Lecture

Before we begin, let’s ask our Lord’s special blessing upon our work together. Our God and heavenly Father, how we thank You for Your marvelous gift of Your Word. We ask now that You may open our eyes and help us as we turn to these Scriptures, that indeed they may be the inspired Word of God for each one, even as You have made them for us. We would pray, too, Father, that You may lift the scales and the veil from our hearts and eyes, for we have the living Christ who has come to abide within us. So help us, we pray, and bless our study together, for we ask it in Your wonderful name, in the name of our coming Lord Jesus. Amen.

Our first lecture this morning is the Christian and the Old Testament. We want to particularly look at the problem of, “Why should a Christian even get involved with the Old Testament, and what is the use or significance of that text for us today?”

I think the place for us to begin is where Emo Kraeling, where he began. He said some years ago, 1955 AD, that the Old Testament is not just one problem among many, but it is the master problem of theology. Solve the problem of the Christian Jews of the Old Testament and indeed you have put yourself well in the center of doing theology. For this is, I think, the most important question of the Church. It affects almost everything else we do.

Some have tried to point out and to show that the answer to this problem will decide how we understand Jesus Christ in His historical character. For our Lord said these are the texts that speak of me. And, again, it helps us understand His Jewish context, His divine validation from heaven above. It decides, the Old Testament view decides the Church’s view of itself as the element in the mystery of God. It decides our interpretation of the salvation which is offered in Jesus Christ. It decides our estimate of earthly and temporal life, how we are to live here and now. It decides the relationship between God’s chosen people, Israel, and the Church, and it decides our whole understanding of where history is going, and the Kingdom of God. So, when you begin putting it down, the answer to the Old Testament and to the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament are between the Old Testament and the contemporary Christian is not a small issue at all.

Some writing recently [by] A.H.J. Gunneweg, he also echoed the same sentiment. He said it would be no exaggeration to understand the hermeneutical problem of the Old Testament as the problem of Christian theology. And not just one problem among others, seeing that all other questions of theology are affected in one way or another by the solution to this problem. And you can go back and show the stress and the great Christological arguments, the Trinitarian arguments, and the arguments of soteriology and the atonement and practically every one of the contemporary arguments has its roots in some problem of interpreting the Old Testament.

And no less adamant was Bernard Anderson. He said “No problem more urgently needs to be brought to focus. It is a question which confronts every Christian in the Church; whether that Christian, be a professional theologian, a pastor of a congregation, or a lay person. It is no exaggeration to say on this question hangs the meaning of the Christian faith.”

Well, that’s quite a claim, and yet, on the other hand, I would back up all three of these citations. It seems to me that whether you are following Kraeling or Gunneweg or Anderson, or in your own personal study, here we have over three-fourths of God’s Word. It actually is 77.2 percent of the Bible. Some people speak of [the Old Testament as] the first half of our Bible. Come on! It’s more than the first half—it’s the first three-fourths of what God had to say. And, by the way, it’s what God had to say. It is His revelation that is tremendously significant.

Well, so much for the statement by way of introduction that the Christian and the Old Testament is the master problem in theology. And it truly is. And I think you can begin tracing back some of the greats of our day, and if you want to find out where they tripped up, it usually is in their understanding and their mastering the Old Testament problem.

But let’s go to the New Testament; since, as believers, we want to always try to at least see what the most recent revelation of our Lord, for after all, the Bible then closed with Malachi. I think we can begin by best seeing it in Luke 24:25. You remember our Lord on that famous Emmaus road walk. He said to those two disciples, he said to them, “O fools and slow of heart” or, as other translations have said, “How foolish you are.” Now, I don’t know what you think, but I don’t believe that was a passing grade for that particular performance. As they are going down the road to Emmaus, it doesn’t say, but in my margins I have the idea they were kicking stones. They were really depressed. There were the events of that particular weekend. There had been a crucifixion on Friday, and it was—it’s a most despicable thing to see a human form stretched out on a crucifix, up there on a hill among some thieves and that was the leader of the movement. That’s what you had hoped was what the whole Testament was looking forward to. And now you’re going down the road, and our Lord Himself, who previously was on that cross, is now walking alongside of the men. But they can’t even realize it. They are so down heartened. I think that their hands are behind their backs; I think they are scuffing their shoes, or sandals, excuse me, scuffing their sandals up and won’t even look up. And so He says to them, “O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.”

