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OLD TESTAMENT BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
“The Theological Value of the Old Testament for the Church Today”
Reality for Missions
Elaine J. Kennedy, February 2006

Confessions of Faith render both Testaments of the Bible as a revelation of God’s reality to man. One such confession states, “I believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and are a revelation of his will to men, and the sufficient and only rule of faith and practice.” Theology and reality did not begin with the New Testament but is rooted in the Old Testament.

REALITY FOR MISSIONS COMES FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT
People desire reality! Is there reality? What is real? How can we know the real? Is God real? How does God define reality? Can reality be understood within culture? Is sin real? Can man have a reality of faith? Has God ever connected with man or made Himself known to man? Can man really know God? Is there truth? Where is the basis of truth? How can we know and study God’s truth? Can this reality be known by all? What is the best method of offering this reality to a multi-cultural, multi-religious world?
The Old Testament gives theological value to the New Testament church age in that it defines reality and what’s most important in life. The Old Testament gives the reality of knowing God, the reality of sin and of man’s personal reality with God. The Old Testament defines holiness necessary for appropriate community, giving the basis of God’s covenant relationship with man so that there can be a Community of people with a reality of faith showing forth God to the ends of the earth. The Old Testament is the basis for the reality of truth expounded in the New Testament that is to be shared to the whole world. This total reality gives the New Testament church the fuel needed for exploding the gospel to the entire world.
Using the Old Testament in explaining these realities to biblically illiterate cultures describe God in the warm cultural setting as a personal God, not cold, calculated theological facts that might elucidate an impersonal God. God’s reality is best learned in story-form, for that is how He gave reality to man. The theological value of the Old Testament for the church today is to use the Old Testament to share the reality of events for the worldwide spread of the gospel. In looking at both Testaments, this paper will address the approach or the mode of dealing with reality events. It will emphasize the use of story-form to share reality with a lost and dying world, thus emphasizing the theme of the song, “I Love to Tell the Story.”

The Old Testament gives Value and Reality in Knowing God
Every tribe has an origin story, but only the Old Testament Bible has a story of man ‘made in God’s image.’ A New Testament trying to reconcile sinful man is a vacuum without the story of man’s true origins. Man can have no reality in knowing God if he is only a blob of atoms. Human race takes on greater value when it is defined within a reality origin, for then there is no one race greater than another race—so that missions is for all peoples. A real God works through man’s reality of existence and a community of believers who know real faith—for the ultimate purpose of making God known to the whole world. The unfolding story of God to people He chooses can reach a world floundering in unreality.
The Old Testament is full of God-personal encounters with man in either extra-ordinary theophanies as Jacob’s vision or sometimes in plain view as Joshua’s view of his Commander. These concrete-reality stories lay the groundwork for the New Testament’s coming of God as His Son, Jesus Christ, entering man’s realm in an incarnation way. God’s works and words prepare people for Jesus’ works and words that come from God. New Testament miracles flow out of the Old Testament accounts as from the same God. In the same way, God’s mercy, grace, and lovingkindness often override His jealousy, wrath and punishment—both are seen in both Testaments.
Reality is important for missions. Missions began in the Old Testament as God’s desire that His name be honored and known through the nation Israel to surrounding nations. God lays down the foundation in the Old Testament for the building of the New Testament. “A solid knowledge and understanding of God only comes by studying the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we meet God and begin to understand not only Who He is but also His ways in the affairs of individuals and nations.”

The Old Testament gives Value in Understanding Man’s Total Depravity and the Reality of Sin

