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October 15 - October 16, 2025
the same person who was born as Jesus two thousand years ago was also at work in the Old Testament before then.
For years, I’d been asking myself and anyone who would listen, “What’s the Old Testament all about?” The Author, the divine Author behind the human authors, had already given the answer to similarly confused disciples about two thousand years ago. Jesus told them the Old Testament was all about Him.
“We do not start at Genesis 1 and work our way forward until we discover where it is all leading. Rather we first come to Christ, and he directs us to study the Old Testament in the light of the gospel. The gospel will interpret the Old Testament by showing us its goal and meaning.”
In other words, the whole Old Testament was about Him, specifically His sufferings and His glory.
Right from the start He presented Himself not as a complete contrast to the Old Testament but as its climax and fulfillment.
Then, the clincher . . . from Jesus Himself: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. . . . For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.”11 “The Old Testament scriptures testify of Me . . . Moses wrote about Me . . . Believing Moses’ teaching is the same as believing Me.”
Peter then tied the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles together. The same “things” that were predicted, studied, and partly understood by the prophets are now “reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.” The prophets ministered the same “things” that the apostles “now reported.” The Old Testament “things” and the New Testament “reports” were identical in substance.
But Paul was not looking back at the Sinai covenant and portraying it as a legalistic bondage. He was looking at the way most Jews of his day had misunderstood the originally gracious Sinai covenant and perverted it into a covenant of works, resulting in bondage.
First, the Sinai covenant painted pictures of grace. The moral law of Exodus 20 was preceded by the grace of the Passover lamb,
Second, the Sinai covenant is set in the context of grace. Exodus 19:4–5 sets forth all God had done in delivering Israel from Egypt as the basis for the divine “therefore obey”:
The law was given to people whom God had already redeemed. . . . Grace comes before the law. There are eighteen chapters of salvation before we get to Sinai and the Ten Commandments. . . . I stress this because the idea that . . . in the OT salvation was by obeying the law, whereas in the NT it is by grace, is a terrible distortion of Scripture.
Third, the Sinai covenant points to our need of grace. In Galatians 3, Paul argued strongly that the law was not intended to disannul or cancel the promise of grace.11 He began by asserting that the gospel of Abraham was a gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus.12 But he then went on to prove that the gospel of Moses was also a gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus: “And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect.”
Fourth, the Sinai covenant shows how we are to respond to grace.
“Obedience is the only right response to having been saved, and the way to enjoy the fruits of redemption, not to earn them.”22 The Sinai covenant then, rightly understood, was a revelation of grace. Or to put it another way, the gospel of Abraham was the gospel of Moses. And both were the gospel of Jesus.
When Paul attacked the Sinai covenant, he was not attacking it as it was designed by God, but as it had been twisted and abused by the Jews.
As Augustine put it, “If the Spirit of grace is absent, the law is present only to accuse and kill us.”
The Old Testament Scriptures are intelligible only when understood as predicting and prefiguring Christ. . . . The knowledge of Christ, as a matter of fact and as a matter of course, removes the veil from the Old Testament. . . . The main idea of the whole context is, that the recognition of Jesus Christ as Lord, or Jehovah, is the key to the Old Testament. It opens all its mysteries, or, to use the figure of the apostle, it removes the veil that hid from the Jews the true meaning of their own Scriptures. As soon as they turn to the Lord, i.e., as soon as they recognize Jesus Christ as their
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three types of Old Testament law—moral, ceremonial, and civil—and
God gave His moral law to our first parents, Adam and Eve. Although they rejected God’s law by sinning, traces of it remain imprinted on every human conscience.2 God also gave a summary of the moral law at Mount Sinai. Although it was given first to the nation of Israel, and some of its applications were specific to Israel, the ten basic moral principles were to be a permanent moral code for all people at all times. As the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it: “The moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof.”
Although permanent moral principles and duties were revealed in the ceremonial laws (for example, the principle of holy worship and the duty of preparing for worship by holy living), the actual ceremonies themselves were abolished when Jesus replaced the tabernacle and the temple with Himself.
The civil law contained precepts and penalties that governed Israel’s society. Many of these laws were given to protect and preserve Israel from threats to its existence, both from within and from without, until the Messiah came forth from it.
Speaking of Old Testament Israel, the Westminster Confession states, “To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.”
the law predicts God’s intention to restore order to His world, to cleanse it from defilement, and to restore its inhabitants to communion with Him. In so doing, it reveals Christ’s beautiful character.
All the Old Testament covenants consistently present a God who seeks relationship with fallen sinners. The new covenant promises also have relationship at their very core. Jeremiah conveyed God’s words: “I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.”50 Jesus was the fulfillment of this covenant promise.51 He is Immanuel, “God with us.”52 He brings His people into a saving relationship with God.
The Proverbs don’t just land in the middle of the Old Testament like some unexpected aliens from outer space. No, they grow out of Exodus 20. They take the general principles of God’s Law, the Ten Commandments, and give them eyes, ears, hands, and feet. The Law comes alive in the Proverbs as we see what obedience to the Law looks like in daily life—in the home, in business, in relationships, and so on. They flesh out the general principles of the Law in the specifics of everyday life, preparing the way for the literal fleshing out of God’s law in Jesus’ earthly life. That relationship between
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• We sing to Jesus with the Psalms. • We sing of Jesus in the Psalms. • We sing with Jesus in the Psalms.
What insight the book of Psalms gives us into Jesus’ spiritual life! What a privilege that we can sing Jesus’ hymns from His own hymnbook! As His body, we can sing the Psalms with Jesus, our Head. He is our Song Leader. Pastor Michael Lefebvre, who wrote a book on the Psalms, put it like this: Many modern hymns are written to Jesus, or are written about Jesus. The Psalms also include portions addressed to Christ and many lines about him. But in all the Psalms (and only in the Psalms) we have words of Christ to sing with him. Finding Jesus in the Psalms is not simply about the prophecies of his
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HE IS EVERYTHING TO ME (1:1–17) He is beautiful, but I am damaged. He is generous in praise and gifts. He refreshes me. He returns my love. He enriches my life. A TASTE OF HEAVEN ON EARTH (2:1–17) Love is beautiful/fragrant. Love nourishes. Love is patient and sensitive. Love is enthusiastic. Love invites. Love is bashful. Love is tender. Love is possessive. Love is imperfect on earth. HE IS ALL-OVER LOVELY (5:10–16) He is outstanding. He is noble and royal. He is tender. He is fragrant. He is rich. He is strong and solid. He is authoritative. He is affectionate. LOVE WINS (8:5–14) Love
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