The Validity of the Old Testament

Mr. Shoemaker?

It looks like the sun just came out as I was walking up here. That's always a good sign.

Have you ever been in a discussion with someone outside of the church about differences between your beliefs and theirs, in which you are feeling confident because you looked in the Bible and you showed them exactly why what we believe is right and supported from Scripture. And so you think, wow, I did a good job of this, I explained it as all in the Scripture, and then they just sort of toss that all aside because they say, well, that was all under the Old Covenant.

We're New Testament Christians. I think most of us have had that experience at some time or another. Now, I have to say, it doesn't happen as often as it used to, because nowadays it's not so hard just finding someone that will accept the validity of the Old Testament as finding someone who believes that the Bible itself, any of it, is worth looking at.

But still, if you look among many people who are professing Christians, who truly believe that they're striving to do according to God's will, many of them have what we know as a grave misunderstanding about God's Word. They believe that a large section of Scripture is obsolete or irrelevant or at best optional. You know, okay, the Old Testament, maybe we can find something of value, but we get to choose out of it what's worth keeping, because most of it's not binding or obligatory.

They believe that the Old Testament Scriptures are not authoritative because they're under grace, and that's just the old law. But this line of thinking, people who believe they fully understand God's will and His laws, they believe that the New Testament is all that really matters, that the Old Testament was in place and it had authority until Christ came, and from that time on, the Old Testament became outdated. And this is not only what many people believe, sort of in their hearts, but it's the official doctrine of many Christian churches. But in that way of thinking, that would imply that God gave Christians two different Bibles. Alright, maybe I shouldn't say Christians, I should say that way of thinking says He gave the nation of Israel one set of Scriptures through Moses, and that would be valid up until Jesus Christ came.

And then after that, put those away, put it on the shelf, that's outdated. Now there's a new Bible, and this one's valid. But doesn't that imply that God did some inadequate work the first time? Yeah, well, I missed up, and now I'm going to fix it. I'm going to do it better the next time. Well, that's just not true. And I don't think that will come as a surprise to any of us, well, to most of us.

And here's where I want to choose what I say carefully, because many of you have been here for a long time, and you've looked through this and proven these things to yourself a number of times. Some of us haven't been around as long. We have younger members of the audience, and so I wanted to look into this subject today, realizing that we should, as I spoke a couple weeks ago, we should know what we believe, and we should be able to explain why. And we should examine the subject and know if we believe the Old Testament is something that we should consider, we should be able to look at it and explain to someone why.

So we're going to look at both the Old and New Testament and see that there are one continuous set of Scriptures that God gave to us to teach us how to live. One continuous set of inspired writings. I'm not always good at thinking of titles, but I'd like to call this one, The Validity of the Old Testament. Nice one, I do think of a title that you can actually write.

It's easier to write than it is to say. Validity of the Old Testament, which is still easier than, what was that, Snack Shack Shelter. Let's start by considering the actual terms. Old Testament, New Testament. Since the belief is widespread that the Old Testament is obsolete and the New Testament now has validity, shouldn't we find that stated in the Bible itself? It should be there if it's true. But I would say it's not. Matter of fact, I know that it's not. And it's interesting, if we look at the wording, the places where those terms appear actually are often improper uses of the word.

If you'll join me, let's turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 3. 2 Corinthians 3, and we'll read verse 6. Now I'm guessing, are there a number of you using the original King James Version? I know a lot of us have newer translations. I want to read, actually, I just want to pull out the phrase.

And the original King James, where it says, "...who also made us sufficient as ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." The original King James calls that New Testament. I more often read from the New King James, which properly renders that as ministers of the New Covenant. New Covenant is actually the way that Greek word should be translated. Interestingly enough, though, even more modern translators hesitated later in the chapter, if you look at verse 14. In verse 14, I'm reading the New King James now, it says, "...but their minds were blinded, for until this day the same veil remains un-lifted in reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ." Now, how many of you have the New King James, or a translation where you had two different words there?

Mine, in verse 6, it has covenant. In verse 14, mine has testament. But those are actually the exact same Greek word. The word is diethiki, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. The Greek diethiki means contract, or covenant, or formal agreement. And so, in these two scriptures, it's not referring to different sections of the Bible, so much as the fact it's referring to different ways that God chose to deal with mankind. In the first covenant, God made a formal agreement with the nation of Israel. And as the scripture shows, we're not going to turn there, but it was based on physical promises and physical rewards. And then the new covenant, God made with called-out Christians, where He makes spiritual promises and spiritual rewards. So these scriptures, as I said, not talking about different parts of the Bible, different covenants.

If we were to go back to the first century, and if we could talk to the original apostles and to those who wrote what now is the New Testament, and we talked to them about, oh, the New Testament and the Old Testament, they'd look at us and go, huh? What are you talking about? They didn't use those terms. They didn't become in common use until considerably later.

Matter of fact, the earliest use that we know of where that appears is in the writings of early theologian Tertullian. I don't know why I've got all these words that are hard to say today. And this is back far enough. I don't know if it was Mr. Tertullian. Anyways, Tertullian. He only had one name, kind of like Cher and Madonna. Anyways, his writings were the first time we see the terms New Testament and Old Testament, and he wrote over 100 years after the apostles had left the scene. They didn't use those terms because they didn't think in those ways.