God hates sin! This Old Testament truth gives weight and added meaning when it is seen in real stories in people’s lives. Israel’s depravity as seen by following the pagan gods of fertility (Baal) and the king god and the star god (Amos 5:25) substantiate the reality of sin. Romans 1:23-25 describes sinful man as changing the glory of the incorruptible God into images…and exchanging the truth of God for a lie. The debased mind of Romans 1:28 comes out of the desperately sinful heart of Jeremiah 17:9.
People of the Old Testament stopped up their ears and would not listen to God. Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” I used to wonder what that phrase meant, until I discovered it in the Old Testament. Zechariah 7:11 says the people put their fingers in their ears to keep from hearing. Micah 1:2 said, “Let all the people of the world listen.” Israel became as spiritually rotten as the Gentiles around them, yet God reached into Gentile lives within the Old Testament, as with Rahab and Ruth; so today, God will save some from each group as the message goes to those who will hear.
The Old Testament is poignant with God’s wrath against man when man’s sin creates such a stench that it reaches the nostrils of God. God’s mercy and lovingkindness outweigh His anger and His wrath, but His wrath and jealousy are surely seen in those Old Testament stories, so that when we get to the New Testament, we fully understand what it means to be eternally condemned. Stories of the Old Testament wrath of God relate realistically to the New Testament wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men (Romans 1:18).

The Old Testament gives Value in Understanding God’s Dealings with Mankind— Personal Reality

The Old Testament stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David point to a God who uses a covenant relationship and election in his dealing with mankind. God is personally involved in the lives of those He calls, meaning that God is also personally involved in our lives and in the lives of the New Testament saints.
I’m not sure that a “developed theological view” would give greater understanding than Job had, for instance. Job looked for a bodily resurrection! That entailed great future understanding. God gave personal reality to man throughout all of human history. Adam and Moses experienced God’s presence walking and talking with them sometimes in bodily facial form. Now in New Testament times, we are confronted with a human Christ as the express image of God. Theology is ‘developed’ as we think we see more clearly from our end of the tunnel because more proof appears not because more theology appears, but all ‘developed theology’ is dependent on God’s faithfulness and His covenant promises to mankind.
The Ten Commandments is one example of God’s dealings with mankind throughout history. These laws were not suddenly enacted when God gave tablets of stone to Moses, because similar laws can be found in society earlier than the time of Moses, such as the Hammurabi Code, something I remember from my Ancient History college classes. The Ten Commandments are perpetually binding laws to all nations to all generations that are sourced from Creation, from a Law-giving righteous and just God. Law binds man to God, but due to sin man is incapable of keeping this covenant. Jesus was capable of keeping the Law, so released man from the Law and bound him to God; only faith in God is needed for salvation. To try to teach redemption and justification in the New Testament without the Old Testament would be mere words without meaning.
Man’s alienation from God necessitates a method of accessibility to God if there is to be personal reality with a living God. Even at the time of Moses, God desired to draw near to each individual but the people feared a fiery God, so God established the priests as mediators. Later, prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel had their lives dramatically changed when they faced a personal God. Jesus, by taking the punishment of hell for us, faced God on our behalf and becomes the best possible Mediator to make possible man’s access to God. While this may appear to be a ‘process,’ and an unfolding of theology, the gut-origin of God being personal with man was always personal and individual. It appeared to be ‘community’ with the nation Israel, yet each individual family had the responsibility to bring the sin-offering to the priest. God’s salvation was and is always personal; the ‘community’ is a gathering together of saved people.
Is the Old Testament God-centered and the New Testament Christocentric? Or are both God-centered with the emphasis of the historical Christ seen as God in the New Testament? Is the Old Testament only preparation for the New Testament Messiah, or are both Testaments about God, either as Jehovah or as Christ (Jehovah in human flesh)? Theology’s ‘development’ is more about the events of salvation rather than its method. The method of salvation is always faith, but the events stretch from animal skins to cover Adam and Eve to an annual atonement offering to a once-for-all offering of God’s Son.

The Old Testament gives Value in Understanding Community Worship—
Reality of Faith

