An increasing number of Christians have dismissed the Old Testament as irrelevant. Some in their dismissal have said it represents a cruel God, not the God of compassion. Those dismissals are very dangerous assumptions. As Scripture tells us our God does not change, “For I, the Lord, do not change” (Malachi 3:6). Only the way of salvation offered in Jesus and expressed in the New Testament has changed. Jesus did once and for all time what the sacrifice of animals could never accomplish. Jesus the One who is that new way, quoted the Old Testament scripture without qualification.
The Old Testament has great value in many ways. One of those ways is being used as a template to lay over the historical interpretation of human nature, the leadership of nations, and how people interact with each other. We can use the Old Testament template to interpret the present and forecast the future. By laying that template over any point in time we can predict what will take place because it has happened repeatedly in history.
When we are seeking to understand the behavior of people, nations, and their rulers, and what will be the outcome of their choices, the Old Testament is of great value when it is applied as a template to any time in history. It will reveal to us what will transpire because human nature has not changed over time, and neither have the consequences people and nations will suffer because they turned away from God. It is in that unchanging human nature that we bring the Gospel message – a message that offers the only kind of change that will last.
Amen!
He has a plan and will not be stopped by the failure of his servants, or their temptation, or their pride……
[Dan 4:34-35 ESV] At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”
Ecclesiastes 1:9 explains I extremely well.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
I am shocked, dismayed and stunned. Irrelevant? Jesus said you don’t know what God said and you don’t know how God works. Those who believe God is cruel, walk in darkness. Jesus asked Nicodemus, you are a teacher of Israel and you don’t know these basics? I