Now, having said that, I want to put a disclaimer. I'm still going to use those terms. There's nothing wrong with saying Old Testament and New Testament to refer to sections of the Bible. It's a common use, and it's not... There are some practices that we stay away from because they had obvious pagan origins, and we think they lend towards worshipping false gods. For me to call the first part of the Bible the Old Testament doesn't have some pagan origin that honors a false god. So it's okay to continue using those terms, and I'll certainly do that. But we do want to be aware that the common misconceptions that many people who want to be good Christians but don't have that understanding, we want to realize that they're under a misconception, and we want to be able to understand why we believe that the Old Testament is valid. So I want to spend the rest of our time here today looking at five points, or five major ways that we can prove to ourselves and perhaps to others that the Old Testament is valid, that it's not outdated, it's not obsolete. And I would say that includes a lot more than just saying, well, read Matthew 5.17. And we're going to go to Matthew 5.17 in a little bit, but that's where Christ said, don't think that I've come to destroy the law and the prophets. We can add a lot to that in showing that the law and the prophets are still valid. So my first point, my first point is that the men who wrote a majority of the New Testament within their writings said many good, positive things about the Old Testament. Their writings uphold the validity and the authority of the Old Testament. Let's look first to 2 Timothy chapter 3. 2 Timothy 3 verse 15, the section of Scripture that we read fairly often, often starting in verse 16. But Paul remembers writing to a man that he mentored and brought along to serve in the ministry, Timothy. And writing to Timothy, he says, from childhood you've known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. Now, this is important. Paul was writing, probably, scholars believe, around 66 A.D., around 30-some years after Christ had been sacrificed. But still, before, most of the New Testament was written, or at least canonized and accepted as Scripture. So when Paul says, you've known from a childhood the holy Scriptures, he's referring to what we call the Old Testament, especially considering Timothy might have been a young man next to Paul, but he was probably in his 20s, 30s, or 40s by this time. So when he was a child, the Scriptures that he was learning was what we call the Old Testament. Was or were. And he was learning them from his Jewish mother and his Jewish grandmother who brought him up, teaching him those Scriptures. And notice in the end of this verse, verse 15, he says, these holy Scriptures, they're able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

Paul tied faith in Jesus Christ to the holy Scriptures of the Old Testament.

And that's not a fluke. They obviously go together. Something on my jacket. That alone goes a long way to disprove any idea that the Old Testament was only for Israel and only until the time of Christ. But we can continue to see what Paul said about them in verse 16. All Scripture, again, that Old Testament is given by inspiration of God. And it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be complete and thoroughly equipped for every good work. Paul here used that word we emphasize at times, theonustos.

Theonustos is the combination of theo for God, and noostos is the word that pertains to air or the movement of air. Like nowadays we have pneumatic tires or pneumatic tools, compressed air tools. Literally it means God breathed or breathed out by God. As in these Old Testament Scriptures, all of them were breathed out by God. And why were they done? Why did God say them?

For doctrine, which is a teaching. For reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness. And that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped. I think it's interesting, we can use that as a general term, but Paul was writing to Timothy, who he was, he said, was trained by his mother and grandmother, and whom Paul personally trained to be a man of God. So in a way, Paul was saying, You, Timothy, you want to be a man of God? Look to these Scriptures, because they were breathed out by God to equip you for the good work that we want you to do. And a lot of that fits very well. Let's turn back to Psalm 119. Psalm 119 in verse 160. It struck me while I was turning there this morning, there aren't very many chapters in the Bible where you can say, look to verse 160. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure this is the only one.

Psalm 119 in verse 160, David writes, The entirety of your word is truth. The entirety of your word. Old Testament and New Testament. Now, at the time David wrote this, a lot of the old testament hadn't yet been written. But I think God inspired David to write this, because the entirety of it, everything that had been written, all that was being written and would be, is truth. Every one of your righteous judgments endures forever. So God's word is truth and it endures forever. It doesn't wear out. It doesn't become obsolete. As I said, Paul, we believe, wrote the book of 2 Timothy, or a letter to 2 Timothy, probably in his last year of life. And he was trying to encourage Timothy to carry on this important work. But if he did write it near the end of his life, it shows that Paul, after all he'd done, all he'd seen and all he'd experienced, still thought that about the Holy Scriptures, about the Scriptures that were the Old Testament. He said, this is what's given to us from God for teaching, correction, instruction, and to make you thoroughly equipped. He never gave any indication that this has been outdated or replaced. Let's notice another strong statement by Paul. I want to look to a couple in the book of Acts. Acts 24 and verse 14. Acts 24 and verse 14. This is a situation where Paul was on trial, and he actually had to appear before at least two magistrates that are described, and we know later he would appear before Caesar, and he was expected to give account of himself. He never, you know, remember, he had been a Pharisee in an earlier life before Jesus Christ called him personally and taught him. But Paul harkened back to the time he was a Pharisee, and he regretted some of his actions, but not the teaching that he had. He just came to say that he understood it all the better, and he still supported the Holy Scriptures that he had studied as a Pharisee. Acts 24 and verse 14. But this I confess to you that according to the way that they call a sect, that is, they would call it a heresy or a branched belief, according to that way, so worship I, the God of my fathers, believing all things written in the law and the prophets. Even though he was on trial for this weird belief, he's saying, I still believe everything that was in the law and the prophets.

Now, this is referring to what we call the Old Testament. Now, the Old Testament is broken up into three general divisions, usually law, writings, and prophets. But sometimes it's just altogether called the law. Or, as we see here, I believe law and writings, unless for some reason Paul had something against the, I said law and prophets, I doubt that Paul was saying, yeah, I believe everything in the prophets and in the law, but I don't believe that Psalm stuff. No, I believe he did believe the Psalm still. If he left it out on purpose, though, it's intriguing, because the Psalms and the writings are the one thing that many Christian churches do want to still keep. They'll print up copies of the New Testament with the Psalms, because the Psalms can be inspiring, and so, though one part of the Old Testament that they don't want to throw out, I guess perhaps God didn't inspire Paul to specifically name. Perhaps, but I think law and prophets, he meant all of the Old Testament writings. He believed that. We can see if we turn a few pages over to Chapter 28, Acts 28. This is later in this whole experience where Paul had been sent to Caesar, if you remember, after he testified, and the magistrate asked him, do you want to go up to Jerusalem and testify of these things? Well, Paul didn't want to go to Jerusalem because they were trying to kill him there, so he appealed to Caesar, and the judge puts his head together. Well, you appeal to Caesar, we're going to send you. So Paul has this long journey to go to Rome. He gets shipwrecked. He has all these things. He finally arrives at Rome, and he says, well, I don't want a bad mouth, my countrymen, the Jews.

