Discovery #21: The Key Principles (Lessons) of the Old Testament

The earliest versions of the Old Testament were preserved on parchment scrolls where only a portion of the books were recorded (e.g., the Torah). Later, the entire Bible was canonized according to what Bible scholars felt were those books that were truly inspired by God.

 Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

For years, I focused most of my Bible study effort on the New Testament. After all, isn’t that where we can learn the most about Jesus? What I have come to understand is that the answer to that question is: “Yes and No.”

As a child, I remember all the stories we were taught about Moses, Joesph, Elijah, and others. Those stories were fun and interesting, but they did little to advance my understanding of Jesus, so I moved on to the New Testament. And even though I did notice that Jesus often quoted from the Old Testament, it never prompted me to study why. After all, He was a Jew. Over the years, I had consciously or unconsciously decided to forget, diminish, or ignore what was taught in the Old Testament, thinking that all the “good stuff” was in the New Testament. That is until I read Christopher J. H. Wright’s book “Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament.” Dr. Wright opened my eyes to seeing things I had never seen before in the Old Testament. I learned that to understand Jesus’ message fully, we need to study why God spent so much time (~1,800 years) developing the message of the Old Testament. There are so many lessons there that are critical to understanding what Jesus came to accomplish. And they encompass so much more than the prophecies we tend to quote. Dr. Wright taught me that the lessons of the Old Testament did not expire with the publication of the New Testament. And (BTW) the Jews did not get cut out of God’s will because of their actions against Jesus at the cross, nor their rejection of him and His message later on. Remember, only 27 of the 66 books (~40%) of the Bible are contained in the New Testament. Thus, if 60% became obsolete upon publication of the New Testament, then why have theologians throughout the centuries kept both sections in the Bible?

In my book, I try to reintroduce the Old Testament from two perspectives:

• A summary of what happened–to whom and with what consequences, and;
• An explanation of what God was trying to teach the main characters along the way.

Although the principles I extracted are somewhat different from the content of Dr. Wright’s book, I’m certain I was influenced by him. Collectively, the lessons I learned have significantly enhanced my understanding of Jesus. In fact, there are so many lessons it will take several emails (blogs) to write about it.

Let me begin by asking: Why do you think God gave us both the Old and New Testaments?

Is it because:

1. He wanted us to know how humanity was created and our history up to the time of Jesus. (Informative back-fill)
2. He wanted us to understand why the human race needed Jesus to come and save us from ourselves. (Redemptive Inadequacies)
3. He wanted to emphasize how difficult it was to get out of the curse of sin on our own. (The Pull from the Dark Side)
4. He wanted to show us how lost we would be without the help and grace of God. (Co-Dependency Realities)
5. All of the above.

I think we all know that “All of the above” is the correct answer. But, to accomplish all that, God chose to focus His lessons on only one part of humanity: the Jews. God didn’t treat the world (and His creation) like a classroom where He had to wait for the star students to “rise to the top” so He could form His “A-team.” He knew that if He did that, those star pupils might be scattered all over the earth, and His message would be lost because there was no means to communicate between cultures at that time. Instead, He chose a single star pupil to become the catalyst for His “A”-Team. This selection process was not random. God deliberately looked for and found the one person on earth who measured up to the character, integrity, and loyalty required to please God. That person was Abraham. The author of Hebrews provided this insight as to why Abraham was chosen:

¹⁷ It was by faith that Abraham, when God tested him, offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice. God made the promises to Abraham, but Abraham was ready to offer his own son as a sacrifice. ¹⁸ God had said, “The descendants I promised you will be from Isaac.” ¹⁹ Abraham believed that God could raise the dead, and really, it was as if Abraham got Isaac back from death. Hebrews 11: 17-19 NCV

We all know how long it took for Abraham and Sarah to have their only son, Isaac. For years, they waited for God to bless them with this son. And then God gave them Isaac long after anyone would have considered it possible for them to have him. They literally laughed with joy when Isaac was born. God had promised Abraham He would make Isaac into “a great nation,” but when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham didn’t hesitate. His faith in His God allowed him to believe that God would not take away the one thing God had promised him for so long. He knew that Isaac was the very symbol of God’s love for him, so “Abraham believed” that if he killed Isaac, God would raise him from the dead. ((If this sounds like what happened with Jesus, make a note! Abraham was chosen by God to be an example of the saving power God would exercise through Jesus. The story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice “his only son” parallels exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross!)) We must never forget that THAT was the type of person God chose to be an example to the world. Abraham became the rootstock of the genetic tree that would become the nation of Israel!

Yet, coming from good stock doesn’t mean that every branch will produce good fruit all the time. The sons of Jacob (Abraham’s grandson and later known as Israel) demonstrated – time and again – that they were not perfect and could not keep their focus on the requirements God placed upon them. From the time of Abraham until Jesus appeared on the scene was ~1,800 years. During that time, Israel followed a predictable and frustrating (to both them and God) cycle: ((Refer to my post on The Cycle for more details:  https://its-a-god-thing.blog/?p=740&preview_id=740&preview_nonce=905217788e&_thumbnail_id=-1&preview=true))

1. They began in His favor—chosen by Him to be His people.
2. They grew tired of obeying God and trusting Him, so they abandoned Him, choosing to seek other alternatives that the world had to offer.
3. When they abandoned God, God abandoned them (He allowed them the freedom to go their own way).
4. The result always led to bad things (defeat by their enemies, disease, famine, displacement from their homes (exile), slavery, etc.)
5. They would then whine, cry, beg, pray, repent before God, and ask Him to take them back.
6. God would then relent, forgive them, and take them back.
7. Then, the cycle would repeat.

One would think that, over 1,800 years, something would be learned, and the cycle would be broken. But, when Jesus arrived, the Jews were in bondage to the Romans (Step #4) for the umpteenth time, with no evidence that they were any closer to “breaking the cycle.” But that doesn’t mean that God did not lay down some tracks along the way for them to learn from and grow. In fact, He did. We may think that the Jews are best known for their failures, but that is not true. Over 1,800 years, God used them to demonstrate many valuable lessons. And once we learn some of these lessons, the story of Jesus will make so much more sense.

Next time, we will begin with one of the more difficult (and perhaps controversial) lessons God used to teach His people—the Principle of Winnowing.

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