Missing Pieces: Why Dismissing the Old Testament is a Big Mistake

Hey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc. That's a Good Question is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm John, I serve as a pastor as well as a host of this show. You can always submit questions at peacechurch.cc/questions.

Today I'm here with Mitch. Yeah, I'm the other guy on the podcast. And last week we had a great conversation with Carl Lafferton about better ways to disciple our children and resources on how to disciple our children. It was a great conversation. If you didn't listen to that, I highly, highly, highly recommend that you go back and listen to that. It was awesome. It was great having him on. Today we are fielding some questions about the part of the Bible that maybe we're not super familiar with or maybe a little bit uncomfortable with, and that's the Old Testament. So let's jump into our first question.

It's this. Is it okay that I only read the New Testament? Yeah, you know, that first part of the Bible, a little tougher, a little longer. Just stick to the new stuff, right? Yeah, it can be uncomfortable.

It can be confusing.

Easier that way.

Yeah. No, no. So, you know, if you're, if you've just become a believer, a follower of Jesus, you know, you're just getting started, then yeah, yeah. Start with one of the Gospels. I always recommend starting with the Gospel of John. Read that all the way through. Get to see Jesus walk and talk. Get to know sort of firsthand your Lord and Savior. I think that's a great place to start. But then you got to get into the Old Testament. You can't just have the New Testament. Actually, you know, if you were to put your finger in your Bible where the Old Testament and New Testament separate, you'll realize that actually the Old Testament is the much larger part of the story before the New Testament comes. So the Bible would be a lot shorter if you just had the New Testament. But there's so many reasons that come to mind. So I think of, if you were just trying to read the New Testament without any Old Testament background. You open the Bible and you just hear this story of Joseph and Mary and this guy named Jesus.

And I can only imagine thinking, who are these people? What is going on? What's the problem that's trying to be solved? You hear the story of Jesus dying and then rising, but why? Yeah, it's almost, the New Testament is an answer to a problem, the problem that's set up in the Old Testament.

So we miss the Old Testament, you just hear an answer, right? And it's almost like Jeopardy where it doesn't make sense, where you're only hearing the answer. Yeah, where did these people come from? Where did any of us come from? What is the origin?

What about the Adam and Eve story, and realizing sin is the problem in the story? That's what Jesus came to say. You know, you read John 1 and you hear John the Baptist refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. Yeah.

Okay, why is he a lamb? You know, who's God? What's the sin that we're trying to take away? You know, you don't have the background of understanding the problem, understanding the sacrificial system and how that all works. So much going on in the Old Testament that you have to have to understand the story.

Yeah, and this can be a kind of a popular belief. A well-known author and speaker, Andy Stanley, says that Peter, this is a quote from him, Peter James Paul elected to unhitch the Christian faith from their Jewish scriptures. And my friends, we must as well. Again, I want to say, that's the end of the quote, I want to say that's a quote. That's not me saying that. He says basically that we must unhitch our Christian faith from the Jewish scriptures, from the Old Testament like Peter, James, and Paul did. That's what he's saying. Man.

What would you say to that?

Well, I was already shocked before you finished the quote. Just hearing him say that Peter, James, and Paul had unhitched from their Jewish background. I would disagree with that entirely. I think if you read the book of Acts, if you read the letters of the New Testament, these are guys who are deeply rooted

in the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament, who are wrestling through how do they continue to be faithful to what God said in the Old Testament, as well as now live in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Man, I mean, that's what the New Testament,

that's what most of the New Testament letters are about. It's figuring out all that stuff. And the answer for them wasn't to jettison all of it and to say, all right, just forget all that stuff, we're moving on. The answer was to figure out how did Jesus fulfill what was going on in the Old Testament? How do we continue what was going on there with this now really important point in the story of Jesus, of Jesus?

Yeah, yeah.

