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 21st
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
No comments:
Post a Comment