The Cross Is the Answer. How Well Do You Know the Question?
The Landscape of Scripture
The highest I have ever been above the surface of the earth has been in an airplane. A commercial airline cruises at around 34,000 feet, which is about 5,000 feet higher than the tallest mountain on earth. Only military pilots, astronauts, and a few daredevils have been higher than I! Of course, countless people—millions?—have been just as high, sitting comfortably in pressurized cabins, munching away on peanuts or pretzels.
Every year more and more people travel to faraway destinations by flying. When we fly, we routinely get higher above sea level than anyone had ever been just one hundred years ago! For all of history, the record for how high a human ascended into the atmosphere would have rested with some adventurous, hard-working climber. Now, all we have to do is get to the airport an hour ahead of time, stand in a couple of lines, and then sit in a well-padded chair for several hours.
My favorite moment is takeoff. The airplane rolls along slowly. A pause comes, then it lurches into a higher gear. Seconds later you look out the window and see that you are racing faster than any car on the highway. Then the wheels lift off the ground, first the front, then the back. Before you know it, you’re looking down at the tops of the buildings around the airport, the highways that feed into it, the layout of the city, and the hills and rivers and coastline!
The Message of the Old Testament
Mark Dever
Author Mark Dever introduces readers to the Old Testament as a glorious whole so that they are able to see the big picture of the majesty of God and the wonder of his promises.
I’ve just looked away from the computer because I’m writing this on a train, and we’ve just crossed a high bridge over a wide river. Looking out, I can see for a great distance. Such sights—from an airplane or a train—give you a whole new perspective on where you are. You can locate yourself, and better understand where you are going and how you are getting there.
In all of life, of course, we need to better understand where we are going, and this requires locating where we are in the first place. When I preached through the Old Testament at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., I tried to do just that by flying higher than sermons often go. I hoped that these “Bible overviews” would help my congregation better learn both where we are and where we are going.
I was already familiar with some of the Old Testament books when the week came to preach them—Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Jonah, Malachi. But turning to other books felt more like my first trip into a new country! In both categories, however, I found far more than what I expected: a richness, a newness, a healthy strangeness, and, simultaneously, a familiar quality that let me know I was simply seeing more of the same God I have come to know and love through Jesus Christ.
I remember preaching through the Major Prophets in a series entitled “Big Hopes.” As I worked through Isaiah one Sunday, Jeremiah the next, then Ezekiel, and finally Daniel, it seemed as if I were hearing the four movements of a great symphony. Isaiah begins the symphony with grand and brooding premonitions of destruction, the terrible love of atonement, and then the triumphant joy of eschatological hope. Jeremiah takes over the second movement with the horrifying siege of Jerusalem, minor in its key, yet not without sweet themes of a promised deliverance and justice. Then we turn our ears to Babylon, where we hear Ezekiel’s variations on Jeremiah. His tune is familiar, but it is less particularized, more abstracted. It gives us new and riveting perspectives on God’s love for his people and his people’s rejection of him. Finally, Daniel, taking the great themes of the previous books, recasts them in several beautiful vignettes of individuals who trust and hope in God, who oppose and are opposed by God, and of some who experience his judgment and restoration. The themes carry forward into Daniel’s visions of a mystifying and marvelous future, as the “music” of the Major Prophets fades out.
Understanding each book on its own is one thing. Seeing them next to one another—how each one complements, counterbalances, and expands on the others—brings a new luster to each and to the whole.
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Lock and Key
We turn particularly to the Old Testament. For some Christians, the New Testament can feel like the densely populated states on America’s East Coast. The New Testament books are generally smaller, more traveled, more familiar. The books of the Old Testament, on the other hand, can feel like the unknown and storied lands of the American West probably felt to nineteenth-century pioneers. The great open plains of Patriarchal history, the impenetrable Rockies of Levitical law, and the thick forests and deep canyons of prophets frighten off many would-be travelers. Everyone knows a favorite story or two brought back by the brave souls who have ventured into the unknown, but many Christians are content to spend their quiet times among the more well-known, seemingly habitable landscapes of the Gospels or the epistles. The books of the Old Testament are large. We don’t know them very well. They require us to know all sorts of history we have either forgotten or never learned. And all those unpronounceable names! The whole idea of journeying into the Old Testament begins to sound overwhelming, time-consuming, unprofitable, and maybe even dangerous.
For reasons like these, most of us have abandoned the Old Testament for the New. Let the scholars, the archaeologists, the prophecy-hounds, and the children’s Sunday school teachers deal with it!
Yet, by abandoning these books, we abandon the revelation of God. More than that, we hinder our ability to understand the New Testament’s revelation of Jesus Christ.
If you don’t get what the Old Testament teaches, you’ll never get Christ.
If Christ is the key to human history, the Old Testament carefully describes the lock. If Christ is the climax of the story, the Old Testament sets the stage and begins the plot. Do you read just the endings of books?
If the New Testament presents God’s promises kept, the Old Testament tells us about God’s promises made.
In other words, if you don’t get what the Old Testament teaches, you’ll never get Christ. Our God does not waste words. Each Testament needs the other. You will best be able to comprehend Christ’s cross if you first understand the question left unanswered by the Old Testament. The cross is the answer. How well do you know the question?
In order to acquire a sense of the grandiosity of God’s work, the majesty of his plan, and the tenacity of his love, there is no replacement for the Old Testament. Deprive yourself of this part of God’s revelation, and your God will seem smaller, less holy, and less loving than God really is.
This article is adapted from The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made by Mark Dever.
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