The Scriptures of Jesus and the Early Church

By Kristen Bennett Marble

Imagine reading the Bible of Jesus, Paul and the early Church and unlocking the Scriptures that formed their faith. How would that experience grow and enrich your relationship with God?

Don't just imagine it! Experience God's transforming presence as you explore “The Scriptures of Jesus and the Early Church.” Often ignored, considered too confusing, or even rejected for its supposed depiction of an angry, wrathful god, the Old Testament is largely absent from our churches and personal faith today. But that absence limits our full knowledge and experience of God.

Make sense of the Old Testament and rediscover the Bible of Jesus and the early Church in this engaging and accessible study. Develop your faith, strengthen your commitment to follow Jesus, and experience the richness of God's entire Word. Throughout 13 chapters, you'll explore lessons like “Reading the Old Testament like Paul” and “Finding Jesus in the Old Testament,” while learning 13 practical Text Tools.

Be transformed and encouraged as you dig into the untapped potential of our Old Testament, and like Johnny Cash you'll declare, “The more I learn, the more excited I get!”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Light Life Publishing
• Release date: Nov 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780893673567

Book preview

Introduction

How would you describe the Old Testament? If we’re honest, we have the proper church answer and then our real answer. The church answer is that the Old Testament is part of our Bible, and is the holy inspired word of God. But, most of our candid responses reveal significantly different answers: the Old Testament is gruesome, filled with killing and bloody sacrifices, and exposes an angry, wrathful God. Or perhaps the Old Testament is absent of grace, foreign, hard to understand, boring, and perhaps even unnecessary.

Take a minute to read Exodus 3:14-15 and Exodus 34:5-7. What do you notice? What jumps out to you about who God is? Last week during Bible study, a group of us read these passages and I was shocked to hear people’s honest reflections. That’s a God I could never satisfy…I don’t understand that God—there’s just no grace…He’s so demanding. I wrestled with their responses all week, wondering what they saw as compared to what I saw. When I read these passages, I see a God who attaches himself and his identity to the flawed Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I see a God who hears his people’s cries, calls up, and sends forth leaders to redeem them from bondage. I see a God who is abundantly gracious and characterized by chesed, which is best described as grace on steroids (according to my Old Testament professor, Dr. Delamarter).

I also hear a God who is filled with compassion, grace, love, and faithfulness. Listen to his words again: The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin (Exodus 34:5-7). Indeed, if you keep reading, we also see a just God who punishes wickedness and flagrant sin—but to three or four generations as compared to the thousands to whom he extends love.

Have you ever tried to drive into the sun wearing dirty sunglasses? It’s about impossible to see. I think sometimes that’s what we do with the Old Testament. It’s like we’re wearing dirty sunglasses that predispose us to only notice the passages that confirm our expectations of a demanding, wrathful, angry, graceless Old Testament god. And that’s unfortunate, because that isn’t how the early church or Jesus read these passages.

Jesus said, If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him (John 14:7). Most of us do know Jesus. We love him, follow him, trust him, and aim to live like him. What if we exchanged our dirty sunglasses for new lenses? What would happen if we took our understanding of Jesus into the Old Testament, knowing that Jesus knew a gracious, loving Father, and found him when reading the Scriptures? What if Jesus’ nature and character guided our reading of Old Testament passages about God? What difference would that make? It should make a difference. Because if we know Jesus, we also know God.

Doing that would be a great place to start. But we cannot stop there. Again, if we’re honest, we have to admit many of us don’t really know what to do with the Old Testament. We could maybe pick out a few good Sunday School stories for kids. We might be able to recite a couple favorite Psalms. But beyond that, we’re not even sure we want to bother. We’re not sure we even like the Old Testament. It’s just easier to skip right ahead to the New Testament. After all, we don’t have the tools for really reading and understanding the text.

If that’s you, take heart. You’re in the right place! This Bible study is designed to give you thirteen essential tools for exploring Old Testament texts. In each chapter we’ll uncover and discuss a new tool that will guide you in reading the Old Testament. You might even come to love it—just like Jesus and Paul!

Do you know the greatest commandments, according to Jesus? Many of us can quote Jesus’ famous words. They may even guide our faith and lives. He said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Matthew 22:37-39). These are powerful words—but do you know how Jesus came up with them? He quoted them—from Deuteronomy and Leviticus in the Old Testament. In fact, a majority of Jesus’ words are based on ideas found in the Old Testament.

Just as Jesus helps us understand God, the Old Testament helps us understand Jesus. By reading and studying the Old Testament, we see the bigger picture of God’s plan for restoring and redeeming his creation—a plan that is being accomplished through Jesus. So, let’s dig into the Old Testament. Along the way, you’ll have opportunities to read Scripture, ask questions, wrestle with texts, and practice new tools. In the chapters you’ll not only learn text tools, you’ll also find a lesson about reading the Old Testament, as well as ten discussion questions. These questions are intended to help you think about the lesson further by discussing and applying the new ideas. While you can certainly go through this study on your own, I’d encourage you to join together with one or two others in this journey. You can encourage and support one another, and you’ll be reading the Bible how it’s always historically been done—in community and as part of a conversation with each other and God.

Before jumping into Chapter One of the study, a great starting place is the short survey found in the Appendix. This survey, titled, What I Really Think about the Old Testament gives you an opportunity to honestly reflect on the ways you read, understand and think about the Old Testament right now. When you take it, go beyond the church answers—be honest! Don’t answer the way you think you should; answer with what you really believe.

