Proclaimer Blog
The New Testament use of the Old (1)
One of the most important grids for any preacher tackling an Old Testament text is to ask if and then how it is used in the New Testament. The whole Bible is inspired and so it is always going to be instructive to see how inspired Scripture interprets inspired Scripture. I'm going to say a little more about this over the coming days. First, it's good to see that the New Testament uses the old in different ways.
1. Understanding the OT story
There are times when the NT sees the OT as a whole into which the story of salvation fits. This is evident in Stephen’s majestic overview in Acts 7, for example, or in the words of Jesus to his followers in Luke 24.27. In both of these cases, and others too, the OT Scripture is taken as a whole and the reader invited to see how the work of Christ (in particular) acts as the great climax to this story.
Most of us are well drilled in this kind of biblical theology and will often apply it to Old Testament texts. But it is worth noting that this is not the only way the Old Testament is understood. There is more than one sermon from the Old Testament, to which the answer is “Jesus is the coming King.”