Earliest worship occurred in families, and the earliest Old Testament name for God (Elohim) first assumed a family name—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Old Testament saints were saved by faith in the promise of God’s redemption—the promise that came from Genesis 3:15. Justification and redemption is perhaps the greatest theological development in the whole Bible, but it always involved the reality of faith, with those who held faith gathering together for worship. Moses drew a nation together based on God’s Redemption for Israel out of Egypt, and New Testament community worship is also based on God’s redemption. Many New Testament ideas for worship come from this one nation’s community worship. Our idea of Psalms and singing and instruments come from David’s community worship for the Nation Israel.
The Post-Exilic community returned to complete a temple and for worship. “Certainly, this non-political, spiritual identity anticipated the New Testament’s view of the New Israel, the Church, which transcends ethnic, national, and geographic barriers.” I had never before understood the significance that this renewed temple gave not just to Israel but also to the New Testament. Usually, we are taught to see this Temple merely as a fulfillment of Christ entering the Temple that the post-exilic community built. But the Ezra-Nehemiah Temple and Torah signaled a renewed desire for all to worship God even without a temple in future fulfillment, and that in Christ, God would preserve His own precious people in an “ultimate, eternal fruition.” This reality of faith extends to all generations, to all people-groups, and to all language-groups. Today, we worship with the sense that God will preserve us, just as He proved that in a tangible way in story form in previous Old Testament generations. We do not worship God in a vacuum but in an overarching view of His mercy, love and grace that reaches out the same today as yesterday.
God’s dealings with mankind were for all the nations even as He worked with one specific group. When Israel failed to honor God’s name, God sought for a new people-group, a new grafting-in of Gentiles to make His name great among the nations. From the days of the Early Church in the Book of Acts to people like Cornelius and the pagan Gentiles who became believers, as such were some of you, God began building His Church. This New Testament new mystery is not in isolation from the reality of the Old Testament, as both are rooted in honoring God’s Name, and in the end of the Church-age, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is LORD to the glory of God the Father, a truth which is also rooted in the Old Testament (Isaiah 45:23; Romans 14:11).

The Old Testament gives Doctrinal and Illustrative Basis for New Testament Truths Reality of Truth

“Many theological relations between the testaments are transmitted through quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament.” Since there are over a thousand quotes or allusions in the New Testament to the Old Testament, we cannot possibly review all the theological implications for the church today, but we should take note that “Scripture as used in the New Testament conceives of the Old Testament as a unitary whole.” One fulfilled prophecy that crosses over between Israel and the church is the Zechariah 13:7 quotation by Christ in Mark 14:27 since Christ is the Shepherd of both Israel and of the Church—in separate distinctive ways. The Good Shepherd also contrasts the shepherds of Ezekiel 34.
The preaching of the Apostles in the Book of Acts referred to Abraham, Moses and David. The Epistles quote from prophet’s messages in regard to doctrines of faith. The subject of the election of grace and a remnant has reference to the many who did not bow to Baal, which conjures up the whole story of Elijah at Mount Carmel against the prophets of Baal. The doctrine of faith from Romans 4 and Galatians 3:6-9 is referenced back to Abraham. Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38 and following are rooted in Genesis 15:6 and Habakkuk 2:4.
Holiness versus paganism in 1 Corinthians 8 is sourced from Israel’s idolatry and the theme of holiness in the Book of Leviticus. Fear of ritualism in the Old Testament worship sacrificial system could happen in the New Testament church in the traditions of baptism and communion. God’s desire is not for sacrifice, but for obedience; one must keep the reality of God prominent in life and in worship. Our bodies as the Temple of the living God (from Romans 21:1 and 2 Corinthians 6:16) is pregnant with meaning as it relates to the Old Testament temple and holiness from the place where God dwells. The doctrine of the Resurrection from 1 Corinthians 15 is not a new doctrine as it was mentioned by Job and considered by Abraham. Christ as the Head of His church in the New Testament is rooted in God’s Theocracy ruling in the Old Testament. The earthly ruler, whether of the nation or of the church, is to keep God centered as the King. A demanding domineering pastor steals control from God! Concerning prophecy, any New Testament mention of a kingdom seems to be rooted in David’s earthly kingdom (Ezekiel 34:23).