So he calls them together to explain what he's doing there. And it's interesting, this is when he's going to talk to the Jews that are in Rome. In Acts 28 and verse 23, When they'd appointed him a day, many came to his lodging, to whom he explained and solemnly testified of the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus from both the law of Moses and the prophets from morning until evening.

Oh, yeah, I was looking for something else. No. He's explaining, persuading them about Jesus. Basically, so this Jesus was the Christ. He was the Messiah, and Paul was showing them from the law and the prophets. So Paul wasn't saying, you know, throw out those old writings, they're outdated. We've got a new Bible now.

You know, there's a new guy in town, this Jesus. And he was saying, well, Jesus was the Christ, and let me show you in the Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures, to prove that that was him. So Paul was not at all, you know, trying to change things around. He was showing that the New Testament, I said that backwards, the Old Testament has the message of the Kingdom of God and the message of Jesus Christ. You don't have to look only to the New Testament to have that message.

Now, I've been focusing on Paul, mostly, well, of course, Paul wrote the majority of what's now the New Testament, but also his writings are the basis of what sometimes is called Pauline theology. That's the theology that says, we're under grace, the law was nailed to the cross, and that's done away. You know, we don't need the Old Testament. Most of those who teach that base it on the writings of Paul, well, we've just looked at the writings of Paul that seem to say the exact opposite. We can find one of the other leading apostles, though, said something similar.

In 2 Peter, 2 Peter chapter 3, we'll read verses 1 and 2. 2 Peter chapter 3, Beloved, I now write to you the second epistle, and both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder, that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles, and the Lord of our Savior. That's interesting, saying, be mindful of two sets of words. One, the holy prophets. Now, the prophets lived long ago, so they weren't... He was thinking, be mindful of the things you heard in your ears.

Their words were recorded in what we now call the Old Testament. And then the words of the apostles, they might have heard in person, and they were beginning to have them available in writing. But isn't it interesting? Paul puts the prophets and the apostles on equal footing, as far as authoritative teaching.

Now, it's funny, for some of us, we might say, well, these apostles are the new kids on the block. That's kind of presumptuous to say we're on level with the apostles. But back up and look at, from the perspective of most professing Christians, they would say, the apostles are it. They were taught by Jesus, and the prophets were no more.

How could they say the prophets are on par with the apostles, because they superseded them and outdated them? But Peter doesn't say that. He says, give heed to those words spoken of by the prophets, and also those of the apostles. And that also fits with exactly what Paul said. I made a note of this. Let's turn to Ephesians 2.20. I wasn't going to turn there originally, but I had a second thought this morning, because I wanted to show how much Peter and Paul were thinking alike.

And they were two of the leading apostles. So I said, Paul wrote much more, but we don't want to forget that Peter trained Mark, and we believe that when Mark wrote down the gospel according to Mark, he was very young at the time that Jesus was teaching. Scholars believe that Mark got his understanding and learning about Christ's ministry from Peter. So Peter is responsible not only for those two epistles, but also for the gospel of Mark. Anyways, in Ephesians 2.20, Paul says, having built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, apostles and prophets.

Peter said the words of the prophets and of the apostles, both of them equal. And that fits not only with what we've seen the words in a number of scriptures, but if you read through the book of Acts, you read through all of the New Testament.

You'll see that the teaching and the actions of the apostles fit this way of thinking. They clearly believed the Old Testament, and they taught it. They understood it, and they understood how it related to Jesus Christ as the Messiah, as the Christ. So, as I said, we can see our first point again, was that Peter and Paul both, in their writings, upheld the Old Testament. They upheld its validity, and they showed how high a regard they held it in.

How high a regard they held it. I'm trying not to end my sentences with a preposition. Okay, second point. Much of the material that makes up the New Testament is actually quoting the Old Testament. A lot of what we read in the New Testament is actually taking words from the Old Testament. I've got some numbers to show that. Quite a few numbers. Don't worry about writing them all down. Scholars say there are 695 separate quotations from the books of the Old Testament in the New Testament.

So, 695 direct quotations. And there are many more passages where there are references to the Old Testament. It might be a reference to a character or an event that happened in the Old Testament. Now, there's disagreements on the numbers, especially where it's not a direct quote, then is it a reference or not? But, different scholars disagree, but if we look at it, there's probably about 4,000 such references. Separate ones. Either directly quoting or referring to, say, making the mention of Noah or of the flood without quoting something from Genesis. Some say that one-third of the New Testament consists of quotes or allusions to the Old Testament. That's a pretty hefty percentage. In fact, if we consider the book of Genesis alone, there are more than 200 references to the book of Genesis in the New Testament.

