Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures… (Romans 1:1-2)

I have a confession to make. I find the Old (or First) Testament hard slogging at times. I enjoy all the stories I learned in Sunday School (Abraham and Isaac, Moses and the Exodus, David and Goliath, etc.). But those stories actually make up only a small portion of the Old Testament.  o much of it can be confusing, mainly due to our distance in time from those days and our more Greco/Roman way of thinking rather than Hebraic. The Hebrew mindset is the dominant one of the entire Bible since only one writer in the New Testament (Luke) was not Jewish by birth and background.

Now, perhaps you are like me. You turn to, say, the book of Ezekiel and you start reading. And pretty quickly, you are lost. The language and the imagery is foreign to you and you can’t make heads or tails of what God might be trying to communicate. The temptation is very real to give up and limit our reading to the New Testament.

The Apostle Paul would warn us against that. In 2 Timothy, he writes All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work (3:16-17). The Scripture referred to is what we call the Old Testament. It is as much the word of God as the New Testament and is God’s gift to us for our good. And in the opening verses of Romans, Paul also lets us know that the Old Testament is connected to the gospel.

Paul tells us three truths about the gospel in v.2.

• First, the gospel is about promises.  Paul could have simply said that God gave or sent the gospel beforehand (that is, before the coming of Jesus). Instead, he writes that the good news is based on promises that God has made. The promises were made to Abraham and his offspring (Galatians 3:16), elaborated on throughout the rest of the Old Testament, and then found their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. As Paul writes elsewhere, For all the promises of God find their Yes in him [Jesus] (2 Corinthians 1:20).
• Second, these promises of the gospel came through his prophets. This means it is mediated but only through authorized agents. But it also means it comes through different people at different times in different situations. But they were all pointing towards and communicating the same message.
• Third, these promises of the gospel are now contained in the holy Scriptures. As with 2 Timothy 3, the Scriptures in view here are what we find in the Old Testament. They are holy because of their source, i.e. God.  

Saints, we cannot ignore the Old Testament. It is God’s word to us, even today. It is also the means by which we can grow in our understanding of the good news of Jesus Christ, our Savior and King. We really can’t even understand the New Testament without understanding the Old (the book of Hebrews is a prime example of this). And in our current time, there are plenty of wonderful resources to help us untie the knotty parts (though there is a depth to the word of God which means we will always have room to learn and grow). So, let us recommit ourselves to all of God’s word and in doing so, grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.