Christians and the Old Testament

Christians and the Old Testament
By: Dr. Danny Purvis

“I can’t wait to dig into all 34 chapters of Deuteronomy.” I don’t know about you, but in my 40 years of being a Christian, I have never heard one Believer make that statement. Don’t get me wrong…I’m sure it has happened…I’m just saying I personally have never heard it. I have also ever heard anyone say that their favorite section of Scripture is the Minor Prophets. Maybe it’s the name. I mean, are we really going to place a tremendous amount of weight on a group of people designated as “minor”? A collection of books written by people whose names we struggle even to pronounce correctly? Then there is Ecclesiastes. I am thoroughly convinced 99% of Christians have no idea what that book is even about. Again, maybe it’s the name. Point is, for the most part, Christians have a complicated relationship with the Old Testament.

Don’t get me wrong. We certainly have some OT events and people that are near and dear to our hearts. Moses, Abraham, David, Solomon, Esther, Ruth, Jacob, Isaac, and Samson. In general, I think a large number of Believers could converse intelligently about most of those folks and the events that they encountered. But there are roughly 2,000 people named in the OT. Of the 66 books that make up the Bible, the OT contains 39. That’s nearly 60% of the entire Bible (I Googled that). And as much as we love the New Testament and spend most of our time there, by relegating the OT to the back burner, we are missing out on a lot. Oh, we’ll say put loud that we love and embrace both the OT and NT as God’s Word…we mostly just hang out in the NT. Frankly, many people believe the OT is, frankly, boring. Or we cling to the absolutely fallacious idea that the OT is about judgement and the NT is about grace…and we would much rather read about grace than judgement. That is a gross oversimplification.

Both the OT and the NT contain elements grace and judgement. If I had to oversimplify in a more correct way, I will say this. If there is one overarching message portrayed in the OT (but certainly not the only message) it would be this: Sin is bad. It is really, really, really, bad. And God wants us to see how bad it really is. And we? We desperately need to understand how bad sin is. Because of we don’t, it is impossible to be saved. Not unlikely…impossible. God uses His OT, in part, to give us example after example of the destructive nature of sin. He uses 39 books to illustrate this vital construct to us over and over and over again. And then, once He does that, He introduces us to Jesus Who is the answer to that sin. God wants us to see that sin is not simply behavior, but our very nature. We are enslaved to us. In fact, In Romans 3 where Paul writes out God’s indictment on the whole of humanity (Romans 3:9-20), he quotes the OT (mostly Psalms and Isaiah).

But the criticism of the OT that bothers me more than anything is when people maintain that there is no grace in the OT. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there are moments of grace so precious and so reassuring that they easily mesh with those moments we are so familiar with in the NT. God choosing Abraham to be the “father of many nations” when at the time Abraham was a pagan idol worshiper. God choosing not only to spare a pagan prostitute named Rahab but to actually place her in the biological lineage of Jesus Himself. He extended grace to Samson despite his many failures. Ruth’s redemption at the hands of Boaz is a physical example of the redemption offered to us when we come to faith in Christ. But there is a moment in the OT that outshines them all. And it involves a man that easily 90% of Christians have never heard of (and if they have, they don’t his story). That man’s name was Mephibosheth.

You might be saying to yourself: See, that proves my point. I can’t even pronounce this guy’s name…I don’t know what book he’s in…and all of that together makes me believe it’s just another boing OT story that has nothing to do with me. Well, if you’re interested (and you should be because it has everything to do with you), you can find this event in 2 Samuel, chapter 9. On the surface it seems to be a feel-good story of David’s kindness. In fact, the title of that chapter in many Bible is: David’s kindness to Mephibosheth. That title doesn’t explain it by half. Mephibosheth was Jonathan’s son. Jonathan was King Saul’s son. So, even though David had become king, Mephibosheth had a legitimate claim to the throne according the rules of succession. And in those days, when a different king came into power and realized there were those still alive who could have a claim…well…I guess you know what would happen to them. On top of this, Mephibosheth was also disabled. When Saul and Jonathan were killed in battle, unrest was sure to follow. So, in her haste to get the child out of harm’s way, Mephibosheth’s nurse dropped him and the injury caused a permanent disability to his feet. In the words of the Scripture, Mephibosheth had become crippled.

One day Mephibosheth was called to go before David. I’m sure he saw the handwriting on the wall. Davis was king. Mephibosheth was descendent from the previous king. He was a loose end that David was finally getting around to cutting off. He was an enemy to David simply because of his birth. We know he was terrified because God’s Word tells us that he fell on his face before David and paid homage to him and because David told him not to be afraid. But instead of killing him, David did something else. He gave back all of the property that belonged to Mephibosheth’s grandfather, Saul. He invited Mephibosheth to stay in David’s home and specifically told him: “You shall eat at my table always” (2 Samuel 9:7b). David brought him into his home and treated him as his family. You might think…cool story. Good for David. Good for Mephibosheth. But consider more closely.

This event, roughly 1,000 years before Jesus was born, is a direct depiction of the salvation that Christ brings us. Like Mephibosheth, we were enemies of God. Like David, God had every right to treat us as enemies. Like Mephibosheth we are crippled…crippled by our sin and our disobedience. Like David, Christ showed grace to us and invites us to live our lives both here and in heaven as His children. This event is one of, if not the best pictures of God’s love, mercy, forgiveness and grace in all of Scripture. Tucked away in one chapter of an OT book that a majority of Christians will probably never read.

I leave you with this. You should try to spend some time…a lot of time…in the OT. There are some truly amazing things in there.

-Dr. Danny Purvis