And then He said wasn’t it necessary, didn’t it need to happen? He uses a little Greek particle there. It’s the Greek work “dei” that means “it is necessary,” and is pronounced like the word “day” in English. It had to take place. There was a divine necessity and an urgency in the very flow of things. It had to take place, that Christ had to suffer these things and then to enter His glory. Wasn’t that necessary? Wasn’t that the order of things? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He explained to them what He said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself. It had to take place and, come on, men, where did you go to seminary? Who taught you? Didn’t you know anything about this? Didn’t they say anything about Me in the Pentateuch? Didn’t they say anything about Me in the Psalms? How about the course in prophets? Did they say anything about Me? And didn’t you know that I had to suffer? And didn’t you know that I then was going to be glorified? And didn’t you know this was going to take place at all? Come on, men. You guys are dummies! I think that’s the modern translation for fools. “Oh, fools and slow of heart.” The flunkies. You really have failed the course.

And then beginning with Moses and the prophets and all the writings. This, as you know, is the famous three-part analysis of the Old Testament, Torah, which is the law, or sometimes spoken of as [the Law of] Moses, since he’s the writer of the first five books.

And then the second part, the prophets, or the technical name there sometimes used is the nabi’im, the prophets, and they are the second section. This would include the major prophets, the four major prophets, as we analyze them, and the 12 minor prophets. It would also include the earlier prophets, too, which would be Joshua, Judges, Samuel, [and] Kings. So you have the four earlier prophets, and these 16 would be the latter prophets in the Jewish designation. So the prophets, by the way, those are not historical books, it’s not just sheer history. It is God fulfilling His Word in the earlier prophets, too.

And then the third part is called the writings, and the ketubim, as they’re known in Hebrew, same word, writings, and these include Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the smaller books which are added thereto, as well. And it concludes with Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles. So, at any rate, you have the three-fold division.

Our Lord walked through the entire, what we now call the Old Testament. By the way, the designation Old Testament is a very recent one comparatively. It is with the Church-father Origen in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 2nd and 3rd century that basically he, following the New Covenant from Jeremiah 31, then said what was previous was the Old Covenant.

Hence, we have Old Testament and New Testament. But that’s not a Biblical designation. That is a Church-father’s traditional designation. So, in that sense, we are following tradition. But there is no Biblical precedent for that which says, this is the end of the Old Testament and now begins the New. We will see it later on that comes.

So the first appraisal of the Old Testament, by our Lord Himself, was that those are the writings that spoke of Himself, and here’s the other point. A person could, if they would, see Him and understand Him from these texts. Our text also says in Luke 24:31, then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and He disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” And you remember in verse 44, again, [He said to them,] “This is what I told you when I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that’s written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets [and the Psalms].” And this time, rather than using the writings as the third designation, He takes the largest book in the collection, the Psalms, but again refers to the three parts. And verse 45 of Luke 24, [Then] he opened their minds so that they could understand the Scriptures, et cetera. Well, that’s the first, and I think one of the great appraisals of the Old Testament.

