Half A Book
Or,
Terrified By Torah
When was the last time you heard a message preached out of the Old Testament? My guess is, probably not in a while.
Why is that?
During Easter, there were a number of TV specials on the life of Jesus, some really bad, a few that were passable. But one struck some chords, as they detailed how the message of Jesus was systematically removed from its Jewish foundations over the years.
Most of today's churches have been completely sanitized from any trace of Jewishness. Jesus may as well have been from the moon as from the tribe of David.
Paul spoke profoundly when He said, “I did not fail to declare to you the whole counsel of God.” (Acts 20:27)
As a new believer, I read the scriptures like a starving man, tattering my Bible by underlining everything I read in one year. I never saw it as two books, and I rarely just had a New Testament. It was one book to me - The Word of the Lord. The whole of it is about one God, and one Messiah. The Torah, the “Old Testament” is full of Jesus, and the “New Testament” is intricately and inseparably woven with the Old.
My concern is that most Christians - and most pulpits - have a real aversion to the “Old Testament”. We like the Psalms, the Song of Solomon is good for marriage week, and the Proverbs seem to be practical enough to extract one or two occasionally. But Ezra? Ezekiel? Habakuk? We rarely go there!
Why is that?
First, I think the “Old Testament” scares us. “The God of the Old Testament” scares us! Doesn't He? So, many have partitioned God into the God of the Old Testament, and then Jesus. We like Jesus, at least our Westernized version - soft, flowing blond hair, blue eyes, looking beatific and harmless, always suffering, always forgiving. It's one of the things that irks me about some of the comments about The Passion - “It's about love, peace, brotherhood and forgiveness.” No, it is NOT. Jesus was about an eternal rescue mission from sin and hell at the cost of His own blood!
I realize most people prefer the Jesus that most resembles a hippie who does everything but say, “Why can't we just get along?” We can all pick things we like about Jesus and what He said. But we also ignore and exclude the things that make us squirm. When I hear some people in sermons describing Jesus in flowery, weepy sermons, I want to scream, “What Bible are YOU reading?!?” Yes, He WAS kind, loving and compassionate. But to the religious and proud He was harsh. In anger He upturned the tables of the merchants in the Temple. He cursed a fig tree to death. He makes me tremble! He is the One with Fire in His Eyes, and words like thunder that made John, the very one that lay his head on Jesus' breast, fall on his face like a dead man. (I'm thankful Jesus then touched him and said, “Don't be afraid, John. It's Me.”) But no one can read the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament without understanding that Jesus is NOT our personal fluffy-bunny.
We talk of the God of the Old Testament as if He was a different person than He is now. Yet He says, “I am the Lord God, I do not change.”
Some things Jesus said are far harsher than anything I've read in the Old Testament. And believers are missing more than they can imagine by not plumbing the depths of the Old for the true character of our Father and our God. He is a father who compassionately loves His children (Psalm 103:13). He's a Father who can't bear to be without us or to forget us (Isaiah 49:15) and a God who cares not just for people but for even cattle. (Jonah 4:11) He is a Father who cared for a little crippled boy named Mephibosheth and took him from poverty and exile and set him at the King's table.
Until you make the “Old Testament” a whole with the New, until you read it and study it diligently with the New, you will never get the complete picture. Most of the New Testament makes little sense to me without the understanding that the Old gives. How in the world can you make any sense of Revelation until you understand its companion, Daniel?
I could continue much more but for now I just wanted to provoke you a little: Why are you afraid of the Old Testament? I think it is partially because when we begin to pursue its study, not just in little pieces we like but in whole, we have to throw up our hands at some point and admit we know NEXT TO NOTHING about God! And that is GOOD! How arrogant of us to think we could distill him into little bite-size sermons and teachings and make people feel like we've got it! He is greater and deeper than we can ever imagine. We KNOW Him because of Jesus, as a friend, Father and companion. But it will take eternity to know Him, and we can only begin by admitting how very small our understanding is. And nothing does that for me like a good dose of the Tenach. (Old Testament.) With that humility I am then led to admit that everything I've read about Jesus in the New is just a tiny fragment of what is to be known of Him. I am not afraid anymore - the One Book has become an amazing adventure to me!
The “God of the Old Testament” is the same as the New. Jesus is the express image of all that God is. “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” (John 14:9) Ebrace the Tenach - the Old - the Prophets and the Songs just as you would Paul's letters and the Gospels. Only as you embrace it all is One Book can you truly become a workman who need not be ashamed, ready for any work and any mission God calls you to do.
Gregory Reid
