God’s word is a beautiful gift, given to us by God, for our understanding and our benefit (2 Tim 3). The Bible text is full of examples of His love for us all, and shows us that we can put our hope in God when times are difficult. The Old (or First) Testament is a combination of books that show God’s love for his children, His never-ending mercy, His faithfulness, and His sovereignty over all the Earth.
The Old Testament is a combination of books that show God’s love for His children, His never-ending mercy, His faithfulness, and His sovereignty over all the Earth.
God is Loving
The garden of Eden is a good example of this love. God created a beautiful garden for the first man and woman to live in. It had everything they would ever need. God was with them in the garden, and walked with them there. Their sin threatened to put a dark stain on their relationship, but even after the fall (Genesis 3), God forgave them and continued to make sure their needs were satisfied.
The rest of the Old Testament shows the repeated struggle of God’s chosen people to follow the law and their desire to do things their own way. God saved them from slavery and continued to walk beside them in the wilderness and on into the Promised Land. He continued to pursue a relationship with His children, making sure they had what they needed.
God is Full of Mercy
Through the wilderness, the conquest of the Promised Land, the rise and fall of the many Kings of Israel and Judah, and the establishment of, the fall, and rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple, we see God continually protecting not only the faithful remnant, but also the people who sinned against Him, all because He is a merciful God.
In the book of 2 Samuel, we see God’s mercy in how He dealt with David after his sin. True, there were consequences, but David was able to overcome his mistakes and was forgiven by God. Moving into the books of Kings and Chronicles, we begin to see that the constant return to sin following a time of revival. God continued to be a God of second chances, bringing new God fearing rulers to the land, and offering the opportunity for the people to change their ways. We even see this mercy in the book of Job when God forgives Job’s friends for their behavior.
God is Faithful
God created Adam in His own image, and then created woman to help him do the tasks he was assigned. God was with them, giving them whatever they needed in order to thrive in their world.
In Exodus, Moses questioned his readiness and his ability to carry out God’s assignment, much like many of us do now. God stood by Moses. He answered Moses’ request for a helper, listened to his prayers over his people and walked alongside him when things were difficult. God shows that He is worthy of Moses’ trust throughout their time in the wilderness. God also kept His promise to the Israelites, bringing them into the promised land and giving them exactly what He had promised.
It wasn’t just in the first five books that we see God’s faithfulness. In Ruth, her trust in the God of Naomi was rewarded by the provision of Boaz, a new husband for this young widow. Ruth’s trust in God is shown in the text, and the faithfulness of God is displayed.
The First Testament establishes a pattern and a base line for the trustworthiness of God to come through when people needed Him even if they are suffering because of their own mistakes. We can see how the connection between the First Testament’s promises and the New Testament fulfillment of Jesus as savior would show God’s faithfulness to future generations. This connection to the trustworthiness of God helps future readers of the text to trust in the gospel message.
God is Sovereign Over All
The message shows us that God is God over everything. He has been there through the entire building of civilization, watching over everything and everyone, working all things for good towards the fulfillment of His eventual plan.
He protected Moses as a baby so that he could take part in God’s plan for the future generations in Egypt (Exodus 2). He sustained His chosen people throughout the centuries as they were dominated by surrounding world powers. He preserved the family line of King David throughout wars and conquests, so that His son Jesus would come from that line, just as was foretold (2 Sam 7).
God showed that He is the God of nature and all the Earth in the plagues in Egypt (Exodus 7-12), the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14), the offering at Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18), the survival of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3), and many other miracles. This demonstration of God’s sovereignty through the first books of the Bible brings the reader to a place where the message of the New Testament not only seems possible, but is true to His character as well.
Along with showing us who God is, the First Testament lays out the weakness of the human heart, as well as showing us the strength so clearly present in some of the first leaders of a growing population. In seeing the stories of the early people groups and their challenges and triumphs, we see how much in common we have with them. The seemingly distant characters of the Old Testament become real to us when we read the text, allowing us to understand their feelings and their struggles.
Along with showing us who God is, the First Testament lays out the weakness of the human heart, as well as showing us the strength so clearly present in some of the first leaders of a growing population.
The Old Testament writings contribute to the whole Bible message because these were the first people that God created. These are the first relationships between man and God. Before the message was scrambled, before things got complicated and weighed down with a lot of confusing and skewed teachings, these were the first examples. It is because God chose these writers and preserved these messages that we should take note of them.
Without the First Testament, we don’t fully understand the beauty of God’s plan.
We need to walk through these pages of the ancient text to see why the need for a savior arose. The first people were filled with sinful behavior. Their willful disobedience in their actions, and their inability to stay true to their God made His intervention necessary. Whether it was the complaints in the wilderness in Exodus-Numbers, the disobedience in war (such as the decision to try and conquer AI without God’s backing in Joshua), or their frequent following of false gods and prophets as in 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles, the texts put together a consistent message of protection and forgiveness by God even in light of this poor behavior.
The detailed stories in the Old Testament allow us to get to know people before the coming of the Messiah. In the deeper reading of these texts, I find that no matter what time period they lived in, we are much more the same than we are different. God is with us, the same as He was in the Garden of Eden. So many of our struggles are inner struggles, and those don’t change with the times. We all at times have felt like Job, like things aren’t going right, even though we feel like we are doing the right thing. We also have likely all fallen into despair when the consequences of our actions come full circle, like in Lamentations.
God gave us the whole Bible.
If we believe that these words are the inspired word of God, we then realize that they were meant for us to read as a compilation. The understanding of the complete Bible is a crucial part of our understanding of God.
Through these early writings, the First Testament shows why we needed a savior and who God’s people were in the centuries leading up to the coming of the Messiah. The New Testament answers that question with the explanation of how we were saved from our sin. The First Testament shows who God is, and is the context that the gospel fits into. It’s the reason why Jesus came.
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¹Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