And every single one of the New Testament writers refers to Genesis, and some of them directly quoting. And, by the way, Jesus himself also references Genesis a number of times. And I'm glad I put this in my notes. Lest you think that I'm so good at doing this research, a lot of these numbers... I'm borrowing directly from an article that was in the Good News by Scott Ashley some years ago called The Old Testament in the New Testament. So, if some of these numbers sound really familiar and you think I've read that somewhere, good chance that you did read it somewhere. But I'm not above borrowing. Of the 26 books and letters that form the New Testament, 20 of them quote the Old Testament. That's hardly saying, wow, that's done away, we're replacing it. The only ones that don't are the six shortest. Titus, Philemon, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, and Jude. But out of those, Titus, 1st, and 3rd John, and Jude all refer to the Old Testament without directly quoting it. Even the book of Revelation, which is very forward-looking, has 348 references to the Old Testament. Isn't that something? You just can't get away from it. And you wouldn't want to or need to. If you turn around and look at it from the other perspective, from the Old Testament, it has 39 books. Only 9 of them are not quoted in the New Testament. And I don't have written down which ones those are, but I'll bet if we write to Scott Ashley, he can tell us. Some people think, okay, yeah, that's the Old Testament, but remember a lot of that's Psalms and Job, and it's very inspiring. But we don't want to look at the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch is the name for the first five books, otherwise sometimes called the Torah or Torah. Those are the books that people want to say, oh, that definitely was nailed to the cross. That's a lot of the law. But the New Testament quotes from those first five books 245 times, and then there are a lot of other references. Paul himself quoted from those books somewhere between 70 and 100 times. And you're saying, why are you saying between 70 and 100? Sometimes he uses a word or, well, not just a word, but a phrase where you say, well, that could be a direct quote, or it could just be a phrase that was easy to say. So there's some dispute, but at least 70, maybe as many as 100. Jesus Christ quoted from those books a number of times. Let's turn to one of them, Matthew 4 and verse 4. Matthew 4 and verse 4. This is going to be one that, if you're not already thinking of it, you'll recognize it right away. But he answered him and said, it's written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Now, of course, Jesus Christ is supporting what we read by the Apostle Paul, saying, every word breathed out by God. He says, live by every word that comes out of God's mouth, Old Testament and New Testament. Of course, the New Testament hadn't been written yet.

And Jesus Christ wasn't only saying that we should live by every word of God, but he was quoting from Deuteronomy 8 and verse 3.

And of course, this story is taken from the time when Jesus Christ was tempted by Satan. As we know, Christ knew the time was come. He was ready to begin his ministry. He went out and fasted 40 days and 40 nights, which is some serious preparation. And then Satan came and tested him.

Oh, bet you're a little hungry. Won't you, if you're the son of God, make those stones turn into bread. What did Christ do? He didn't turn the stones to bread, although let's not doubt that he could have. He could have said, God, Father, I need bread. Give me some. Instead, he quoted the Bible. He said, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And then Satan tested him again and tested him again, each time Jesus responded by quoting Scripture.

And in the end, I love, as Mr. Armstrong used to say, in the end he snapped out a response. Get behind me, Satan. Or get out of here, Satan. And Satan left him. He had to obey. In the end, Satan had to acknowledge the authority of Jesus Christ. But it's interesting, at the same time, he was acknowledging the authority of those Scriptures. Because Jesus was quoting Scripture. And Satan had to acknowledge that those Scriptures were correct and that the authority of them was there. And so when Christ quoted those, he couldn't gain, say, or resist. He had to obey. All through his ministry, Jesus Christ made a point of basing his teachings on the Old Testament. He quoted them often, and Jesus never contradicted them. That's where some people get confused because they say, oh, Jesus turned upside down all that Old Testament teaching.

You know, Jesus, on a number of times, contradicted the teachings of the Pharisees. Their traditions, their customs, where the Pharisees had gone overboard and misinterpreted the Scripture. Jesus contradicted them. He called them a bunch of vipers and snakes and hypocrites. And he told the people, well, do what they say when they teach the Scripture, but don't do after their actions, for they say and they don't do. So he said, they sit in Moses' seat, so do according to what they say, which when Jesus Christ said that, he was acknowledging the authority of Moses. So he corrected the customs of the Pharisees. He didn't contradict Scripture. And with that in mind, now let's turn to Matthew 5 and verse 17. That's only across the page from me. But knowing Christ's respect for Scripture, that makes it much more understandable when we read this. He says, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. And we can say that means to fill it up, make it spiritual intent full. For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. By all, remember, law can refer to the whole Old Testament. So it doesn't mean until someone lives by the law, because Christ did do that. But until everything it predicts is fulfilled, and there's a lot of prophecy yet to be fulfilled. Wherefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, what commandments? He's referring to the Old Testament. And teaches men so, he'll be called least in the kingdom. Now he'll be called least, that doesn't mean he'll be in the kingdom. But whoever does and teaches them, he'll be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So that's where to do and teach even the least of the commandments. That doesn't imply that Jesus was coming to replace it, or he didn't say, look, we're going to nail these to the cross in a couple years when I'm done with my ministry. No, he was supporting it. Let's turn ahead to John 5. John 5, and we'll read verses 46 and 47.

That's funny. Well, maybe it's because the Pharisees taught the interpretation of the Scriptures rather differently. I keep citing from places where Christ is having a confrontation with them. And this is the case again. He says, Do not think that I'll accuse you of the Father. There's one who accuses you, that is the Pharisees, Moses, in whom you trust. So basically he's saying, Moses, his writings are the ones that teach that you're wrong. He says, for if you believed Moses, you would believe me. He wrote about me. Moses wrote about Jesus Christ? Well, he did. All of the Old Testament foretells the coming of the Messiah, and that was Christ. But if you don't believe his writings, how will you believe my words? Because, by implication, the words of Jesus Christ and the writings of Moses don't contradict. They fit together perfectly, which is leading into my next point. I don't want to get ahead of myself too far. But let's read one more quote by Jesus Christ in John 10 and verse 35. John 10 and 35. I'm taking this a little bit out of context, because I want to get to this one particular thing that he said. And they were upset that Jesus Christ was calling himself the Son of God. And so he quotes from a section of Psalms. He said, If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and set in the world, you're blaspheming? Because I said, I'm the Son of God. But I wanted to back up here. He's quoting the Old Testament. He says, The Scripture can't be broken. It can't be broken. It will stand. It's not going to be contradicted. It can't be nailed to the cross. It can't be obliterated. It holds its value and its validity.