So what are the potential consequences of adopting this line or this thought into our theology as Christians? Yeah, well one of the most common things related to this way of thinking that you hear and this is an ancient heresy Called Marcionism and named it for the guy named Marcion, but I but you hear this all the time Popularly from people if you talk to unbelievers about the Bible you might hear this that the God of the Old Testament was mean and evil and wrathful, and the God of the New Testament is a really nice guy. You know, you hear as if they're two different gods, two totally different stories.

Well, that's what Marcion believed. He really believed that Yahweh was the evil God of the Old Testament and that Jesus came from an unknown father to save us from this Old Testament deity named Yahweh, which is crazy, but we've adopted that a lot into modern Christianity. It's crazy. Right.

One of the ways that I hear it a lot is in relationship to hell. Yeah. Yeah, the God of the Old Testament, you know, that God who believed in wrath and hell versus the God of the New Testament who's really nice and kind and sweet. What I want to say to that right away is, have you ever read the New Testament? Yeah.

Have you ever read the Gospel of Matthew and listened to what Jesus has to say about hell. Actually, Jesus talks more about hell than anybody else. Huge topic that Jesus talks a lot about, paints it in a very poor light, you know, fire, gnashing of teeth. Man, I mean, Jesus has some pretty harsh things to say. I think people just skip over those parts. I think people who are saying that haven't actually themselves read the Old Testament or the New Testament. revelation and all hell breaks loose literally. Yeah, Jesus is carrying a sword.

Yeah, I would say pretty wrathful and that's a good thing. We want God to be a God of wrath who's against sin.

That's a good thing theologically.

Yeah, so I read an article today as well on thinking about, as we were thinking about this episode, thinking about going back to what Andy Stanley said, you know, very popular pastor. I mean, this is a guy who has a huge platform. This was just a few years ago that he said this. So I pulled this up as well.

And there's a few other quotes that I think are worth sharing that he said. Here's one in that same sermon. He said, the Bible did not create Christianity. The resurrection of Jesus created and launched Christianity. Your whole house of Old Testament cards can come tumbling down. The question is, did Jesus rise from the dead? And the eyewitnesses say he did. That's quite the line. Yeah, man. Old Testament house of cards, humbling down.

That's pretty hard to get behind. Yeah, totally. So, on the one hand, there is some truth in the sense that Christians throughout the ages have said that the resurrection of belief and the resurrection of Jesus is kind of the distinguishing mark between an unbeliever and a believer. So, historically we have said, there's so much more that we as Christians should agree on that the Bible teaches, but that agreeing on the resurrection of Jesus is one of the foundational things. So just to give a little bit of context that historically that is something Christians have said, but not to the exclusion of all the other things. Yeah, we've always been for that the resurrection is like the linchpin of our faith and yet we'd never go and say, well, then nothing else matters. As long as you believe in the resurrection, that's good enough. That's not what we're about. Well, that line, the Bible did not create Christianity. So, you know, he's been criticized for saying that Christians need to unhitch from the Old Testament. But what I'm really hearing is more like unhitched from the Bible as a whole. I think that's really what's going on. Well, he's been a proponent of saying that the Bible isn't inerrant, that he said things before, criticizing Christians' really strong belief in the Bible and basing our faith from that. So it's kind of consistent with his preaching. Yeah, yeah. Here's a, man, I've got a couple more quotes. Here's one. So, this was on his church's website written about the sermon. Here it is. This is kind of how they advertised the sermon.

They said, if you were raised on a version of Christianity that relied on the Bible as the foundation of faith, a version that was eventually dismantled by academia or the realities of life, maybe it's time for you to change your mind about Jesus. Maybe it's time for you to consider the version of Christianity that relies on the event of the resurrection of Jesus as its foundation. If you gave up your faith because of something about or in the Bible, maybe you gave up unnecessarily.

Oh man, that hurts to hear. Yeah, that's just, that's silly. You know, we believe that God's Word is literally from God. And yeah, the Bible should be something we base our faith around. Yeah, so one of the—yeah, so we've already said that, number one, you're losing the story. You know, even just some of the—you know, he and that statement from the website are stealing from the Bible while devaluing the Bible.

