Even a superficial study of church history makes it clear that it’s all too easy to develop ideas about God and then to worship these ideas instead of God Himself, the God revealed in the Bible. As the skeptic Voltaire quipped: “God made man in His image, and man has returned the compliment.” We may not even realize that we have an incomplete or even false understanding of God.¹

Thus, we must return to Scripture and compare our thinking about God with what is taught there. And this study must include both Testaments, for in both the Lord has spoken to us. This point is important because some have argued that the God revealed in the New Testament is different from the One revealed in the Old. That’s not a position that Seventh-day Adventists accept, nor is it a position taught in the Bible.

What phrases punctuate the Old Testament prophets over and over again? Jer. 7:1–3.  

Thousands of times the prophetic messages of the Old Testament are laced with the phrase “thus says the Lord” or an equivalent. This should remind us that the prophet is not merely speaking for God but that God is speaking for Himself through the prophet.

At the same time, the New Testament is filled with reference after reference to the Old Testament. In fact, the whole theology of the New Testament is intricately linked to the Old. How does one, for instance, make sense of the sacrifice of Jesus apart from the entire sacrificial system revealed in the Old Testament? How many times did Jesus, as well as the New Testament writers, refer to Old Testament passages in order to buttress their arguments and points? The whole New Testament corpus finds its theological foundation in the Old. There’s no justification for any radical division between them. All Scripture—both Testaments—is inspired by the Lord (2 Tim. 3:16).

Look up the following texts. How do they help us see the link between the New Testament and the Old? What do they tell us about how Jesus, as well as the New Testament writers, viewed the Old Testament? Matt. 4:4, 11:10; Mark 1:2; 7:6; John 12:14, 15; Acts 13:33; Rom. 3:10; Gal. 3:13; 1 Pet. 1:16; 1 Cor. 5:7.  

Mark Twain once said it’s not the parts of the Bible that he doesn’t understand which bother him; it’s the parts that he does. Who doesn’t, at times, find sections of the Bible bothersome? Given what the Bible says about itself (2 Tim. 3:16), how should we respond to the parts we don’t understand, or maybe not even like? (See also 1 Cor. 13:12.)

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