So, as I said, this comes back to my second... To summarize the second point, a lot of what is the New Testament is made up of quotes from or references to the Old Testament, including much of Jesus Christ's direct teaching. Let's look at a third point, then. And as I said, I was leading into this. The Old Testament and the New Testament fit together. They fit together to form one complete set of writings. There's a unity that goes through them all that doesn't make sense if you take them apart. And that's a unity in historical treatment, a unity in style, although there are varieties of style, but they all fit together. And certainly, now of theme, one way of looking at the Bible is, you could say, that the entire thing is about one family.

One family being the family of Abraham and his descendants. If you said that, you'd say, well, the first 11 chapters are a prelude to get to him. That's interesting, because we meet Abraham in only Genesis 12, and then the rest of it is about his descendants, including the one descendant, Jesus Christ, through whom all the spiritual promises would be fulfilled.

When I say that, I want to make clear, we realize that God is not working only with physical Israel. God chose to work with them at a certain time as an example and a model to the world. Of course, he made Israel different than the other nations. Well, we could go back all the way to the two trees. Of course, in Genesis, where God said, okay, you took the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you want to decide for yourself what's right and wrong, go and try it.

Set up your own forms of government, your own moral codes, and all of that. But I will choose some people. He chose the nation of Israel to say, I'm going to give you every advantage. I'm going to tell you how you should order your society, tell you how you should worship all these things, and they would still fail. Without the God's Holy Spirit, mankind can't survive, can't govern himself. I'm getting ahead of myself.

That's a theme I'm thinking of for a future sermon. But we see the whole Bible has that theme dealing with this one group of people. And there's millions, billions of people that it doesn't deal with. The Chinese, the Africans, the American Indians, it deals with them only when they come in contact with Israel. Not because they have no value or that God doesn't care about them, but he chose one group to show his plan and purpose. And then, of course, through Jesus Christ and the spiritual revelation that comes through him, all will have their opportunity to be in God's plan.

But some people want to discount the Old Testament because it has that focus on one group of people and say, well, it can't be God's message for all people because it only deals with some people. Well, it is the message for all people partly because it deals with them. And God's overall theme, Old Testament and New Testament, comes through one central theme, and that is the gospel of the kingdom of God.

That we see throughout the Bible and encompasses everything that Jesus Christ has done, what he's doing now, and what will be done in the future. And it's sad. A lot of people don't realize that. And without realizing how this fits together and how the Old Testament was leading up to Jesus Christ's ministry and showing how much mankind can't do things right without the Holy Spirit, they just see it as a collection of disconnected stories. I find that interesting. If you go to a children's section, which Sue and I do a lot more often, a children's book section, you can find Bible stories.

And all of them have these disconnected stories. Here's the story of Jonah and the whale. Here's the story of David and Goliath. Here's the story of Joshua and Jericho. And they're not put together. They're Bible stories in the plural.

But some years ago, when the Church of God decided to print Basil Wolverton's work, remember, it might have been in several volumes, but it was THE Bible's story. It's one story. And it has a lot of episodes that all fit together, but they do fit together. There's a unity. They're all bound together because they're the story of God working with mankind to build His kingdom. But you wouldn't get that. I say, if you picked up any novel and said, well, I'm going to turn to about two-thirds of the way through and start reading, you'd draw some...

you'd make mistakes about the overall plot. You'd read about some characters and probably misunderstand what they were doing. Or say you said, I'm going to read the first half of it and then stop reading. You might see a bunch of things that didn't tie together because the author hadn't tied them up yet. So you have to look at it as one unit, Old Testament and New.

In 1981, a man named John Bright published a book called The Kingdom of God. And let me quote from page 197. He said, had we to give that book a title, and he's referring to the Bible, if we had to give the Bible a title, we might with justice call it, The Book of the Coming Kingdom of God. That is indeed its central theme everywhere. Old Testament and New Testament thus stand together as two acts of a single drama. That literal kingdom, that's what Daniel foresaw. Remember, he wrote about different kingdoms, you know, represented in that idol. But then that stone cut out without hand smashed the idol on its feet, and it crumbled and blew away, and the stone became a mountain that filled the whole earth.

That's not just a disjointed story, it was a way of demonstrating the kingdom of God. And story after story ties into that. Then Jesus Christ came saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom is at hand. You know, repent and believe the gospel. I'm losing track of where it was in my notes. Now, we see Christ teaching about the kingdom of God.

How many parables? As I said, he wrote saying, the kingdom of God is like... and then he gives an example. But few who call themselves Christian understand a lot of that because in their minds, they've torn the book in half and thrown away the first half. And so they're missing out on a lot of that continuity that would explain things. And so I said, with that, the lives of the patriarchs and of the prophets, you know, Isaiah, Jacob, Moses, David, they're just individual separate vignettes and they don't see how they're related. That's one of the benefits we believe God revealed to Herbert W.

Armstrong. Not that he only ever revealed it to him, but Mr. Armstrong had a unique ability to see how the whole Bible fit together. And he's the one that described some of its pieces as being like a jigsaw puzzle.

And with God's Spirit, it helps you fit all those pieces together and you see the broad big picture that the whole Bible portrays. When we put it all together in its proper framework, we see that the Old Testament provides the foundation for what's revealed in the New Testament. We see that broad sweep of history. Let's turn to Romans, Chapter 15, where Paul says that probably in a way better than I can.

Romans 15 and verse 4. Romans 15 and verse 4 says, Whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. These things were written for our learning, that God had this plan all along. And all along it was to encompass all peoples everywhere. And so we have that hope, the message of the coming Kingdom of God. Let's read down to verse 8. Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision, as we're referring to the Jews of his time, for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the Father.

