Understanding the Old Testament: The Backstory to Jesus

Because there's so much confusion when it comes to the Old Testament. There's so much confusion. You're like, okay, well, so what's that got to do with anything? Because it affects. It affects so much. It affects your understanding of who Jesus is and your approach to Jesus and what Jesus came to do. And it will impact how you see what God is doing in your own life. So in this series, we want to clarify some things, better understand some things as it relates to the Old Testament. And I believe it's going to inspire you. [00:37:52] (27 seconds)

The Old Testament is the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures. Furthermore, the Old Testament is a mixture of literary forms. Most of it is history. History, basically a narrative. This is what happened. And a lot of it, though, is poetry. And maybe you didn't realize that. We're going to see some of that in the next few weeks. Like, this is poetry. Large chunks of it is poetry. Not kind of poetry, you know, roses are reds, violets are blue, Jesus is a Tar Heel fan too, stuff like that. [00:39:29] (33 seconds)

There's a lot of prophecy. Towards the end of the Old Testament, lots of prophecy. By, you know, the prophets. The Old Testament prophets, you'll hear us refer to them. Prophecy is predicting future events. Or foreshadowing, to use a movie term. It's foreshadowing. Oh, that's foreshadowing. Oh, that's going to come back. And, you know, oh, we'll see that again. Kind of thing. And so there's a lot of that. In fact, scholars tell us, this is interesting, a little side note. Scholars tell us that there are no less than 300, maybe as many as 500 prophecies in the Old Testament that Jesus fulfills himself in the New. [00:40:24] (37 seconds)

The main story is summarized when God sends his final king, Jesus, which by the way, is God himself. That's a brain buster right there. That Jesus is God in flesh and bone and blood. God came himself to earth in the person of Jesus. And so God sends Jesus, his final king to earth to save us. Because remember, that's what the, that's what the, the backstory showed us. We need a savior. Okay. Well, Jesus is that savior. He came to save us and set up and establish a kingdom that he's in the process of even now doing that where he will reign forever. [00:44:52] (39 seconds)

The Old Testament is a discussion and a playing out and a chronicling of the Old Covenant. It's another word you will hear us use, the Old Covenant. A covenant is an agreement. That's what it is. We don't use that word a lot. It's an agreement. It's an agreement that God made with Israel. Yeah, there you go. And this covenant theme is this arrangement, this agreement. This agreement between God and Israel. God says, if you, then I. If you do this, then I will do this. If you don't do this, then this will happen, this will happen, that won't happen, this is what you can expect. [00:47:39] (39 seconds)

And the theme of the New Covenant found in the New Testament, which is the main story, is this. Where in the old and in the back story, God says, if you, then I, in the main story, the New Testament, the New Covenant, the agreement that God made with the world, God sends Jesus. And Jesus says, basically, I've done everything that needs to be done to connect a sinful man with a holy God. I've done it all. I've accomplished. I completed the Old Covenant in myself. I have fulfilled it. I have fulfilled it and completed it. And I've done everything that needs to be done because mankind couldn't do it. Humankind couldn't pull it off. So all I'm asking you to do now is trust me. I got you. [00:49:22] (44 seconds)

In the Old Covenant, in the Old Testament, in the backstory, in that previous arrangement that God made that we could not keep up our own end of the deal, in that previous arrangement, in order for your sins to be forgiven and for you to worship God, you had to bring a sacrifice every single time. Can you imagine what that would look like today? Can you imagine how nasty, how gross, how inconvenient? I mean, to show up to church. I mean, you finally got everybody in the car and we're barely going to be on time and you get five minutes down the road. Did you bring the sheep? I thought you got the sheep. Oh, this is going to be bad. [00:54:39] (42 seconds)

When we understand that the old testament is the backstory for the main story oh it just helps so much clear up confusion avoid mixing things up helps us better understand and appreciate what jesus came to do then and what he's still doing today and what he invites us into it helps us better understand his work in our lives believe it or not the backstory you're going to figure this out and probably by the end of our next next week that the backstory really is our story you're going to see yourself you're going to find yourself in this narrative and that's part of the beauty of how it mirrors our own individual journey [01:06:07] (51 seconds)