Prophetic Fulfillments Need to be Broad Enough to Encompass the Whole World

Chinese people want to know how their nation fits into ‘end time’ events just as America wonders, so prophetic fulfillments need to be broad enough to encompass the whole world. In Ezekiel 20:9, 14, 22and 44, we see that God honored His own Name among the surrounding nations by treating His own people, the Israelites, mercifully. God promised in the Old Testament that He would re-gather His people Israel, even after they were intermarried among other nations, and even after they were lost among the mountains and valleys of all nations of the earth (Jeremiah 31, especially verse 10).
The New Testament’s theme of the gospel among the Gentiles in all the nations will find God’s people! One wonders if the greater number of tribal groups is not some of the hidden Israelite groupings of those scattered peoples, because God will find them and bring them to Himself, as they were scattered everywhere. Israel’s return will display God’s holiness for all the nations to see (Ezekiel 39:27). Since God’s holy reputation is at stake, Israel will return to the land because it is God’s land and God will pour out His Spirit on the people of Israel (Ezekiel 39:29) because God is furious that Israel suffered shame before the surrounding nations (Ezekiel 36:6).
Through Abraham, all other families will be blest (Genesis 12:3) as Gentiles too will turn to God, for God feels sorry for the spiritual darkness of all people (Jonah 4:11). Jew and Gentile are together blessed even as God blesses each separately; God sees the whole picture while theologians remain divided over the distinctions. God will gather the remnant (Micah 2:12) while He also will pour out His Spirit upon all people (Joel 2:28), and God is able to do both at the same time. Kaiser’s model is a whole picture of prophetic fulfillments even while we see it as double or multiple, yet God sees it as one. God has one plan and will complete it, but He gives that plan through events of history. Theologians tinker with the parts; God has and sees the whole and gives it to man in the way that man can understand it—in parts, in stages, in historical stories. As stated by Paul Karleen, “we cannot discover the broad scheme except through the individual parts, and we should review our understanding of the separate pieces in light of the whole.”
One example of the whole picture as seen in distinctions is the New Covenant. Old Testament authors intended the New Covenant to be for Israel; it is promised for Israel—that God would give them a new heart. In the New Testament, God gives man that new heart. The author of the Book of Hebrews intended the New Covenant to be for the Church-age as begun by Christ in the Upper Room. This New Testament truth is an Old Testament promise for an erring nation, for through a new heart, Israel will return—again, a distinction for theologians to debate but possibly one of God’s whole pictures.
Another example of the whole picture as seen in distinctions is the victory of Christ over Satan. Prophets like Elijah experienced victory over pagan gods in the Old Testament. Christ experienced victory over sin and Satan on the cross. When Satan is bound for a thousand years, there will be victory in Christ’s regal reign on the earth. But the final victory over Satan is when he is thrown into the Lake of Fire.
One understanding that we must have is that the New Testament fulfillments of Old Testament promises do not override the literal fulfillment as mentioned by Bruce K. Waltke. As God views the whole, the kingdom can have both a literal and a spiritual fulfillment. Mt. Zion can refer to a literal place on earth, and for God not to resume ownership of Jerusalem as a place would be for His name to continue to be dishonored among the nations. Yet at the same time, God can establish a spiritual kingdom within the hearts of man—and God can (and will) bring the two together in a future time and place. In the process of that spiritual kingdom being established, there will also be a literal kingdom established on Mt. Zion when Jesus returns to that specific location in Palestine. God can work with two groups of people simultaneously while theologians seem to have difficulty processing all details together as a whole. Man wants to redefine details because his mind is too limited to processing all the details into a whole. If theologians would let God be God in the outworking of future events, they could understand that God wants man’s spiritual heart and God also wants the earth as His and that He can work out both in His best way and timing.
At the end of chronological teaching of the Bible to a young Chinese couple, the husband asked, “Why doesn’t God put His heaven-kingdom in place immediately; why have a millennium kingdom with Satan bound followed by another war of nations followed by the New Heavens and a New Earth; why not go immediately into the New Earth?” Because we had shared a historical theological development of the Old Testament, we counter-asked Jack, “Why didn’t God send His Son immediately to Adam and Eve; why go through generations of time?” He got the point. The theme of God dealing with man in man’s time frame of a natural, historical setting will bear out in prophecy just as it was God’s way from the beginning of sin. The Old Testament gives meaning to the New Testament. That’s why I Love to Tell the Story!

