There is a dangerous slippage taking place within some elements of the Church. It is a lessening, even a dismissal of the Old Testament. It has been described as too harsh representing a cruel God. Jesus quoted the Old Testament over 70 times. The apostles were not afraid the Old Testament would stall their efforts to introduce the New Covenant. They quoted it over 200 times calling them the oracles of God.
When Jesus was tempted by the devil, the Lord responded to each temptation with a verse from the Old Testament. The Lord was not afraid to represent the same God who administered both covenants. Reading the book of Revelation sounds a lot like many of the Old Testament verses that cause people concern.
During the devil’s temptation of Jesus, the devil asked the Lord to turn stones into bread. Jesus said, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4).
Then to tempt Jesus into testing God, the devil took Him to the highest point of the Temple and told Jesus to jump off and have angels save Him. After the devil misused Scripture to support his temptation, Jesus replied, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the Lord your God.’” (vs. 7).
Finally, the devil took Jesus to the peak of a high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. He told Jesus if He would kneel and worship him, he would give all the kingdoms to Him. Jesus replied, “Get out of here, Satan. For the Scriptures say, ‘You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him’” (vs. 10).
The three quotes Jesus used all came from the book of Deuteronomy not from the yet-to-be-finished canon of the New Testament. If one is a student of God’s Kingdom and understands the way of salvation through Jesus alone, it is not difficult to read the most challenging sections of the Old Testament and place those sections in a time in history where they represent what happened before the Cross.
To reject in part or in total the Old Testament will reduce us to a selective kind of faith where the very verses we may need to confront a temptation from hell have been naively dismissed from our vocabulary. That kind of slippage will take us to places we do not want to go.
Wonderful warning/correction much needed in today’s church culture. Thank you for your insight on this not always popular truth.
I have never heard this teaching before, but I can see it’s very needed in the body of Christ. I never realized what Jesus quoted to Satan was from the book of Deuteronomy.
So very true! The entirety of the bible is God”s word. The old testament leads us into the new testament, the new testament leads us into revelation , revelation leads us into eternity . The bible is not for “cherry picking”. We are either in or not. As the bible tells us lukewarm is unacceptable to God.
Astounding that believers would not see that without the Old Testament we would never know who our Father is. Without the prophets Jesus was just a miracle worker with nothing to back up His existence as The Messiah. The Mercy of God is seen over and over towards the Israelites. If you don’t know the Old Testament you really don’t know the Character and faithfulness of God the Father. I probably read the old more than the new as it backs up everything Jesus and the apostles taught. Without that they were false teachers and Jesus was not the Messiah.