You know, they're talking about how Jesus can save you, how Jesus can be your, how Jesus rose from the dead. They're talking about quote unquote Christianity and yet trying to throw out the very story of Christianity. You know, you don't have all, you know, you can't get there from here.

You know, you can't throw out the Bible and hold on to the resurrection as well as all these other things we're talking about. So there's that. I would also, another important argument would be, okay, if, because what you're trying to say is let's follow Jesus, but not the Bible. So I think a question you've got to ask then is, would Jesus accept those terms? Is Jesus okay with that? And there's a very clear no. If you read the story of Jesus in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus is all about the Bible.

You can't say to Jesus, Jesus, I love you, I want to follow you, but I don't care anything for the words that you say.

Yeah.

Right, the Bible is God's word, Jesus' word. And so, you know, imagine trying to go home and husband say that to your wife. I love you so much, but you know, the words that you say, I just don't want to hear them. I just don't care.

Yeah. You know, just let me know how that goes for you.

I don't think it's going to go well.

I know some men who've said that, it doesn't go well for them. They end up in our offices. Yeah, right. Yeah, to talk about that. Yeah, there's a there's an article on resound you that explains that it talks about What did Jesus believe about the Old Testament scripture? Just about scripture in general and it there's a book that that elaborates even more it's a little bit academic so the article is probably easier read but Everything that Jesus did in his ministry is affirming Old Testament scripture Old Testament authority of Scripture, believing that this was inspired by God and that this was God's Word.

Right. Yeah. Right. As Jesus argues with the Pharisees and other people, he is constantly referring to passages in the Bible, and he even goes so far as not just to refer to ideas, concepts, but he refers to specific words, or even the tense of words. I think of when he's making that argument about the God of Abraham. Yeah. And he argues from the tense of the word that this is the God of Abraham, you know, presently not just in the past, you know. Jesus had an incredibly high view of God's Word and at his time, by the way, the Old Testament. Yeah. You know, they didn't have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John when Jesus is preaching and teaching. He's talking about and quoting from the Old Testament. Yeah, I mean, even when, like, even more minute things, you look at it when he goes to a festival, right? He is celebrating something that happened in the Old Testament. When he is affirming the idea of a Messiah, he's affirming something that was prophesied in the Old Testament. When he's affirming covenants, when he's affirming the law, when he's affirming anything, all of his actions are proving that he's basing who he is and what he's about to do squarely in the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament was God's authoritative and inspired word. Yeah.

You know, it's a silly argument to say that Jesus didn't believe in the Old Testament. It really is. It is. It's a very silly argument. And I think from what we've seen from from from preachers who are trying to remove themselves from parts of the scripture and sort of say that follow Jesus, but not the Bible.

I think they're really trying to get away from the countercultural parts of the Bible, right? What the Bible might say about sexuality or gender or, you know, whatever. Limitations on what people view as freedom. We'd make the argument that real freedom is following God. That's where you're going to find real freedom and joy. But the way they would perceive it is limitations on what they want to do.

They want to get away from that and sort of portray a Jesus that is always affirming and forgiving. Although, honestly, whenever I hear somebody say, well, it's okay because Jesus will forgive you, I think you're missing that. Forgiveness only comes because you've done something wrong. So they're really getting at more affirming than forgiving. It's kind of just a silly thing. If you're not going to base your belief in Scripture, who is Jesus anyways? What Jesus is it? Right? Like how do you know? Like is it is it some Hispanic guy named Jesus? Like it could be at that point because how do you understand who this person is if you're not finding him in Scripture? At some point you have to base it back to some authoritative text. Otherwise, it's just this concept and that's could be anybody.

Could be anybody.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. So, just to highlight again that this is still a problem going on today. You know, we've already given some quotes from a pastor who just said this in the last few years who's very popular. Additionally, there are some branches of the modern-day church within. So, this is a topic we've talked about on the show before, but dispensationalism is a type of theology. And, you know, certainly not sure of all dispensationalists that they would do this, but there are some dispensationalists, some groups within that larger group, that would even say that the Old Testament is not relevant. There are some that would call themselves even Pauline-only dispensationalists, or I've encountered prison epistle-only dispensationalists.

