4) Context Matters - Part 2: The Old Testament is More than Pointing to Jesus

In the last section, we reviewed "Context Matters - Part 1." There, we started to lay some foundational knowledge regarding the Bible. Context is essential, and we must establish context when reading the Bible. The Bible is a collection of literature written in different styles, influencing how it is read and understood. In the first century, during the time of Jesus, the Bible was the Hebrew Scriptures, or Tanakh, consisting of the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. Every author of the Bible is considered to be inspired by God. Jesus and the apostles held the Old Testament, or Tanakh, in high regard, and we should also. We will continue the conversation in this post by looking at the Old Testament a little closer. In some churches, the Old Testament is often used to emphasize Jesus. In other words, the Old Testament is said to point to Christ. While I am in no way downplaying or minimizing the importance of Jesus, it bears mentioning that the Old Testament is more than just a bunch of writings that point to Jesus. 

As modern-day disciples, we must read the New Testament and the Old Testament through the eyes of a first-century Jew. In future studies, we will dive deeper into their faith and hope, which for them wasn't about saying a prayer to receive Jesus into their heart so that they could be forgiven and free from shame. It wasn't so they could have some good community in this life, the first-century version of the American dream. Faith and hope also weren't about going to heaven when they die. Instead, it was about counting God and his words as trustworthy and reliable, explicitly expecting God to fulfill his covenantal promises to them, which included a complete restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel back to the land that God had promised Abraham. They expected the resurrection of the dead, the restoration of the kingdom of Israel, and the nations flowing up to Jerusalem to hear God's instruction. This promised restoration would be brought about by the Messiah, the king of Israel, on the day of the Lord, when he would gather everyone together, punish the wicked, reward the righteous, and rule with justice and equity over all the nations from Jerusalem. 

This is quite a different picture of the future than what the average Gentile Christian hears about at church on a Sunday morning. If much of the evidence points to this first-century Jewish understanding, then why is this message different from the message a modern-day Christian typically hears? There are many reasons for this, but one concerns how modern believers approach the Old Testament.

We often have this wrong idea that everything from Genesis to Malachi points to Jesus and that it's largely irrelevant to us today because, as the reasoning goes, Jesus has come. We don't need to know anything other than Jesus and the cross and forgiveness. This is pretty problematic for a few reasons. 

First, it's far too general of a statement to make because the Old Testament presents a story of something so much bigger than Jesus coming to die for sins and to rise again. It's mostly unfamiliarity with the details that causes this perspective. Don't get me wrong, Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are significant. But his life, death, and resurrection are important because they are in context to the larger story of God's covenantal dealing with Israel and what those covenants mean for the rest of the nations and all of creation itself. 

The second reason it's problematic to say that Genesis through Malachi all points to Jesus is that it ignores the context of the words of Jesus and his followers in the New Testament. Now, I want to develop this point and read a story that is familiar to most people. And that's the Christmas story. We hear this in churches at least once a year in December. But I think we often overlook the details, maybe because of overfamiliarity with the story. So let's look at this story from Luke 1:26:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Luke 1:26-33, ESV Bible)

The last few verses are direct quotations from the Old Testament and have nothing to do with Jesus dying on the cross for sins. Those particular words are from 2 Samuel, chapter seven. And they would have rung loudly in the ears of a first-century jew because the nation of Israel at the time of Jesus was languishing under the oppression of Rome. And the overarching question that so many were seeking to answer at the time was, "Will God be faithful to do what he said?" All of those promises that he made in the prophets and in the covenants that he created with the Jewish people, how are they going to come to pass? 2 Samuel 7:10, where God is speaking to King David:

And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. (2 Samuel 7:10-14, ESV Bible)

Today, we read Gabriel's words and envision a heavenly kingdom. Jesus came to die for our sins so we can go be with him in this heavenly kingdom when we die. This is not what Mary is thinking when she hears the words of Gabriel. Like all of the other first-century Jews, Mary would have been longing for the promised deliverance, safety, security, and prosperity in the land that God promised to Abraham, where Israel's enemies would no longer oppress them, and a son of David would reign on David's throne in Jerusalem. 

This is a really important context for us to understand because the angel comes to her and doesn't redefine the hope that Mary and the people of Israel had; instead, he forcefully affirms it. If Gabriel was implying a spiritual kingdom, he would say so. This is not some spiritual trickery where the Jews believe one thing, and God keeps leading them down a path of understanding only to pull the carpet out from under their feet in the future. What would that say about God, and how could we ever comprehend the message of scripture? In Luke, Gabriel is reaffirming the same promises in the Old Testament. 

Another good example that highlights the context of the first-century Jewish worldview is in Acts 26. This chapter recounts the Apostle Paul's defense before King Agrippa, detailing his recognition of Jesus as the Messiah and his mission to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. In verse 6, Paul says:

And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? (Acts 26:6-8, ESV Bible)

Again, we see his worldview in context to the Old Testament promises to Israel. So his hope, even as an apostle and a disciple, did not change because of Jesus. Even after Jesus came, died, and rose, and after Paul encountered Jesus, he's still affirming a Jewish apocalyptic hope. To be blunt, because of our modern Gentile ignorance of this Jewish story, we miss entirely these details about the hope of the Jewish people. Or, at worst, we assume that it gets redefined somehow and that Jesus is reigning in heaven right now, and he's already on David's throne, somehow spiritually subduing Israel's enemies. We over-spiritualize the hopes of Israel because we fail to see the first-century Jewish perspective. 

Talk to any Jewish person living in the land of Israel right now, or even look at the news from the Middle East. Israel doesn't have rest from her enemies. There's no king from David's line ruling from Jerusalem and no house for the Lord's name. There's no temple in Jerusalem, either. Some in the scholarly world have written volumes spiritualizing these things and saying that Jesus came to redefine or reimagine them through his ministry or death and resurrection. They claim that the ethnic descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob don't really matter anymore because God now has a new people called the church. But we have so much evidence, both biblically and historically, that this is not the way that first-century Jews thought. And this first-century Jewish thought did not change until hundreds of years later when people like Augustine and Constantine came into the picture. We will explore that more in future studies.

The main thing I hope you take away from this is that the Gospel and our hope as Gentile disciples of Jesus today is wrapped up in tangible, earthly promises God has made to and through the Jewish people. God intends to be faithful to those promises, as he spoke them in the Old Testament scriptures. We're looking forward to a genuine day in the future when the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, returns and sets up a kingdom based in Jerusalem, and that kingdom will rule over all the nations. The authors of the New Testament say that Jesus' resurrection provides proof that we can have certainty about these things:

He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. (2 Corinthians 5:5, ESV Bible)

Who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:14, ESV Bible)

When we have certainty about the future, it changes how we live in the present.

I hope now you can see that the Old Testament meant much more to the first-century Jews than we have often imagined. While many parts of the Old Testament point to Jesus, the story's grandeur is much bigger than the simple "Jesus died for your sins so you can go to heaven when you die" message. 

In the next post, we will continue looking at more concepts related to context that will be applicable when studying the Bible.