Is the Old Testament Irrelevant?
Published October 11th, 2005 in Hearing the WordRecently I was at a conference where a church leader who had once been prominent in the pentecostal church and was now moving in emerging church circles, stood up the front and said, “I now speak from the gospels 90% of the time.” While I think all of our teaching and preaching should be firmly grounded in Jesus, I also think that it is vital for discipleship that we take the Bible as a whole. Hence, our theme for Sunday night - Is the Old Testament Irrelevant?
My own bias is pretty evident, given that we’ve spent the last six months looking at poeple form the Old Testament! But I thought it would be good if somebody else tackle the question. Here’s what Owen had to say…
1. The OT lays the foundation for learning how God has been active throughout history. The first chapter of the NT contains mainly OT people, continuing the idea that God is at work right through.
2. The prophecies of the OT point towards what God was doing, working towards the arrival of his son and the reconciliation of people to God.
3. The stories of the people themselves show the realities of the human/God interation. There’s lots of faithful people, but many, many mistakes, misunderstandings and quite a few dummy-spits too!
AS I thought about it this morning, the three things Owen pointed out to us are quite profound, for God is working right now in the same way he was working in the OT. For instance, God is at work as history is written in our time. God is pointing us towards something much better in the future, and that gives us hope. And the thing that keeps us faithful is the telling of our stories, God’s story and how they intersect.
The older I get and the more I learn about it, the more I am simply stunned at how powerful this book really is.
I can see why someone may preach from the New Testament alot more than the Old Testament. The OT is important and for so many reasons, it contains the stories of God and his chosen people, showing us so much of who God is, and how amazing and awesome He is. However the NT shows us the life of Jesus, God incarnate right here on earth, living breathing God as a man. It shows us the way he lived his life and the stories he told to guide us in the right directions. It contains the commands he told us to teach others. In the NT is where the Church begins and there is the reason for the Church to be Jesus witnesses here on earth, to love the people here and go and make more followers of Jesus.
And since the Church isn’t really doing much in the means of doing the things Jesus told us to do then maybe we need to hear them a whole lot more cause we obviously don’t seem to be getting it.
so maybe it is more that in this time we need to get wacked over the head with the NT a bit more than the OT.