Enduring Treasure: The Lasting Value of the Old Testament for Christians

By Pieter J. Lalleman

In this book Dr Pieter Lalleman (Spurgeon’s College) argues that the Old Testament is more than just a series of predictions about the coming of Jesus! The first part of the Bible is an Enduring Treasure, of lasting value for the Christian church, and as such it must continue to play an important role in our personal faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Faithbuilders
• Release date: Jul 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781912120741

Pieter J. Lalleman

Pieter J. Lalleman is Tutor in Biblical Studies at Spurgeon's College, London.

Book preview

Preface

The keen reader will have noticed that there are some topics in the Old Testament that never, or hardly ever, re-emerge in the New Testament, yet they are still important for us as Christians today. This book argues that the Old Testament is more than a series of predictions about Jesus, as some think; quite a bit more! There are numerous sections of the Old Testament that still have much to say to us in the period after the New Testament. Because of these good and beautiful aspects of the Old Testament, this first part of the Bible is of lasting value for believers. For this reason, my book is an enthusiastic ‘yes’ to the Old Testament. I want to show what a great book the Old Testament is and how it can play an important role in the churches and in our personal faith.

The introduction first tells something about the Bible and the Old Testament in general. In it I also explain the different ways in which the Old Testament still applies to us, and I show to which persons I owe my inspiration for this book and why I think that the lasting treasure of the Old Testament is an important issue for New Testament believers.

In the chapters which follow I set out these treasures in the Old Testament one by one. These chapters are the core of the book. In the last three chapters I briefly discuss several examples of misreading and misuse of the Old Testament.

Others have done their best to keep the Old Testament free from dust. This book is a supplement to these earlier books. I am focusing on the value of the Old Testament, in the hope that it will be restored to its rightful and valuable place in our personal life of faith and in the communities to which we belong.

I am grateful to the publishers of the Dutch original of this book for their kind permission to translate and edit it for English readers. The translations from other Dutch authors are mine.

Dr Pieter J. Lalleman

London, April 2017

Introduction

Israel

In the past God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets of the Old Testament (Hebrews 1:1). For centuries, the Lord God revealed himself to Israel and this is recorded in the first part of our Bible, the Old Testament (OT). In the beginning, there was not yet a people called Israel; God created the world and made himself known to all humankind (Genesis 1–11). Later on, this same God called Abram to move to a foreign land and made him the father of a new nation (Genesis 12–50). With this people, God made a covenant and he introduced himself to them (Exodus). The rules of the covenant were worked out in detail (Leviticus – Deuteronomy) and so began a long history of falling, getting up, and falling again. We have the ongoing story of God and Israel in the books of Joshua to Kings, and from a different angle, we can read about this in Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

At the end, the story of Israel simply runs into the sand. This happened even though God had sent prophets to reveal the people more of himself, to further clarify his intentions, and to give timely guidelines (Isaiah – Malachi). The people responded to God’s revelation by singing hymns, lamentations, and other songs (Psalms). Wise people thought about a good life and about suffering (Job, Proverbs – Song of Songs). Israel collected its holy books and later called this collection Tanakh; Christians call this book the Old Testament. The New Testament (NT) includes a reference to it as ‘the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms’ (Luke 24:44). At various places in this collection we find the expectation that at some time in the future God would send his people a Saviour.

Jesus Christ

Back to Hebrews chapter 1. After this long period in which God revealed himself to Israel, he did indeed send the promised Redeemer; he revealed himself in a deeper and more definitive way than ever through our Lord Jesus Christ. Although Jesus’s outer appearance was that of an ordinary man (Philippians 2:7; Isaiah 53), Christians believe that in him God came to earth. Jesus died for the sins of the world, but rose again from the dead. We will not discuss his person, life, death, and resurrection here, but this event has changed world history for ever. The relationship between God and humans is restored at last. These things are recorded in the New Testament, which contains four biographies of this Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew – John) which show how special he was in many ways.

Upon Jesus’s departure from the earth his followers were commissioned to tell the world about him, although that mission only made a slow start (Acts). In the period that followed, leaders among the early Christians wrote letters to churches and individuals in which they reflected on the meaning of the life and ministry of Jesus for time and eternity, and in which they discuss the current situation in the first Christian communities (Romans – Revelation).

