that only God can rescue them while we lay awake at night worrying we will lose everything we have worked for because we are over our heads in debt, our house is worth half what we owe on it, the car keeps breaking down, our company is down-sizing and our job is either in jeopardy or already gone and our kids are more interested in social networking, reality TV or video games than in following what we taught them was important.

The other problem with the Old Testament, we are afraid of God…that He will treat us like the children of Israel.  We do not want to be chastised when we mess up, we just want things to be fixed or for God to stop us when we are making a bad decision.  That the opportunities of life would miraculously come with a warning label saying do not go down into this basement, scary things are down here, instead go the opposite direction and you will find the hero waiting to rescue you.  We want sunshine and roses without the rains.

A few years back I was asked to teach the Minor Prophets and agreed to do so, not because I wanted to teach them but because I wanted to teach either Romans or Hebrews, and I thought if I did a class that was not my first pick then maybe I would have first pick the next semester.  Little did I know that this would begin a love affair for me with the Old Testament.  What I saw as I began to really dig into the prophets was the amazing love that God the Father has for His people.  Every plague, every invading army, every heartache made it more and more clear to me.  Instead of seeing God waiting to smite with a bolt of lightening, I saw a Father doing everything possible to bring His wayward children back to a place of blessing and security.  I saw God’s heart as I had never seen it before, aching and bleeding, crying out come this way you no longer need to go into the basement, I will protect you and care for you.  You will be safe and nothing can ever hurt you again.

I realize now that I would never have been able to teach Romans or Hebrews back then like I could now; because now I have a glimpse of the Scriptures that are a basis for those two amazing New Testament books.  I can see a little into the back story that makes them so powerful.

And I have come to the realization, that no matter how much I hate the fact, I am exactly like the Israelites.  My memory is very short and I forget from one moment to the next how much the Lord has blessed me.  I let things come between me and God which is idolatry.  I tend to not give God the credit He deserves when things go well which I am finding out is spiritual adultery.  I only cry out when I am in trouble and it takes a crisis for me to know it is time to repent.  No, I am not different at all!  I wish I were, but I am not.  This realization has also brought on another change; I can no longer judge people the same way I used to.  I do not see their sin so much as I see someone that is in bondage and needs to be set free.  Instead of being disgusted by what they do; I am starting to see they are just like me but have chosen to hide their pain in a different way than I did.  That sin is sin and in God’s eyes they are all equally disgusting.

So back to the original question, why study the Old Testament?  Several reasons:

• Foundation to the whole Bible
• Explains why we even need a Savior in the first place
• Times and technologies change but people don’t
• It truly shows the love of God the Father for His children
• It shows human nature more clearly than any psychology book ever did
• There are no excuses for our sins or failures
• Only Jesus can save us, there is absolutely no other way
• God has never changed and He never will
• Everything is for the glory of God, always has been and always will be!
• We can only be truly happy when our relationship with God is personal and intimate.
• There is no God but God, everything else is a worthless idol.
• We can be victorious, but never in our own strength.
• It shows the patience God has for us
• God wants to bless us
• We have a deep longing to be connected to something more than us and only God can fulfill that longing.
• Victory is assured
• Promises will be kept

Fighting for Sanctification

I am going through my journals and notes as I prepare to write another Bible Study.  I am thinking this study will deal with Sanctification and when I found this journal entry from last year I thought it appropriate to share.

July 23, 2012

A tweet on the Desiring God website got me to thinking this morning. It said

“"You shall drive out the Canaanites though they have chariots of iron."

Josh. 17:18 No rooted sin is too strong for God.”

It got me to thinking about what we teach as part of our Tiara Ladies about coming out of bondage and not going back as compared to the Israelites coming out of Egypt, which symbolized the world, and the thought that once we have freedom we are not to return to the bondage.

Well taking the analogy a step farther, we have the Israelites entering into the Promised Land and all that entailed. The land was occupied. Not only was it occupied, it was occupied by giants and very evil people. God told them through Joshua that they were to go in and conquer the land and make it their own.

Why was the land occupied? God told them He had allowed these evil people to live in the land so that it would be cultivated and built up, ready for the Israelites to come in and take possession. It had all been built for them!

