Beginning with Genesis, the Old Testament is comprised of thirty-nine books written in Aramaic and Hebrew over the span of approximately 1,000 years. While God declares in his Word that he is sovereign over all of humanity (Isaiah 45:22–24), Genesis through Malachi is the story of his relationship with the people of Israel.
The Old Testament is a cautionary tale. But it is a cautionary tale filled with hope. It is a record of God’s covenant relationship with a particular people through whom he would reveal himself to all of humankind. It is story of humanity’s struggle to choose faithfulness to God. Our desperate need for a redeemer is woven through every covenant, every sacrifice, every generation. It is an epic story, and in weeks two, three, and four, we’re going to do a deeper dive into the books of the Old Testament. Before we get there, let’s look at a big picture overview of the first thirty-nine books of the Bible:
Creation
(Genesis 1 and 2) “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth . . . Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . . .’ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:1, 26, 31).
Catastrophe
(Genesis 3) Humanity rejected God. Adam and Eve questioned God’s love for them; they questioned his goodness. God gave them everything they would need for a full life in fellowship with him, but they believed the lie of the enemy when he suggested God was a cosmic killjoy. Stained by sin, humanity could no longer have fellowship with God.
Covenant
God made a covenant, or an unbreakable promise, with Abraham to bless him, give him land, and make him into a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3). Abraham’s line continued through Isaac and Jacob, and God declared he would be their God and they would be his people” (Genesis 17:7). Through Jacob’s son, Joseph, God’s people were saved from famine by moving to Egypt.
Captivity
Eventually, a Pharaoh came to power that did not know Joseph (Exodus 1:8), and the Israelites endured four hundred years of slavery in Egypt. But “the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (Exodus 2:23–25).
Country
God never forgot his promises. Israel arrived in Egypt as the twelve sons of Jacob, but they set out for God’s promised land, led by Moses, with more than a million strong. After they wandered the desert due to their own disobedience, God led them into the promised land through Joshua. God delivered the people of the land over to them, and they ruled there for many generations. Again, God promised he would be their God, and they would be his people. He told them if they kept his ways, he would bless them with peace and abundance. But if they abandoned his ways, he would give them over to their enemies (Leviticus 26).
Conquered
Because Israel turned away from the one true God and turned to false gods and foreign kings for provision and protection, he gave them over to their enemies and they lived in exile for seventy years. Then, just as they endured four hundred years of slavery in Egypt before entering the land promised to Abraham, God’s people now waited through four hundred years of silence before Isaiah 11:1–5 would be fulfilled.
Conclusion
We live in an age when the concept and consequences of sin are dismissed as an outdated guilt trip. And according to today’s culture-makers, God—if he exists at all—is distant and unaware of the daily details and decisions of our lives.
But the siren call of the Old Testament is Remember! Remember who God reveals himself to be. Remember his faithfulness even in the face of our sin, rebellion, stubbornness, and doubt. Remember that God is mighty to save. He is “. . . a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and [who] did not forsake them” (Nehemiah 9:17). If we are to have a real appreciation for how far we have fallen in our sin and how powerless we are to rescue ourselves, we must remember the lessons of Old Testament Israel. You will be surprised at how much of yourself you see in their journey!
But the siren call of the Old Testament is Remember! Remember who God reveals himself to be. Remember his faithfulness even in the face of our sin, rebellion, stubbornness, and doubt. Remember that God is mighty to save. He is “. . . a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and [who] did not forsake them” (Nehemiah 9:17).
Because it calls us to remember !! To fully “get” the gift of Christ you have to understand the history of what came before him and see the threads that run from the very first book to the last. It makes it quite obvious how divine this precious book is when you recognize those many threads.
God is faithful. He doesn’t abandon even if you think he has.
Punishment is real when we abandon God and lean on false beliefs.
Remember the history of God and His people
We cannot appreciate the depth of God’s love and the sacrifice of his son, Jesus, if we are unfamiliar with the story of the Old Testament. Time and time again, God shows his faithfulness to his people despite their waywardness. His mercy and love, through the the ultimate sacrifice of his son, Jesus, can not be fully realized without knowing the whole story.
We need to know the old testament to understand that humanity, without God, will get it wrong each and everytime. When we lean on our own resourcefullness we fall woefully short of our true potential and our true purpose. With god, With Jesus we can come into our fullness of hope and with faith strive for an unending future with God.
Everything has a history, there is always a beginning, the Old Testament is our school Master, it shows us that the people all had flaws, everyone can be forgiven…. From the garden of Eden we saw the first way back to God, the shedding of Blood, it covered Man’s sin where God know longer saw the sin but the Blood… without the shedding of Blood there is know remission of sin every prophecy of the old testament has pointed man to a way back to God ….Jesus came to earth to die for our sins, he paid it with His Blood, so when God see’s us He see’s the Blood of Jesus, who has redeemed us.I am one grateful somebody that Jesus washed a way my sins and gave me new life….
The Old Testament serves as a reminder of the past, how many times we have messed up and how many times God has already come to our rescue before He put the ultimate plan of salvation into fulfilled action. Jesus is the ultimate answer to the problem with humanity.
It reminds us of who God is and how faithful and merciful He is to us even in our rebellion. He is a perfect God who requires perfect holiness, and only a perfect and sinless sacrifice would satisfy. Before Jesus, humans would continually follow the pattern of rebellion, a cry for mercy, the offering of a sacrifice and temporary obedience. The pattern could not be broken without a perfect sacrifice.
To start in the garden of eden a perfect place, see the fall of humanity and see that God the creator keeps trying to save us is amazing. It really makes me understand his Grace toward us, he never gives up on us no matter how horrible we are/were to Him. He loves us beyond any love here on earth.
The Old Testament reminds us of how far we have fallen, it reminds us how God has revealed Himself, how forgiving He is and gracious. That even in our worst sin, our rebellion, He still loved us and is faithful to us.
The Old Testament shows us why Jesus came to save us – that the Law of Moses couldn’t save and that no one was able to keep the Law but that we needed Jesus to die on the cross to save us. The Old Testament shows us who God is and how patient he is and how he loves his chosen people and keeps forgiving them. The Old Testament builds up to Jesus and points to him.