Turn to Matthew, Chapter 5, for a second one, Matthew 5:17 and 18. He begins with, “Do not think...” And apparently some were. The opponents of our Lord were thinking what they shouldn’t think, and apparently you have to say that today, too – don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think that I’ve come to destroy the Law. Now, if you thought that, you’re in trouble with our Lord, not me, with our Lord. He said don’t think that. He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear,” not one jot or one tittle. Not the smallest part. He takes here a hyperbole. It’s a conscious exaggeration of saying that not even the yod, which is the smallest letter, or the little crenellation, the little flurry that’s on the end of the last letter, the tau. So here you have a yod, in comparison, for example, to one of the other letters, not the jot or the tittle, that’s that little flurry on the end of the tau. He said not the slightest part will disappear by any means until heaven and earth disappear. In verse 19 He says, “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, (and) [but] whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” “For I tell you that unless your righteousness (exceeds and) surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law (the Scribes), you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Well, a lot more needs to be said on that verse, but certainly we have our Lord saying, don’t think that my mission is to cut loose – to abolish. I’ve come here to see the purpose, the goalpost, the teleological conclusion towards which this is going. So when Christ announces through Paul in Romans 10:4, that Christ is the goal, He is the end of the Law, one of the ways of understanding that word Christ is the end of the Law is, according to the Greek word telos, He is the teleological purpose, goalpost, score again. For here is another victory as the Old Testament comes to its intended purposeful goal.

Another verse that can be brought up here, and we don’t want to belabor the point, but in John 5:39. John’s Gospel, Chapter 5, we have again another setting where our Lord teaches on the same point. John 5:39, He says, “You diligently study the Scriptures…” the graphe. What are the graphe that they had? The Scriptures were exactly the 39 books of the Old Testament. So you diligently study them because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me says Jesus. That’s what the whole point is—if you don’t understand Me from the Old Testament, you’ve missed the Old Testament. Yet you refuse to come to Me and have life. And so you have that same point, and again, of course, verse 45 and 46 of John 5: “[But] do not think that I [will] accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believe Moses, you would believe me, [for he wrote about me.]”. If you would have listened to Moses, it would have led to Me, says our Lord, for he wrote about Me. “But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” If you don’t believe what that Pentateuch says, how are you going to believe Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

And I think the question is still a modern question, too. It’s still a modern question. And there are other places where it comes to the fore, (Romans, Paul). Let’s look what Paul does in Romans 15. He strings together a whole set of verses on this point’; he is at pains to make this point. Romans 15:4, for he says, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach” (them). That’s what I would have thought. It was written to teach them? No, he changed it. It was written to teach “us”. Us. So you can’t say that was written for someone else. That’s wrong to say that. That’s wrong. That’s non-biblical. Paul teaches under inspiration. We’re all perspired that Paul was inspired. He says that this is the reason for writing the Old Testament. It was to teach us, so that through endurance, and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.

I’ve gone through the New Testament and noticed how many times there is the change from where I would have expected the third-person pronoun, they or them or he or she. It is changed to first-person plural, us, we, our. They were written for our encouragement. They were written for us. As a matter of fact, even in the Old Testament, you will find that. In the Book of Hosea, Chapter 12, where there Hosea is preaching on the life of Jacob, when he was in the womb, he grasped the heel of his brother, he wrestled with God. There he wrestled with the angel. He uses both. He says the angel and then he says God. And he said there God spoke with us says Hosea. Hosea says that in the 800’s, or the 8th century, it would be 700’s, 8th century BC., and Jacob’s life took place in the 1800’s BC. In other words, there is a millennium, a thousand years difference. But he said God is still speaking to us. And the New Testament writers pick up that same thing. Here we see it twice in this verse. Let me read it again. “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach (surprise) us.” And then he says, “so that through endurance in the encouragement of the (graphe) Scriptures, we might have hope.” And then he goes on to speak of the promises made to the patriarchs, [Romans 15,] verse 8. And what are those promises? It’s about the Gentiles. And he strings together a whole series of verses there, beginning in II Samuel 22: “Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles”, Verse 9. Verse 10 “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people” (again), or “O nations.” Deuteronomy 32, he quotes. And then he quotes again, Psalm 117, Praise the Lord all you peoples, O you Gentiles. Sing praises to him, all you lands. And again he quotes in verse 12 of Romans 15. He will quote from Isaiah Chapter 11, “The Root of Jesse will spring up, one will arise to rule over the nations; (and in him) the Gentiles will hope [in him].” So Paul goes constantly to say it was written for us and for our encouragement.