THE WHOLE BIBLE AND MODERN-DAY HISTORY RELATE GOD’S REALITY TO DIFFERENT CULTURE GROUPS AND TO DIFFERING RELIGIOUS GROUPS

The beauty of the Old Testament is that it speaks through many different cultures in expressing the reality of God, the reality of sin and the reality of a personal faith relationship with God. Hence, in our mission’s endeavors, we can successfully use the Old Testament stories to relate God’s reality to different culture groups and to differing religious groups. While the Old Testament emphasized a particular place for Community Worship, the Post-Exile community reached into another culture and across to the New Testament doctrine of the Church in another culture.
The Old Testament gives the foundation for the building of the New Testament relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus is not a different God; He IS the same Jehovah-God. True Biblical theology will not differentiate between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament; they are one and the same! Thus, the God-reality is completed in the New Testament by God invading human history. God has always had an interest in man and in man’s history, especially in wanting man to honor His name above all names. The theme of both Testaments and the way to God is through faith. Both the Old and New Testaments emphasize works corresponding with faith, in obeying the Commandments of God. The New Testament does not just fulfill the Old Testament; the connection is much more complex than that! Both Testaments give a reality of truth.
In the theology of the Sovereignty of God, God raises up nations with a heart for missions to take His honored Name to other people groups. When man defies and rebels against God so that the observing world is hindered in knowing God, then God destroys or removes the ‘candlestick’ of influence of that community—just as Judah and Israel were taken captive, and churches of the Book of Revelation were removed for their lack of light in the world.
The Philippines is taking up the torch of reaching Asia for Christ. Communism sought to snuff God out of Asia, to cause the university student to question God’s reality. That reality is best re-affirmed first through the Old Testament to help one see the reality of God, the reality of sin, the reality of faith. Since that reality is best understood in the form of stories, the Old Testament is the best place to begin to bring understanding to the New Testament’s mention of faith. One cannot understand who Jesus is without first understanding the Old Testament origin of all things, or else Jesus can become another god-attachment to a culture’s many other gods. The theology of the Old Testament is needed for missions and for the on-going ministry of the Church today.
Reality for man is seen in stories, in time events, in culture, in happenings, because man is time-bound. Thus, as missionaries, we should give salvation truths to man in those same story-realities and not just in theological doctrinal statements. All of the sermons in the New Testament—by Stephen, Peter, and Paul—refer back to the Old Testament to tell God’s story of salvation. Paul’s message on Mars’ Hill refers back to the Creation story even though it skips the Jewish accounts because his audience is non-Jewish. Jesus Himself began with Moses and the Prophets to explain Himself and His special salvation for mankind (Luke 24:27). The salvation message is hinged upon a story of time and events in history to time-bound man.
To desire other nations to share God’s reality, this story is one to tell to the next generation. “May your ways be known throughout the earth, your saving power among people everywhere. May the nations praise you, O God. Yes, may all the nations praise you. Let the whole world sing for joy, because you govern the nations with justice and guide the people of the whole world.” (Psalm 67:2-4, New Living Translation) The future prophetic scene is already a reality of truth when viewed in the Book of Revelation, “And then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. They sang: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power belong to the one sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.’” (Revelation 5:13, NLT) Yes, I love to tell the story—the story of reality!

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arthur, Kay. Precept Upon Precept: A Divided Heart...A Divided Nation, Chattanooga: Precept Ministries International, 2005.

Bock, Darrell L. “Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament in the New.” Bibliotheca Sacra Volume 142:567. Dallas Theological Seminary. July 1985; 2002.

Karleen, Paul S. The Handbook to Bible Study:With a Guide to the Scofield Study System. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987 (electronic version).

LaSor, William Sanford and David Allen Hubbart and Wm. Frederic Bush. Old Testament Survey, 2nd edition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982, 1996. Pp.563-573.

“New Living Translation, NLT.” Holy Bible, Worldwide Edition. Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 2005.

“The Third Confession of Faith of the Armenian Evangelical Church.” (July 1, 1846) Constantinople, Turkey: Internet Research on Confessions of Faith, accessed January 2006.

Waltke, Bruce K. “Is it Right to Read the New Testament into the Old?” Christianity Today (September 2, 1983): 77. Quoted in Darrell L. Bock. “Evangelicals and the Use of the Old Testament in the New.” Bibliotheca Sacra 142:567 (July 85): 220

Warfield, Benjamin B. The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964. Pp. 234-5 and 238. Quoted in Paul S. Karleen. The Handbook to Bible Study. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994 (electronic version, 1987).