Don’t worry—the survey isn’t graded, and there are no right or wrong answers. In fact, you don’t even have to share your answers with anyone, but I’d encourage you to do so. Talking about your answers would be a great starting place for the honest conversations I hope you’ll have as you go through the next thirteen weeks. And if you’re so inclined, I’d love if you would email your survey responses to [e-mail] or take the survey online at http://bit.ly/2tFrkaf. Your responses will remain anonymous, but will be helpful as I think about how to further enhance the conversation and learning about the Old Testament in the church today.

As you dig into this study, you will notice the terms Old Testament, Scriptures, and Israel’s Scriptures used interchangeably. They all refer to what we call the Old Testament—the 39 books from Genesis through Malachi. You might already know that Jesus, Paul, and the other New Testament writers never used the words Old Testament to describe their Scriptures. They simply called them Scriptures (cf. Luke 24:27, Galatians 3:8) or more specifically, the Law, Prophets, and Writings or Psalms (cf. Matthew 5:17, Luke 24:44). Their identification as the Old Testament only came about much later in church history, initiated perhaps by Paul’s references to the new covenant (translated as new testament in the King James Version of the Bible) in his letters to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 11:25, 2 Corinthians 3:6).

Chapter 1: Why do we Need the Old Testament?

Last summer our family moved 650 miles east, from Newton, Kansas to Indianapolis, Indiana. As we packed and prepared for our move, we took advantage of the opportunity to clean, sort, purge, and simplify. We instructed our children to move only the things they truly loved. Well-worn furniture was released from duty. Multiple moving sales were held. Donations were made—so much so that volunteers at the thrift store quickly knew us by name.

Out with the old, in with the new! became our excited mantra. But that mantra had limits. We didn’t get rid of everything. Our huge family table which hosts regular mealtimes, important family meetings, homework, craft projects, and games was loaded onto the moving truck. Our china cabinet which stores our wedding china and special family heirlooms made the move. Bookshelves which house our voluminous library of books unquestionably came with us. Our new house just wouldn’t be a home without many of those items.

Out with the Old?

Out with the old, in with the new! was a good cleaning and purging strategy for our move, but we couldn’t simply get rid of everything old, blindly assuming something new would be better. Many old things held important memories, were part of who we are, and still deserved prominence in our home. Sometimes I think the Out with the old, in with the new idea is hazardously applied to Scripture. If Jesus is all we need, then why does our Bible have so much other stuff in it? Why are there so many books where Jesus’ name is never even mentioned? Maybe you have even wondered why we still have the Old Testament at all. If our entire faith is about Jesus, why is the Old Testament even necessary? And why does it take up two thirds of the overall length? Isn’t that a bit extreme? If it’s old, isn’t time to just focus on the new?

If you have asked these questions, you are not alone. The importance and role of the Old Testament today are commonly questioned. Some churches even claim to be New Testament churches and reject the Old Testament altogether. Others may not be as blatant in their proclamations, but Old Testament Scripture is rarely read, taught, or preached, except for a few messianic prophecies at Christmas and Easter. Alternatively, sometimes the Old Testament is mined for a few applicable nuggets on Christian living, but is otherwise ignored. I have even heard Paul’s proclamation, The new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Corinthians 5:17) quoted by Christians in support of rejecting the Old Testament.

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What would be potentially absent from a New Testament Church that only used the New Testament? What would you miss? How would your understanding of God change if you only had the New Testament?

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Don’t Reject our Bible

This contemporary tendency to set aside the Old Testament would be shocking to early Christians. Immediately following Jesus’ ascension, the first Christ-followers gathered to celebrate his resurrection, to worship God, and to practice the Lord’s Supper. When they gathered, they recited, taught, and heard the Old Testament Scriptures. For these Jewish believers, the Old Testament was unquestionably God’s holy and sacred Word. It was the only text they knew. The Old Testament was the Bible of the early Church. There were no other texts.

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The early Church understood their Christian faith through the Old Testament. Have you experienced this? How so? If not, how might the Old Testament help you understand your faith better?

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In fact, the Old Testament was the only text for the Church for its first twenty years. Paul’s letters weren’t written and circulated until the 50s. These letters helpfully addressed specific problems the fledgling churches faced, but were not immediately considered Scripture. However, because they so obviously relied on the church’s Old Testament, Paul’s letters confirmed the Scriptures’ continued use. In Paul’s letters, the Church learned how the Old Testament’s words formed the foundation of the new faith. They saw Paul modeling how to approach the Old Testament as divinely inspired, authoritative, and open to Christian interpretation.

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What do you think Paul meant by according to the Scriptures in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8?

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How have you understood Paul’s reference to the Scriptures in the past? If you’re like many Christians, you have always assumed he meant the New Testament. How does the reality that he was referring to the Old Testament impact how you read his work?

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Approximately twenty years after Paul’s letters, the first Gospel was written. Most scholars agree that Mark was written first, although the exact order doesn’t particularly matter for our purposes. But imagine that! Imagine starting a new church and only having the Old Testament for the first twenty years. Finally on the church’s twentieth anniversary, you receive a copy of one Gospel account. Twenty years is a long time to operate as a Church without even one Gospel. Many churches today would be lost without their New Testament. But this was the reality of the early Church. The Old Testament was critically important from the very beginning. Why should it be any different today?

In today’s