So Jesus Christ came and confirmed all these promises made, all these things written in the Old Testament, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, for as it is written. And now he's going to quote from the Old Testament. For this reason I confess to you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. When God was working with ancient Israel, that was part of a plan that included the modern-day church, which would include many who are not part of physical Israel. But God planned all along for his kingdom to encompass all peoples. But just think how incomplete our knowledge of the kingdom of God would be if we didn't have the book of Micah or Isaiah or many of the Old Testament prophecies.

And I'm already thinking in terms of the Feast of Tabernacles and looking ahead, and I think how much do we look to those scriptures when we think about what the kingdom of God will be like when Christ returns? If you'll permit me to use another quote, this is from a 2006 Good News article by Don Hooser. I always like to quote former pastors whenever I can. Not that he's a former pastor here, but he said this, The New Testament cannot be properly understood without the foundational knowledge of the Old Testament.

And the Old Testament must be understood in light of the New Testament. They complement and complete each other. They complement and complete each other. I heard that it reminded me of that line that Tom Cruise was famous for from a movie a few years ago where, toward the end, he's finding the love of his life and says, You complete me! And, oh, I do love you, and they live happily ever after. But, of course, the Old and New Testament aren't people who are lovers, but if they were, they would say to each other, You complete me!

And they would live happily ever after. Maybe that's not such a good analogy, but... But just think, if we were reading only the New Testament, we would only have a vague idea about some important things, including God as creator. The New Testament doesn't explain some of these things we need to know, and a lot of his character traits we learn from reading the Old Testament.

I've often cited one of my favorite parts of the Bible was starting about Isaiah 48, where God is speaking in first person, and you really get a sense of who and what he is. But you don't get that from the New Testament alone. Just think, we believe the Ten Commandments are important. If we had the New Testament only, would we know that there were ten?

Would we know what order they fit in? Probably not. And you could say, well, does the order matter? It's not as important as knowing them, but I think there is some value to knowing what order God gave them. And the Holy Days. The deep spiritual meaning of the Holy Days. If we didn't have the Old Testament, we would know what the Holy Days were, or the order they fall in. And that's one of the things I've learned before I started serving as a pastor, I didn't have an opportunity to do baptismal counseling.

But one of the first things I learned is the importance of discussing the Holy Days is how they reveal God's plan and how He works with mankind over time. And so, looking at the Holy Days, the Old Testament helps us understand, and the New Testament throws light on those. Think of that powerful scripture in the Book of Revelation where it says, An angel came down from heaven with a chain, and he seized the dragon and bound him with a chain and put him in a pit for a thousand years. I say, wow! But we can understand what happens there so much better if we also read Leviticus 16.

And we think about those two goats, and one of them, they cast lots, and one of them, they put all the sins on him and then slit his throat and his blood is shed. But then there's another goat that they confess the sins over him and a strong man takes him out in the wilderness and sets him loose.

And a lot of people without the New Testament are looking at that saying, what in the world? Those crazy Israelites and their goats. But the Old and New Testament fit together and they give us understanding, and we see how that works.

The Old Testament Scriptures, along with giving us knowledge of these things, they give us knowledge about history that we wouldn't have otherwise. Would we know about a garden of Eden and Adam and Eve? No, we wouldn't. A few years ago, there was a program on the History Channel called Secrets of the Ancient World. And one of the first things it said is, in a society with so much knowledge and so much information, it's surprising that if we look beyond about 2,000 years ago, we know almost nothing about the origins of our civilization. Well, if we refuse to look at the Bible, we know almost nothing. Because almost every other authoritative source has ceased to exist. A lot of ancient books have been obliterated. They haven't endured. There's a famous story of, during the time of the Roman Empire, they destroyed a famous library at Alexandria, Egypt. And it had...we don't know how much knowledge in history that was gone forever. I'm curious. Actually, I'm dying as a historian. I'd love to know what was in that library. You know, maybe it detailed all tons of things that happened before the Noatian Flood. But it's gone. But the Bible is not gone because God chose to preserve it. He made sure that it endured. Speaking of which, we wouldn't know about the Flood of Noah very well without the Bible or how mankind survived it. So I'm wondering somewhat from my point, but those things all came to mind. The point is, though, the Old Testament is the key to understanding the New Testament and everything since. And they fit together. That third point was, the Old and New Testaments fit together. They complement each other, and they complete each other. That's a long way of phrasing it. You could put it in whatever words you want.

But let's move on. Along the same vein of thought, the Old Testament has in it many sections, many stories, and much teaching that has deep spiritual meaning for New Testament Christians. The Old Testament is full of deep spiritual meaning. Not just lists of genealogies. Who begat who, and who begat that, and what type of goat to sacrifice for this or that. Those things are there, but even those, if you analyze them, have more spiritual meaning than many people realize. But let's look at some of the big ones. One of the first things that comes to mind is the story of the Passover. Think in ancient Egypt, the story of an enslaved people saved from death by the blood of a lamb. They killed the lamb, put the blood on their doorposts, and they were saved from death. Which symbolizes how the lamb, slain from the foundation of the world, interceded for us to save us from certain eternal death. A perfect picture of true Christianity, the death of that lamb and salvation from death. Without the Old Testament, the story of the New Testament Passover would be lacking a lot of the deep meaning. So likewise for the symbolism of the children of Israel coming out of Egypt. Their physical journey from Egypt to the Promised Land is a great analogy that helps us understand our journey from the slavery and sin to a perfect life ahead. And like those ancient Israelites, when we leave that old life behind and start on that journey, we don't know how many trials and tests will come along the way. We don't know how long the journey will last. And we have trouble foreseeing how many miracles God will work to bring us through it. But look at how many miracles He worked for ancient Israel. You know, bringing water out of a stone, raining bread down from heaven, you know, putting the manna there and doing all these things. And there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of great analogies with spiritual meaning in the book of Exodus alone, let alone all the rest of the Old Testament. And that gives pause. If you think, you know, we think of this modern era of the church going back, and this surprised me, I counted, what, 70, 80 years?