Two Parts

So, Israel had collected its holy books and the Christian church not only inherited this collection, but added a second, smaller set of books consisting of the Gospels, Epistles, Acts, and Revelation. From the moment the church began with this second set, the first set became known as the Old Testament, and the second as the New Testament. Because the Lord Jesus is more important than anything in the Old Testament (this superiority of the New in relation to the Old is the subject of the Letter to the Hebrews), the church developed a tendency to depict the Old Testament as secondary and less important. Almost immediately, even before the New Testament was fully established, some people argued that the Old Testament was no longer needed and could better be abandoned. This idea was particularly promoted by the church leader Marcion who lived in the second century CE, though he did not get many followers. The church decided to keep the Old Testament and continued to recognise this book as the first part of the authoritative word of God. Despite this early decision, discussions about the relationship between Old and New Testaments punctuate the later history of the church and continue till the present time. The German liberal theology of the nineteenth century once again tried to throw the Old Testament overboard, but this attempt also failed.

Theory and Practice

Yet even though the church rejected Marcion’s proposal and retained the collection of sacred Jewish scriptures next to the New Testament, a huge discrepancy has nevertheless developed between the doctrine and life of the church, between its theory and practice, and this discrepancy is growing in our time. In theory, we confess that God has given us a book in two parts, Old Testament and New Testament. For example, in the Westminster Shorter Catechism question 2 reads:

What rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?

And the answer is:

The word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.

But if we are honest, we know that in practice our attitude to the Old Testament differs to our attitude to the New. We prefer to read from the New Testament – it feels warmer and more familiar to us. We also know the New Testament much better than the Old Testament. We have our doubts about the Old Testament. We may prefer to read an edifying book by a popular author rather than read the Old Testament.

Our ministers and pastors too are setting us a bad example. Sermons and Bible studies deal much more often with the New Testament than with the allegedly difficult and boring Old Testament. The conclusion is inevitable that in practice many Christians have become followers of Marcion, whether we admit it or not.

Purpose

This book is an attempt to dislodge the spirit of Marcion so that the Old Testament once again gets a proper place in our personal faith and in the church communities to which we belong. I will do this by showing some of the good and beautiful aspects of the Old Testament which reveal its lasting value for all Christians.

Primate

This book therefore defends and argues the great and enduring value of the Old Testament, but my intention should not be misinterpreted. It is not a call to become Jewish or to live legalistically! For me, too, the New Testament is more important than the Old Testament because it reveals Jesus to us. He is our Saviour and that of the whole world (1 John 2:2). His coming and especially his victory over death is the decisive event in world history. Because I presuppose knowledge of these things, I will not write about them in any detail here. Rather, I am writing on the basis that the New Testament has the primacy in our life of faith, and that the Old Testament must primarily be read in the light of the New Testament.

Yet despite all this, we do not want to give up the Old Testament and there is no need to do so! I want to show some of the elements that make the Old Testament such a great book, and how they can play a role in the faith of the church today.

People of God

But how and why we can say that the Old Testament has lasting value for Christians? What about the things in the Old Testament which were not endorsed by Jesus or the apostles? Are there any criteria that we can use to answer these questions?

Principally, as Christians we have become members of the people of God through faith in Jesus as Lord; we have been grafted into the olive tree of Israel (Romans 11:13–18). The Old Testament contains God’s revelation to his people. Just as the Old Testament applied and still applies to the people of Israel, so in principle it now also applies to us as members of God’s people who have joined later. The Old Testament tells us who God is, what plans he has for his people and the world, and so on. All these things are still as true, and just as important, as when the Old Testament came into being and when Jesus and the apostles lived by it.

The Scriptures

In our respect for the Old Testament we stand in the tradition of Jesus and his first followers. They only ever spoke positively about the Old Testament; how good and how important it is. They obviously did not call it ‘Old Testament’ because in their time there was no New Testament. Like all Jews at that time, they used expressions such as ‘the Scriptures’, ‘the word of God’, and the like. It is not difficult to find examples of the positive way in which Jesus and the early Christians treated the Scriptures; here are just three:

Our Lord Jesus himself speaks positively about the Scriptures; he says that not even a small part of it will be revoked (Matthew 5:17–20).

‘For the word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword: it penetrates deeply into soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.’ (Hebrews 4:12)

The evangelist Matthew repeatedly and emphatically shows how the Scriptures were fulfilled in the ministry of Jesus (e.g. in 1:22–23, 2:15, 17 and 23).

It is therefore fitting for us, as disciples and followers of Jesus, to adopt the same positive attitude toward the Scriptures. The present book is intended as an aid to reading and understanding them.

Fulfilment

We need to reflect on the concept of fulfilment. We believe that the Scriptures were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In him God has revealed himself in a greater way than ever before. Predictions of the coming of the Messiah have come true and now the Scripture is fulfilled. This means that the status of this ancient book has changed. The idea of fulfilment occurs in