Jesus in the Old Testament
You’ll be shocked to learn this, but recently, there was a bit of a dust-up on social media. I could hardly believe it myself. This particular fight was over the Biblical interpretation of the Old Testament. The man who kicked off the kerfuffle wrote, “We cannot read the OT and point to Christ at will. We must only do so when we have clear proof that the text is pointing to or ultimately fulfilled in Christ lest we are guilty of gross allegory.” I am opposed to gross allegory, but I’m not opposed to pointing to Christ. I would have wholeheartedly agreed with that statement once upon a time, but as my Grandpa used to say, “I could be wrong. I was wrong once before.”
I don’t know what Moses knew or didn’t know other than what he wrote. I can’t ask him how much he knew about the types and the shadows. I can’t bring King David down to HQ and interrogate him under the bright lights, pounding my fist on the table, asking, “What did you know and when did you know it!” All we have is what they wrote. But I do know that Jesus and the Apostles read the Old Testament in light of Christ’s redemptive work. All Scriptures point and lead to Christ (Luke 24:27; John 6:39). I don’t make up “gross allegory,” nor do I try to read Christ back into the Old Testament. I now have a firm conviction to read the Scriptures as our Lord and the Apostles understood and taught the Scriptures, that God designed the prior revelation of the Old Testament to point to and teach of Christ.
I probably wouldn’t have thought much about it without my Wednesday night series of messages. I have been preaching a series on Psalms 22, 23, and 24 (all are welcome to come out to Buffalo Valley!), a trilogy of Messianic Psalms. Curiosity got the better of me, and I went to sermonaudio.com and looked for some sermons by some of the more famous men who hold that position, looking to see if they had ever preached from Psalm 23. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find sermons on that Psalm from any of the men I was looking for. In fact, on their site, there were not many sermons from the Old Testament, which was interesting and sad. I’m thankful that these men wouldn’t preach a Christless sermon and that they were convinced to preach the gospel. But I would rather follow the Apostle’s method than follow, well, who would I follow? Must I read commentaries to understand what they said David was thinking before I can understand? Must I read the Old Testament like I’m in the Old Covenant? Is it really being faithful to the message of the Old Testament if you can’t go from there to Christ? If your system of hermeneutics prevents you from preaching from the Old Testament, the Bible of Jesus, and the Apostles, then you should probably rethink your methodology.
