Jesus In The Old Testament
I have a specific concern.
In my experience over the years, I have to say that I find that many Gentile believers have a very limited understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures. I also find that these fellow believers are very open and even thirsty and eager to know more of the foundations of the faith in the Old Testament that lead to the New Covenant that all of us as believers, Jewish or Gentile, live under.
I’m not trying to say that the New Testament is less important than the old, but the old is also not less important than the new. The fact is that the thing that makes the New Testament new is that there is an old one!
So, a really good way to look at this is to realize that when Jesus taught, laying out His messianic credentials, He never ever used the New Testament. He never preached from the New Testament. It was always from the Hebrew Scriptures (OT). Case in point - from the book of Luke.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:16-21
Jesus, in the synagogue at Nazareth, is reading from Isaiah 61:1-2a, and He is telling those in the synagogue on Shabbat (all Jews - what else would you expect?), that He is the fulfillment of that specific Old Testament prophetic Scripture. That was the whole purpose of his first coming: “to proclaim the good news, to proclaim liberty, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Notice, He didn’t complete verse 2: “And the day of vengeance of our God.” That will happen at His Second Coming.
When Jesus, or even the apostles for that matter, refer to the Scriptures in the first century, it was always the Old Testament. A couple of more examples of Jesus referencing the Old Testament. In Matthew 4:1-11, Jesus was tempted by the devil three times.
In every temptation, Jesus responded to the devil out of the Torah, specifically Deuteronomy 8:13, 6:13, and 6:16.
Also, in Luke 24:13-27: This is after the resurrection and two of Jesus’ disciples are walking on the Road to Emmaus. While they were walking, Jesus drew near and began walking with them, but they didn’t recognize him. He asks them what they are talking about. One of them asks him if he is the only visitor to Jerusalem who doesn’t know what has happened in the past few days. And Jesus says, “What things?” (I would love to have seen the look on His face when He asked THAT question.) And so, they go on to explain, Luke 24:19-24:
...And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.”
Luke 24:19-24:
And now Yeshua opens up to them in vv. 25-27, and note specifically what He taught them and from where He taught them:
And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
I grew up believing that the New Testament was for Christians and the Old Testament was for Jews. And by the way, the majority of both groups believe that! But Jesus, the Jewish Messiah brought both the old and the new seamlessly together. If that is how Yeshua taught (not to mention the Apostles), how could we ignore or disregard a part of the Bible that is obviously so important? It’s impossible to understand the New Testament without a basic understanding of the Old Testament. It is like showing up to the second act of a two-act play, having missed the entire first act.
My Jewish people believe, as I did, that the Old Testament is their book and the New Testament is the Christian Bible. One of my mentors many years ago, Zola Levitt, said that the New Testament without the Old is like a roof with no house under it.
Yet, we are still not quite sure how to share the Messiah from the Old Testament. It is time to bridge the gap for both Jews who live life rejecting the Jesus they don’t know, and for Christians to build the foundation under that great roof so that both Jews and Gentiles can become the “one new man” that Paul wrote to the Ephesians about.
Next time we will look at some of the specifics of why Gentile Christians need to know the Old Testament by taking a look at Jesus in Genesis.
