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.

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 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.