And I thought, how many sermons do you think have been given in the last 80 years drawing on the book of Exodus with a lot of meaning in it? But then you can go beyond. How many going back 2,000 years? And maybe a lot more will to come. The Scriptures aren't going to become obsolete and disappear when Christ comes the second time. There's going to be a lot we could draw on. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 10. And notice just a taste of that. With that in mind, let's read this.

Paul's writing this. He says, Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud in the sea. And this helps us understand what baptism is about a little bit more. All ate the same spiritual food. We know they ate physical food, manna.

They drank the same spiritual drink. They also drank a physical drink, but it says, They drank of the spiritual rock that followed them. And that rock was Christ. That's an important thing for us to remember. That rock, the spiritual rock, that pillar of cloud and fire was representing the one who became known as Jesus Christ.

But we can go on from there. But with most of them, God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things became our examples to the intent. So there are examples for us to learn lessons from what they did wrong. To the intent that we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.

And don't become idolaters, as some of them were. It was written, that people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play. Remember I said how many quotes there are of the Old Testament? Here's another direct quote. They built, you know, they said, We don't know what happened to this Moses. He went up in the mountain and disappeared. Aaron, make us some gods. Well, give me your earrings.

He throws them in the... I love the way Aaron says, I threw them in the fire and outwalked this calf. And so they started, you know, worshipping that. And of course Moses did come back and set them straight. So Paul's saying, don't you be like that. We need to learn a lesson. If it seems like somebody's disappeared and we're not sure what's happening next, don't go just create a God. The true God is still there. He said, Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did. And one day 23,000 fell. Nor let us tempt Christ. Some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents.

Nor complained. Boy, everything we might think of doing. He said, look, they did it. And we don't want to do that. Don't complain as some of them complained and were destroyed. All these things happened to them as examples. And they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. One of the reasons the Old Testament was written and preserved for our example for us to learn from.

Now therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation is overtaken you except such as common to man. But God is faithful. I like that. Such is common to man. We all get tempted and tried by the same things. Now, not the same exact things. But that's one thing I learned back when I was teaching history. Sometimes I'd be trying to explain to 18 and 19 year olds why do we have to study this?

Why do we care what happened back then? And I tell them if for no other reason you learn about people. People don't change. Technology changes. Our style of clothes changes. Things like that.

But people are the same. Human nature doesn't change. And you can learn about that from history. You can learn about it from the Bible. Now the one place where we can see that people change is in God's church. Because the Holy Spirit does allow people to change. And we want to see...we can learn from these examples. So we can change. We can be different. So no temptation is overtaking you except as a common demand.

But God is faithful. He won't allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able. With the temptation, He'll make a way of escape that you can bear it. But we need to know what the temptation is and we can learn these valuable lessons. As I said, there's a lot of deep spiritual meaning in the Old Testament.

We have a lot in common with our ancestors. As I said, we have that same human nature that we're trying to overcome. But we can learn a lot from them. Now I should point out, and I'm glad I wrote a note because I almost forgot, there are good examples in the Old Testament, too. It's easy to point to the bad ones, but if you read Hebrews 11, we call the faith chapter.

I'm not going to turn there and read it. There's example after example of men and women who did what was right, who were turning to God and saying, I'm going to stand up for the right.

We can learn from their example, too. We want to be like Abraham and Sarah, who endured in faith. We want to be like Moses, who did the right thing time and again. Again and again, the New Testament points back to the Old. We look at the patriarchs, we can look at the Holy Days and see this deep spiritual meaning, and we can understand God's plan and his way of life. To close the fourth point, recap that. The Old Testament has many sections full of deep spiritual meaning for New Testament Christians.

Let's move on to a final point. My fifth one today, which you might wonder why I didn't make it seven, but we would have gone overtime, obviously. This is one I thought was going to be short. Every time I think a sermon will run short, it does the opposite. Fifth point, the Old Testament contains many prophecies of Jesus Christ, many that were fulfilled by His first coming, leaving many others that will be fulfilled by His second.

And of course, the seeing how accurately those were fulfilled is one of the proofs of the Bible itself and can lend credence to the validity of all of the Old Testament. This book dares to foretell the future. There are a lot of prophecies that we're looking ahead to yet be fulfilled. What gives us any hope that they will be fulfilled? How do we know that they're accurate?

One of the ways we can know is because many have already been fulfilled, and the largest number that have been fulfilled were about Jesus Christ. I thought I had the number written down. Yeah, the Jewish New Testament lists 52 separate prophecies of Christ that were fulfilled in His first coming. But that leaves still more than 100 yet to be fulfilled by His second coming.

Interesting. It's also worth noting that these prophecies that were in books like Ezekiel, Daniel, Zachariah, and Malachi, those being there were one of the reasons that people in the first century – well, of course, they didn't know it was the first century yet – but they were looking for the coming of a Messiah. Remember the story early in the Gospels of the wise men that came from the East? The Christmas stories always say it was three. We don't know how many there were.

But they came and said, we saw the star. They were looking at the prophecy. It's time for the Messiah to be born. Where is He? They said, well, the prophecies say it'll be in Bethlehem. Well, let's go check it out. And they found Him because the prophecies were there to show when and where the Christ would come.