So people who say that only parts of, only the New Testament, or only parts of the New Testament, or even only parts of the New Testament written by Paul while he's in prison are relevant to the Christian today.

Yeah, and that's...

Those are just... but those things are going on. So you just got to be aware that you might encounter people that have this view. It's not what Jesus would have endorsed. It's not what we believe scripture says, but you got to know that those things are floating around here. So real quick, just a few passages from God's Word itself that I think are really important and points of this. So, you know, when we're sharing the gospel with somebody, John 3.16 is a very important verse. I think right after John 3.16 is another important 3.16 verse. It's 2 Timothy 3.16. So here it is. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. And remember the Apostle Paul is writing that as you know the New Testament is still coming to be so he is talking about the Old Testament. Yeah, absolutely. What would be lost if we abandon the Old Testament like some of these pastors would want us to do? I mean, and some of these, I mean, it's an ancient heresy. It's not something new. It's been around for a long time, but what would we lose if we abandoned the Old Testament? Well, let's talk a little bit about one of the major themes of the Old Testament, which is the theme of covenant. So a covenant, I've said before, is a relationship sealed by promises. So you think about when you get married, you've got a relationship with somebody, then you seal it with promises. You're saying, I do, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in life and in death.

So a relationship sealed by promises. And that's what's going on in the Old Testament, is that we've got the story of God and his people and that covenant relationship between them. And we see laid out blessings for being in the covenant. You know, things are going to, you know, God promises that relationship with his people to give them life. He also promises curses if you stray from the Lord, the chief among those being death, you stray away from the Lord. And so, you know, one thing that you lose is you would lose the entire context of the story of the Bible.

You know, the story of the Bible is that of the covenant relationship between God and human beings and how we have broken that covenant. We've strayed away from God, and so therefore we deserve the curse of death. But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus comes, he fulfills the covenant in his perfect life, he pays the price of the covenant, he takes on the curse of death so that we can put faith in him and receive the blessings of the covenant, eternal life. Yeah. So just I

think that's one example of a theme, probably, you know, maybe one of the biggest, most structural themes in the Old Testament and how, I mean, that's the story of the Bible, that's the story of the gospel, that's, you know, that's the whole thing. Yeah. B.B. Warfield, if not, we can correct it, but we'll correct it in the show notes. He said, the Old Testament is like a living room, dimly lit, and the New Testament is like the same room, but with the lights turned on. You can make glimpses, you can see things outlined, but the New Testament now illuminates everything.

It's still one story. It's still the same story overall, but it's now a little bit clearer, and we'd miss that, the beauty of the New Testament, without that in the Old Testament. What are some examples of how the Old Testament points us to Christ? That idea of the light being turned on, that we can see glimpses of it, but now we see it clearly in the New Testament. Yeah, definitely. I'll just try to give a couple pictures here quickly. So, jump back towards the beginning, jump to Genesis 3 and think about Adam and Eve sinning against God, and in Genesis 3.15, you have the first declaration of the gospel, what we call the proto-evangelium, the first declaration of the gospel, that human beings are now at war with Satan and that Eventually a hero will come and he will be defeated but in his defeat he will have victory Hmm, and so, you know, you just go back to that thing That's what we see throughout the rest of the Old Testament. We see the story of all right, you know is

You know is Cain gonna be the the seed of the woman the one who's gonna be the hero No, I know that Cain is is a is a sinful man who murders his brother, that wasn't the seed, you know? King David, is he gonna be the one who fixes all things and brings us back to God? Well, David is a man for God's own heart and he's great, but he's still a broken, sinful person. He sins against God, adultery, murder. And then all along the way, until we finally get to Jesus, who is perfect, who does die for our sin, who does conquer death. Through his defeat, he has victory and has ultimate victory over sin and death and he saves his people. Yeah, it's almost like the whole story of the Old Testament is that, you know, is it gonna be him? No, it's not him. Is it gonna be him? No, it's not him. You read the Kings, the story of the different kings. Oh man, or the judges. Yeah, the judges. Yeah, right. Man. See all these leaders rise up and you're hopeful but they turn out to be broken, Sinful man.