How were they to take possession? By following and listening to everything God told them to do. When they did not follow directions, they were defeated. But when they did as they were told, miracles happened.

What does this look like in the Christian life? So this is where I started thinking about how this relates to us coming into the Promised Land….Kingdom Living and walking victoriously in the Spirit.

When we are saved, come to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, it is like crossing over the Jordan. It is miraculous and completely done by God. There was nothing we could do to make our salvation happen. The only thing we could do is believe and accept what Jesus had done for us. So we crossed over from death to life. We are now in the Promised Land but it is not empty, it is full of all kinds of things and people; things that we do not like and may even scare us. Things that we may have naively thought would just disappear if we became a Christian and now we realize are still very much a part of the landscape.


Our Christian lives are therefore full of those things that were a part of our life before our salvation. Why? Because there is no such thing as a vacuum, something must fill the space. As a natural person, we had filled the space with all kinds of things and just because we get saved does not mean those things now leave, creating a vacuum. Instead, just like the Israelites, we must begin the process of removing the old and replacing it with the new. Now our life of sanctification begins. Which means this is the life of conquering that which is not of God, destroying what is evil, replacing it with God and enjoying the fruits of what is good.

But just like the Israelites we must go only in God’s strength and timing. He has a plan for our lives, what we need to conquer first, second, etc. We must follow His directions or we will get in trouble. If we go and try and destroy in our own strength we will be easily defeated or worse, we could think that we do not need God’s help. If we try and hold on to those things we are told to destroy, we will cause destruction to come into our lives and the lives of those around us. We cannot make any treaties with those things from our past, because they will become a snare and a trap in our lives leading us to worship things other than God.

Some of the stories that made me think of our Kingdom walk:

Jericho…followed God’s leading and a great victory

Achan…coveted things from the past and destroyed his family

Ai…went into battle without God because it was a little battle, thought they could handle it…lost many people

Jebusites…tricked into a treaty leaving behind a people in the land that were not Godly

Inter-marriage…allowed the customs of the people to influence them

Not completing the task….lead to following after the false gods, also leading lives of fear and bondage from invading groups of people

Getting tired…not having their own relationship with God but relying on Joshua, as soon as a strong leader died they would go back to sinning and worshiping false gods.

How then can we possibly live the victorious life that we desire to live? The answer is actually quite simple. The same way we were saved!!!! There is nothing we can do to become more like Jesus; which is the ultimate end for our Christian walk anymore than there was anything we could do to earn our salvation.

It is this very simplicity that becomes a stumbling block to us. We think we must do something, we must prove our love, we should at least clean ourselves up a little if we are going to serve Jesus. All the things that may have kept us from accepting the free gift of salvation are again trying to keep us from enjoying that salvation. This is why the Israelites kept failing in taking possession of the land, they were unwilling to go to God individually and accepting from God’s hand what He had for them. We cannot hope to live in freedom if we too refuse to go directly to God and accept what it is He has for us.

Stop striving! Stop trying to be good enough! Stop hiding! Realize that you are unique and God loves you right where you are. That Jesus longs to lead you step by step in the path that has been set out just for you. He will not leave you in the wilderness and He certainly will not leave you in bondage to anything you are willing to let Him free you from. All you need to do is believe and accept what He has for you.

Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying it will not be hard or take a lot of effort on your part once you accept and believe what Jesus has for you. But it will look more like the march around Jericho. The Israelites had to walk around the city everyday, in the heat and the dust with thousands of others. So you can imagine what a massive ordeal it could have been just getting everyone lined up each day and then marching. But you could tell it was God because at the end of the time of obedience the walls just fell down. Then they had the job of going into the fallen city and finish conquering what was left.

Our sins, faults, bondages, addictions, whatever, may live in walled and fortified cities or have chariots of iron and warriors that are giants, but if we realize what we have been saying here and that according to God’s Word they are defeated. We will be so far ahead that there will be no stopping us on our way to complete freedom. As was stated in the opening tweet:

“"You shall drive out the Canaanites though they have chariots of iron."

Josh. 17:18 No rooted sin is too strong for God.”

God has a gift of freedom for you today, will you believe Him at His word and accept it?