Now, unless we used the criteria that were included in these prophecies, how would we know that Jesus was the Messiah? Remember, we already read some Scriptures that said Paul taught that Jesus was the Christ from the Old Testament. But imagine if the Old Testament weren't there. Imagine the twelve apostles sitting around, and maybe Jesus went off to pray, and they're saying, well, what do you think? He says He's the Messiah, but how are we going to know for sure? Yeah, He did a miracle or two, but there's that Simon Magus. He's doing miracles, and maybe other people. You know, the Old Testament Scriptures say that working miracles is not the criteria. They say if someone works miracles but then teaches you something different, stone them. Think of the Bereans. The Bereans were famous for Paul coming in, and Paul had been stoned in one city. He comes to Berea, teaches the message, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what did the Bereans do? They searched the Scriptures to see if those things were so. But I think what if they searched...they would say, well, we want to search the Scriptures, but if He was the Messiah, then those are outdated and they don't matter. But if He wasn't the Messiah, then they're the only thing that matters, so we don't need to bother to search Him to see if it's true. Now, I'm trying to invent a scenario that's really silly, and by the puzzle it looks on your faces, you're saying, yeah, that is silly. Okay, that's my whole point. The Scriptures fit together, as I just said, and we need them both. And in no place do they fit together better than in the central message of Jesus Christ as Messiah. And that's the point where many want to say that the Old Testament doesn't matter because Jesus Christ was the Messiah. My point is that they matter all the more because He was the Messiah, because you can't separate the two.

Let's turn to Acts 3, verse 19. We'll see a case of that statement. This is during Peter's famous sermon on that first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out.

Acts 3, actually beginning in verse 18.

Those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.

So all these things that the prophets foretold, Jesus Christ fulfilled, repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out, that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. So Jesus Christ fulfilled all these prophecies, but He's hinting that there are other ones yet to be fulfilled. Therefore, repent. Get with the program. You want to be on our team because this guy was it. Jesus Christ was the Messiah. And the Old Testament provides the only criteria by which you could know that. Now, what about His second coming? This blends back into my previous point that the Old and New Testament prophecies together of the end time, of the second coming of Christ, fit together perfectly. Think of how the book of Revelation fits with Daniel and then fits with Matthew, chapter 24. And all these prophecies fit together and they give us that full understanding. And so we know what's going to come, and at least we have a pretty good idea. And we can look forward to it and expect that it will happen. Not only that, but God has continued to expand our understanding since then. Do you think the twelve apostles understood the prophecies of Daniel better than Daniel did? Now, I'm asking that one particularly because that's one we can have a pretty substantial knowledge about. Remember, at the end, Daniel had all this. He said, what does this mean? And he was told, go your way. It's sealed up until the time of the end. So he wrote about this image and these kingdoms that come and beasts rising out of the sea. But by the time of the twelve apostles, they'd seen the Babylonian Empire rise and fall, Persian Empire rise and fall, Greek and Roman, and they could see, okay, Daniel was prophesying these things. And so they probably understood his prophecies better than Daniel did. Now, do you think we might understand them even better? Well, we understand all that history, plus we can see, what about a beast with seven heads and the woman's riding the beast? Well, we know about the rising of the Catholic Church and the revivals of the Roman Empire. And understanding that, we can look for a last revival that'll include ten kings who give their authority to the central, you know, the beast or that central government. We probably see some things that the original apostles didn't and that Daniel didn't. And we can guess, you know, when John saw something come out of a bottomless pit and said, well, it looks like grasshoppers and they sound like chariots when they're on. Maybe, you know, we can speculate. Was he seeing tanks and airplanes and helicopters? And we don't know for sure. I still wonder, wouldn't it be something if one day there really are some type of locust that comes up?

But if it's actually something that looked to John like a locust but looks like a modern war machine to us, then we can say, yeah, we were able to see how prophecies fit a little better because God, through His Spirit, gives us a bigger framework to see things. And that framework, that perspective, is vitally important. And to have it, we need all of the Bible. You could say, this is like the windows in your car. You need the rear window and that rear of your mirror so you can see where you've been. And the side windows, you see things going by, and out the front window you see what's coming ahead. The Bible gives us history, gives us the understanding of human nature and what man is always like. It looks at prophecy and shows us what's coming. Boy, that's even better than I had it written down in my notes, I think. If I said it the way I'm thinking it in my head. But we need all of the Scripture together.

So, to sum up that fifth point, the Old Testament contains a lot of prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus Christ and gives us that understanding and hope of the many prophecies that will be fulfilled by Jesus Christ. So let's wrap up. I want to say that it's undeniable. The Old Testament portion of the Bible is absolutely valid. It's relevant. It's vitally important for Christians. And there are some broad ways that we can explain that. And point people... Now, it's interesting, the question came up this morning. What if someone says, oh, that's just a bunch of old fables? Well, if someone has that attitude, then you might just say, well, you believe what you believe and I'll believe what I believe. But if someone wants to look into it, you can point to them things to show, first of all, that the Bible is God's word and that all of it is valid. We know the men who wrote the New Testament Scriptures believed that the Old Testament Scriptures were valid. Because they said so. A large portion of the New Testament consisted of quotes and allusions to the Old Testament. When we look at both together, they fit together. They complete each other and live happily ever after. There are many examples in the Old Testament that have rich spiritual meaning for us today, even thousands of years in the future.

And the Old Testament prophecies give us a fuller understanding of Jesus Christ's ministry and the fact that he was the Messiah by the prophecies that were fulfilled, the prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled. The Old Testament has a lot that matters to us. It has the concept of a Savior to save us from our sins, the concept of a resurrection. And those are some of the biggest things. And there are many other vital truths and concepts that are first revealed in the Old Testament and then expounded and completed in the second. Second, the New. All of the Bible comprises one unified work. And altogether, it reveals God's great plan, His plan and purpose to build His family, the Kingdom of God, and to include us in it.