Even Moses.

Yeah, Moses.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Just to name some more themes here, you know, I think of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Yeah. Right? You know, God calls Abraham to go up on the mountain and to sacrifice his son out of obedience to God. His only son.

His only son. That's right. You know, we can think of another story that sounds a lot like that. A story of God and his son. And by God's grace, a substitute is supplied to take the place of Isaac. Now in the story of God and his son, his son is the substitute for us. Yeah, we can see all these themes that God lines up in the Old Testament and fills in the New Testament.

Yeah. There's a children's storybook Bible that tells that story, and I can't read it to my kids without tearing up, you know, reading the end where it connects it to Christ. And it's like, you know, another day or in the future, there'd be another father who asks his son or another son who carries up wood on his back, does not struggle and, you know, yeah.

Oh man, it's just, it gets me, but, just because I'm a wimp, but, you know.

Those are the right feelings to have about that story.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's beautiful. I think we would, you know, we would miss it and to see, I think part of the reason that we love the Old Testament is it shows us that God is the same. Theologically, we'd call this the immutability of God, but it's that God does not change, that he operates the same way all throughout scripture because it's one grand narrative. It's one grand story. Yeah, it's beautiful to see those themes God is unchanging and the story is continuous. Yeah. Yeah, not two separate stories one story not two different guys one God. Yeah, absolutely

And he acts the same way. That's the beauty Yeah, we did it we talked about this before we hopped on the podcast But I thought it'd be fun to pick out a passage in Scripture and to as pastor. Yeah to show how we can pick out pointing the Old Testament to Christ from even some stranger or just different passages in the Old Testament.

So I've got one, are you ready for it? I'm ready, I don't know what it is, but I'm excited for it. It's from Exodus 40, it's where Israel is commanded to resurrect, or not resurrect, but to put up the tabernacle, a place where God.

Yeah, the design for the tabernacle. Yeah, so it's instructions. It could be seen as fairly boring, but it's instructions on how to put up the tabernacle. How would we connect that passage to Christ? Yeah, great, that's a good one.

That's a really good one. Yeah, because it's one of those parts of the Bible that we might think, oh man, this is boring stuff and this doesn't apply anymore, right? The tabernacle is come and gone. You know, then we have the temple and that's come and gone. Yeah. So I could see, yeah. The first half of Exodus is like, whoa, that's great, it's fun, filled with acts full of action, and then the second half is kind of like this, you know, what do we do with the tabernacle? Yeah, right, totally. Yeah, so lots of thoughts. So one is, you know, just realizing the purpose of the tabernacle should make us think of Jesus and think of God's grace to us, that the purpose of the tabernacle is for God

to come and live with his people, which is amazing. You know, you got sinful, broken people, rebels against God, and yet God decides in his mercy to come and live with his people. Here, build a tent, and I'm gonna come and dwell in it right with you all.

You can come and visit me, you can come and talk to me, you can come and make sacrifices, worship me. So that's amazing in and of itself. Obviously that should point us to Jesus. Think of in John chapter one, the Son of God came to dwell amongst us, or actually that word is tabernacle, he came to tabernacle amongst us. So Jesus is fulfilling what the original purpose of the tabernacle was. So as you read the latter half of Exodus there and you hear some of the specific designs

going on in the tabernacle, each of them should point us to a different attribute of God, or especially something about Jesus. We think about the altar, we think about the mercy seat, we think about the bread, there's just so many different aspects in the design of the tabernacle that point us forward to Jesus and that show us something about who God is and about how he interacts with us in his grace. Yeah, and even beyond the cross, going to Revelation, right?