Well, there are other passages here where we could make the point, perhaps only one more, and then we should move on: I Corinthians 10:11. And there he says, going through the whole point of the passing through the Red Sea and the exodus, where he struck the rock and water came out of the rock, he says, “These things happen [to them] as examples, and were written down as warnings for us.” For us. So, I Corinthians 10:11 says the Old Testament gives us examples and gives us warnings. The important thing there is the little first-person pronoun, first-person plural pronoun, us, we, they’re written for us. That reminds me, too, in that same connection, you can go over to Hebrews, Chapter 6, where again this same little first-person plural pronoun comes up, where he talks about God made a promise to Abraham and gave him His word. God also swore on His life and took an oath. The word was in Genesis 12, the oath was in Genesis 22, at the sacrifice of Isaac. So that he said by these two unshakable, unchangeable, unrustable, unbreakable, or however we translate these here, in Hebrews 6:18. He said, “God did this so that, by (these) two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie”, we might have a strong consolation; we might have strong courage. You mean Genesis 12 and Genesis 22 is for us, that we might have it? That’s the point. That’s the whole point there. That we, that it might be a strong consolation for us. So the New Testament appraisal of the Old Testament is very, very strong and continues at a number of points.

Let’s ask also, what are the questions that the Old Testament poses? What are the questions that the Old Testament poses as the master problem of theology? Well, I think the first and greatest question is this: Is the God of the Old Testament contrary to the God of the New?

You remember that there was in the early Christian Church in the 100’s, say 114-124, somewhere in there, a man, a shipping magnate who was very influential in the Church named Marcion, M-a-r-c-i-o-n, Marcion. Marcion was one of the first ones who really took major exception to the Old Testament. And so today within the Church we speak of all those who have a fear, or who have objections to the Old Testament, as having Marcionite tendencies. And so Marcion’s name has become a byword for the Christian and the Old Testament. Only his is by negative example. And Marcion spoke of the God of the Old Testament as being a demiurge, a demiurge, which generally means something like “he is a lesser god who created the world, but certainly is different and a separate god from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. So there is no connection between the two. He began to say that the God in the Old Testament acts in very, very strange ways, and he said that certainly can’t be linked with the God of the New Testament. So I suppose from Marcion’s bad example, we must now try to make a response in terms of this problem of the Old Testament as the master problem of theology.

My response would be basically to use Scripture, Hebrews 1:1. God, who in a lot of different ways and a lot of different times, God in the past spoke by, or to our forefathers, by the Prophets in many times and in many various ways. “But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he is appointed heir of all things.” As far as the writer of Hebrews is concerned, it’s the same Lord, same God. The same God who spoke by the Prophets to our forefathers, and to those in the Jewish community as the same Lord who has spoken to us by His son, same God.

As so I take it that Hebrews 1:1-2 is the basic way to respond to this. But I think there is another way to respond to this charge, at least if we want to listen to where the early Church was. And I’m taking testimonies of those who were there, Charlie. They saw it first. They should have the rights to say more clearly than what we do because we are separated by distance. In John’s Gospel, Chapter 12:41. John 12, here we have an argument from the Book of Isaiah, where our Lord is here talking about His death before the crowd, that He is predicting His death which is to come. And then He quotes from Isaiah 6, and He says that, in verse 40, “He blinded their eyes and deadened their hearts so that they [can] neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turnu002du002dand I would heal them.” “Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about Him.” Who was it that Isaiah saw high and lifted up in the royal attire in the temple in heaven? It was Jehovah, or Yahweh, probably more accurately pronounced, the tetragrammaton, the living God Himself, moving there. Now, the testimony of John, is that who Isaiah saw when he saw the Lord and where they cried, “Holy, holy, holy.” That one, he said they saw the glory of none other than me. They spoke of Jesus and spoke of His glory.

