Friday: Further Thought – The Ministry Begins
An evangelist came to town and advertised his meeting like this: “Come see a preacher tear a page out of the Bible!” That, no doubt, brought a crowd. He then stood before them, opened his Bible, and—to their astonishment—tore out a page. “This page,” he said, “never belonged there. It’s the page separating the Old Testament from the New.” Whatever one might think of his theatrics, the preacher made a good point. These two books are, really, one.
Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com
All through the New Testament, the Old Testament is quoted. Time and again events in the New Testament are explained and justified by either Jesus Himself or the New Testament authors, by references to the Old Testament. How often did Jesus make the statement, in one form or another, that “Scripture must be fulfilled”? Whether from Jesus Himself, who repeatedly pointed back to the Old Testament writings (see John 5:39, Luke 24:27, Matt. 22:29, John 13:18), to Paul, who was always quoting the Old Testament (Rom. 4:3, Rom. 11:8, Gal. 4:27), to the book of Revelation, with an estimated 550 Old Testament allusions, the New Testament constantly links itself to the Old. The Old and New Testaments are God’s written revelations to humanity of the plan of salvation. Though, no question, some parts of the Old Testament, such as the sacrificial system, are no longer binding upon Christians, we must never make the mistake of somehow relegating the Old Testament to an inferior status to the New. The Bible is composed of both Testaments, and from them both we learn crucial truths about God and the plan of salvation.
Discussion Questions
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"..... we must never make the mistake of somehow relegating the Old Testament to an inferior status to the New."
Paul detected the lawless trend 2000 years ago when he wrote.."the mystery of iniquity is already at work" Iniquity is lawlessness. Many in modern Christianity are victims of lawless teaching that uses bible verses with no interpretation or warped interpretation.
"Christ is the end of law, we are not under law but grace, the law was our schoolmaster," etc, Listeners accept this because humans are wicked , deceived (Jer 17:9) law trashing, God hating (Rom 8:7) truth trampling (2 Thess 2) criminally insane foolish rebels.
This trend has even contaminated the remnant church as people do not understand or check bible verses like Bereans (Acts 17:11) The 10 commandments have been attacked and the rules for churches by pastors end up being the 4 rules in Acts 15...and even those do not get much exposure or support. Society has suffered the trend to perversion, depravity, and barbarianism as the church as a whole has become less salty.
One example....notice the large trend in recent times at people getting tattoos. Used to be something for biker gangs and some rough servicemen. Check Leviticus 19:28
The dietary laws from Moses are trashed by those whose God is their belly and obesity is pandemic now.
Christ was tempted three times in the New Testament and all his answered came from the Old Testament.
Matthew 4:3-4
The tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.( Deut 8:3)
Matthew 4:6-7
And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.(Deut 6:16)
Matthew 4:9-10
And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (Deut 26:10, Ex 34:14)
Also the plan of redemption is found in the Old Testament and it is fulfilled in the New Testament, in other words you can have the New Testament without the Old Testament.
Esther Moran
There are those that believe the old testament section of the Bible is outdated and perhaps less than Holy Scripture, for what ever reason they choose. The Gideon Bible in hotel and motel rooms was well known for many years. With the belief, that may be there only exposure to the Bible, and as I have thought was just the New Testament. For some, if there is a question one way or another, one might point out that there was no New Testament to differentiate for several thousand years.
For many of us, we live in a secular post-religious world, where the Bible is considered irrelevant. Making any part of the Bible relevant to our unchurched friends is a challenge. Jesus was able to refer to the Old Testament scriptures and reinterpret then for his listeners so that they could see that they were relevant to them. I don't think it is irreverent to suggest that the task is much harder these days when most of our society has a post-religious mind set. They do not even understand the language of Christians.
Jesus was careful to use communication strategies that worked well with his listeners. Here are a couple of questions we need to think about:
1) In non-religious terms, what do we want to say to our unchurched friends?
2) How do we create situations where our unchurched friends want to listen to us?
We often say that it is the work of the Holy Spirit to convince our friends, but we also need to understand that we need to work in partnership with the Holy Spirit. Maybe the Holy Spirit is talking to us and we are not listening because we think the Holy Spirit should be working on our friends.
Maurice,
"1) In non-religious terms, what do we want to say to our unchurched friends?
2) How do we create situations where our unchurched friends want to listen to us?"
There you go. This is essentially what I post as well.
Gospel, grace and salvation need to be explained for the unchurched person on the street.
Gospel is God's solution to the guilt trips, shame, perversion, depravity and criminal nature of humans.,,as well as eternal life for those who graduate from the gospel program.
Salvation= thought detox, mind makeover, decriminalization, rebellion eradication, character healing.
Grace = pardon for criminals who repent and rehabilitation power to pass Jesus' parole hearing.
As long as preachers keep presenting their irrelevant religious obscure lingo, the unchurched will ignore the theological nonsense.
This approach is perpetuated because most clergy do not interact/rub shoulders with the unchurched.