The imagery of a new Eden, an even better Eden, because that's a lot of the imagery is tied to Eden.

The Garden of Eden, you see one day that we're going to dwell with God forever.

That's just beautiful.

Yeah. I love that. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, so the back and forth, so the tabernacle pointing back to the garden, forward to Jesus, forward even further to the new heavens and the new earth. Yeah, it's like we were supposed to dwell with God in Eden. We had a temporary solution with a tabernacle. Jesus came.

He was our, he dwelled on earth. He was the incarnate God and then eternity future. We're going to be able to dwell with him forever. Yeah, it's beautiful, right? Like, I don't know. Maybe I'm just a big Bible nerd, but how can't you fall in love with that story to see how God is so consistent and to see the just the beauty throughout all of that. One story that gets better and better, clearer and clearer. Yeah. All right, Pastor Mitch, I got a passage for you.

Sweet.

This should be on our ordination exam. This is what we should make pastors do. We're just open the Bible, give them a random passage, explain how it fits into the story of the Bible.

Yeah, I like that.

All right, here we go. Genesis 17, I'll start reading in verse nine, just a couple of verses. And God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. All right, circumcision. Yes, they were marking themselves as different than the people surrounding them, and that would be a mark of the covenant that God made with them, right? So this is going to make a people group, a group of people for God, set apart for God. And so the idea of circumcision is actually a sacrament of the Old Testament. It's one of the two that they practiced and it's similar today.

We practice two sacraments. One is baptism, the other is the Lord's Supper, but baptism is the one that replaces the idea of circumcision and that we are people set aside. We are part of God's new covenant community, not a nation, but really the church and the idea of circumcision. And in the New Testament, we need hearts that are circumcised. We need hearts that are transformed from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh.

And that's only done by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit and that's only done and can only be received because Christ went to the cross and he was the fulfillment of that covenant that he was the true Jewish person and that he died in order to give us a new mark marked by baptism. Amen. Yeah. Amen. That's it. Yeah. I'll show the prophets circumcise your heart. Yeah circumcise the foreskin of your heart Yeah, it was an outward sign in the Old Testament the New Testament

It's not about just an outward sign, but it's about being transformed, right? Yeah, sign a sign of cutting something away taking something away being washed cleansed Yep, taking away your sins and you can be with God which is man right at the heart of the story of the Bible Yeah, it's a beautiful thing this this idea is you know, the the theological word is that it's biblical theology it's tracing one idea throughout the entire Bible you can see it there's lots of these like that God is glorified when through both saving and judging usually if you look at any time that there's salvation there's judgment both upon them and the serpent, but also God saves them. He doesn't kill them like he said he was going to. He says, you know, that death will come, but that they will be cursed instead. You look at Exodus, right? The people of Israel, they cross the sea, they're saved through God's saving work as they cross the sea. Noah and the Ark, right? Yeah.

Judgment, the flood is judgment on most, but it's salvation for Noah and his family. Yeah, yeah. Salvation for the Israelites, judgment on the Egyptians. That theme is all throughout the book of Joshua, where the people are being saved as they kick out the Canaanites, you look at the exile, that there's judgment and salvation there. But then you see that on the cross, and the most beautiful thing is that Jesus saves us and he's the one who is judged in our place.

Yeah.

Kind of the pinnacle of that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Then you see it in Revelation too, that there will be people who are saved and judged.

Amen.

Yeah.

Well, hey, for everybody listening, I hope that this has been a great chance to just remember the incredible value of the Old Testament and how that is something that we cannot walk away from as Christians, not to mention the Bible itself. You can't follow Jesus without God's Word and all of God's Word, all of God's Word. Yeah, we hope your takeaway from this is that you would go to the Old Testament, you'd read it, it would help you worship even deeper knowing that this is all part of one grand story. Yeah, amen.

Awesome. Well, hey, thanks for listening, everybody. We hope you have an awesome week. Do us a favor and subscribe, click, follow, like on social media. Have an awesome week. Have an awesome week.