This word glory, I’m afraid, is a word, too, that we have problems with, or at least we tend to theologize it and make it into a sentimental concept there. From the glory of the Lord, it seems to me, that we have here basically the root meaning from Hebrew which means to be heavy, kabed to be heavy, something like k-a-b, pronounced as a “v”, e-d, which means to be heavy. And from the root meaning to be heavy, I think we ought to be careful of etymological studies, because we can get into the root fallacy, but I think here it does apply – that this is legitimate. From the whole idea to be heavy, there is a concept of the sheer gravity of His presence, the sheer gravity of His presence; so that wherever you see the basic concept of the glory of the Lord, it is not, first of all, the effect that it makes. There are raisers out splashing, but it is that He is there. The God who is there from glory. The whole idea is in His thereness, and that agrees, too, with the whole name of Jehovah, as we have come to pronounce it, or more accurately from the Hebrew, probably Yahweh, which as you know is from the verb “to be”, yava and the yah form, it’s just the prefix, “He will be.” He will be what? He will be there. He will be there. So it is the God, He will, and then from the verb “be” and I’m understanding there, put in brackets. So just put He will be “there”, in brackets. The bracketed word is there because there is no word for “there”, but it certainly is a definition of God who would be. Well the whole point was that when he saw His glory, he spoke concerning Him. A second question posed, so that’s our answer to the first one there, just to review, is the God of the Old Testament contrary to the God of the New? And the answer is, no, He is the same. Hebrews 1:1, He is the one who is revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ, for the one that Isaiah saw was the very one who is now being depicted by John as being none other than our Lord Jesus.

Second question, is there [a] Christian canon within a canon, within the total Bible? And the answer here, I think, must be II Timothy 3:14-17. Here you have Paul teaching Tim. I call him Tim because I think I know him well enough; I’ve been reading this frequently. But Paul is talking to his young pastor friend, Tim, Timothy. And he said, Tim preach the word; keep your finger on the text. Don’t depart from the writings. You know these writings. You know what writings we have. What’s our B-I-B-L-E? Yes, that’s the book for me. The B-I-B-L-E that they would have held up in their little Sunday Schools at that time would have been Genesis through Malachi. It is the 39 books, and he says, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and (you) have [become] convinced of, because you know [those] from whom you learned it...” Don’t forget, Timothy, what I taught you. Don’t forget what your grandmother taught you. Don’t forget that faith that also is in your mother.

“And (then), how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise [for] salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” The holy Scriptures here, the holy graphe. What are the writings? It’s Matthew. No, it’s, in this case it’s Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. He said, you have known these things from a little tot on up. These are able to make you wise unto salvation. Fancy that. Paul says you can get saved from them. I didn’t say that; I wouldn’t have the nerve enough, but the Bible says that. The Bible says you can get saved from that. You make you wise for salvation through faith. How do you think the early Church came to know the Lord? Well, you say, there were apostles preaching there. Yes, but the Bereans checked the messages, and they searched the text to see where it was written. So they had to validate it, and they went back to the Prophets, they went back to the writings, they went back to the law to see if it was there. And so, not only that, but he goes on to say, all Scripture is inspired of God. And it is profitable. It’s useful.

And now he’s going to give us here four purpose clauses. What can you get out of the Old Testament? You can get teaching. You can get doctrine. You can get rebuke. It’s for rebuking. Sometimes the saints need to be rebuked. And if there is not a rebuke that is exercised, there grows up a set of weeds, for that’s exactly what heresy is. It’s a sphere in our ministry where we don’t touch it. We say we have no word for that, or we don’t dare to go into it. And there is no rebuking. Then, there is the possibility for someone to come in and say, God has raised us up in these latter days to emphasize this neglect of truth. And they take that one truth and pull it out of context with all the rest of the truth, and you’ve got a heresy underway.

So it’s for teaching, for doctrine, and you can get, you must get, doctrine from the Old Testament. Where are we going to get the doctrine of creation if it’s not from Genesis 1 and 2? Where are we going to get a finer statement on the fall than Genesis 3? Where are we going to get a finer statement on the atonement, the nature of the atonement, than Isaiah 53? There will not be a higher statement in all Scripture on what is the nature of that atonement. Where are we going to get a higher statement on the incomparability of God? Isaiah, Chapter 40, “To whom then will you liken God?” [verse 18] And so, that is Isaiah, Chapter 40.

