Why do we need the Old Testament?
Growing up, I have always heard Christians recite the same mantra to non-believers: "Believe and you will be saved".
I don't disagree with this sentiment, but it's easy to get so fixated on this drop that we ignore the ocean it's in: the Bible. It's particularly easy to ignore the Old Testament because Lamentations is depressing, Daniel's visions are outlandish and confusing, and Song of Solomon is downright embarrassing.
This is the thing you and I forget 99% of the time: God chose what's in the Bible. So, the fact that the Old Testament exists means that God intentionally put it there.
My tiny human brain cannot possibly wrap itself around God's thought process. However, it can come up with four things that the Old Testament does for those who read it.
1. Preserves and transmits the story of God who saves his people
Anyone who browses the Old Testament can see that despite being God's chosen people, the Israelites have made many mistakes. I really like .
For example, despite having seen God afflict Egypt (Exodus 7: 14-11: 10), divide the Red Sea (Exodus 14: 1-22) and unload the aforementioned sea on the persecutors (Exodus 14: 23-31 )), the Israelites got nervous during Moses' time on Mount Sinai and thought among themselves, “This God is not the real deal. Instead we worship a shining cow "(Exodus 32: 1-5).
This was neither the first nor the last of Israel's errors, and God made sure that the authors of the Bible did not leave out a single one. But what does God do after the Israelites are once again wrong? Save them. He saves them every time.
Without the Old Testament, you and I wouldn't know half of what God did to save the Israelites - our spiritual ancestors - from themselves.
Furthermore, we would not understand the theological or cultural roots from which the New Testament in general and the Gospel in particular came. And where would we be if we didn't know the gospel?
2. Show that God is deeply invested in our daily life
Before coming to the Promised Land, the Israelites did not have a president, a prime minister, or even a king. Israel had what we brand new people would call a theocracy. In a theocracy, religion is the state and the state is religion.
This means that the laws set out in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy were not just "you-you" and "you-not-not" for private life; were public law, likewise, paying taxes and stopping at stop signs are the law.
"Who cares?" You ask, "Leviticus is still boring."
That may be true, but the fact that God's Law was also the law of the land shows us something important: God didn't want to see the Israelites only on weekends and at Passover. He wanted to be an integral part of their lives so that they thrive.
This is true of God today: He wants to be with us when we eat our Cheerios, pay the electric bills and fold the laundry that has been in the dryer all week. Without the Old Testament, we would not know that no detail is too small for our God to care.
3. It teaches us how to praise God
When most Christians think of praise, they think of singing along with Hillsong covers in church. This is largely due to the fact that the book of Psalms is an anthology of hymns and poems and partly because singing cheerful songs on Sundays makes our hearts warm and confused.
Since most modern Christian worship comes from happy source material, believers forget that not all praise comes from a joyful place. Job's love for God cost him everything, some of the psalms (e.g. 28, 38 and 88) are desperate cries for help, and Ecclesiastes is a desperate party over how insignificant life is.
Job, Psalms and Ecclesiastes are quite different from each other, but they have the same purpose: to recognize God as the savior not in spite of difficulties and suffering, but because of it.
Without these less than happy Old Testament writings, we would not know that pain can and should be harnessed for praise. We would only be able to praise God when we were happy.
4. Foretells the coming of Christ
God saving Israel, making himself part of our life, teaching us how to praise him… what's the point of all this? Why do we need a mixture of facts, rules and distressing poetry when we have the tried and true "believe and you will be saved"?
Because the Old Testament has something else to do: Prophecies about Jesus. Isaiah 7:14 tells us that Jesus will be called Immanuel, or god with us. The prophet Hosea marries a prostitute as a symbolic representation of Jesus' love for the undeserving Church. And Daniel 7: 13-14 foretells the second coming of Jesus.
These prophecies and dozens of others gave the Old Testament Israelites something to hope for: the end of the covenant of law and the beginning of the covenant of grace. Christians today also derive something from it: the knowledge that God has spent millennia - yes, millennia - caring for His family.
Because it's important?
If you forget all the rest of this article, remember this: The New Testament tells us about the reason for our hope, but the Old Testament tells us what God did to give us that hope.
The more we read about it, the more we understand and appreciate the lengths it made for sinful, stubborn and foolish people like us who don't deserve it.