So, at any rate, we answer that it is for doctrine and for, rebuking, and it’s for correcting and for training in righteousness. And what is the result? It is so that the person of God, the man of God, may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Thoroughly equipped. If there is not an understanding of the whole corpus of the Word of God, there is not a total preparation for the ministry and for the work. People will not be thoroughly equipped if they can’t handle 77.2 percent of the Bible, which is the Old Testament; over three-fourths of God’s word.

A third question that is posed here, and that is the question, isn’t Christianity brand new, since it is based on the new covenant? This brings up the use of the word new in Jeremiah 31:31. He said behold, there God is going to give to us a new covenant. A right and new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. The word new in the Hebrew text uses only one word. There is only one word for new and renew. In the New Testament, however, and in most Indo European, as well as in English, we have two words. We can distinguish between it. We refer, perhaps only one place following Hebrew, we will refer to the new moon, but I take it that most of you understand it’s the same moon. Now, you can fight with me over that, but I do believe it’s the same one. But we do call each month a new moon. The word for new and the word for moon in Hebrew is just slight vowel-point difference, but it’s the same basic root. So in Greek, too, as well, you can make the distinction.

My point is this that the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 is a renewal of the ancient promise God gave to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David, and then adds to it. What makes it new is that He renews what He has said, and then goes on to add brand new things. So there is a brand newness, but you must not put that totally down. If you analyze, as we will in this course, the elements of the new covenant, you will find that over 50 percent of the items mentioned are citations from the promise given to Eve, the promise given to Abraham, the promise given to Isaac, the promise given to Jacob, the promise given to David, they’ll be repeated over and over. ‘I’ll be your God you shall be my people’; ‘I’ll dwell in the midst of you’; ‘I’ll forgive you of your sins’. But then he goes on to speak of things which have never been heard of before—universal peace and universal blessing. No need to teach anyone anymore. And you won’t need to teach your brother anymore. Everyone will know the Lord. Now, that doesn’t sound like anything we have ever heard before. So there are some brand new things, as well as some renewed things.

Then, fourthly, are not the objects of faith, the methods of salvation, and the doctrine of repentance and sin, and the hope beyond the grave different in the New Testament? So different as to signal two different faiths. And my answer to that, briefly, is that in Romans 4:1, Paul there uses two great examples when he tries to talk about justification. He said listen, Abraham was justified by faith. David was justified by faith. We’re justified the same way as were these men. And what was the object of Abraham’s faith? It was the man of promise who is to come. Not that it was any individual that was different. But as a matter of fact, we’ll try to show you that in Abraham he put his faith not in the name of Jesus, he didn’t know the name of Jesus yet, but he knew that there was one coming through the seed of the woman through his own family, and he had only the Word of God. But he put his faith, and the object of his faith was in Him. That’s the point of Paul’s argument. Romans 4:1-17.

The Gospel is the same, too. Paul argues in Galatians 3:8, he says, this same Gospel is the identical one that we have now. Turn quickly as we conclude this lecture, and I try to show you that indeed that’s exactly what Paul was talking about. In Galatians 3:8, the Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, that He pre-announced the Gospel in advance to Abraham, saying in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. He said did you hear that? That’s good news. That’s the Gospel. In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. He said that’s the euaggelion. That’s Paul’s identification. You say, give that to me again. What was the Gospel? The Gospel was Genesis 12:3. In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

And you have the same argument, too, in Romans 1:1-4. It’s the Gospel which was pre-announced by the Prophets, and again in Hebrews 4:2 that we are saved just like they were saved. He says those carcasses that fell in the wilderness, what was wrong with them? (Hebrews 3:17) He said that they themselves, they did not believe. But, as a matter of fact, the same good news has come to us.

So we think that the relevance of the Old Testament for the contemporary Christian is as follows: There is salvation, there is teaching, there is reproof, there is correction, there is training and righteousness. And the whole reason for this is so that we as men and women might be thoroughly prepared by God for every good work.