Old Testament Overview: Promises Made • 01.01.23
Nick Lees   -   January 1, 2023

Overview of the Old Testament: Promises Made

Growing in understanding of God’s plan and purposes

  1. A specific plan
  2. A distinct problem
  3. A particular people
  4. His wonderful promises

Overview of the Old Testament: Promises Made

 

Good morning church family! Happy New Year. I hope you had a good week with family or friends. It’s good to be back with you to worship our Lord together. I always look forward to getting back to be with you.

Ushers + Bibles

Today we’re doing something a little different. Rather than studying a particular passage of a book of the Bible like we usually do, today we’re studying the entire Old Testament! That’s right, instead of 1 book, we’re studying 39 books. Or at least the overview of those 39 books, which are collectively known as the Old Testament.

What comes to your mind when you think of the Old Testament? Sacrifices? The Law? An ornate temple? A golden calf perhaps?

Maybe you don’t think of a specific imagery. Perhaps for you it is more of a response – “Old Testament? Outdated. Irrelevant. Ancient. Hard to understand. Confusing.” Unfortunately, over the years I have heard from many people that they find the Old Testament daunting and hard to study. It’s common for people to prefer the New Testament with its primarily didactic teaching style. Didactic means that it is intended to provide moral instruction. We tend to like things that are clear cut – do X for Y reason and you’ll see Z output. The narratives and poetry and prophecies of the Old Testament can seem much less understandable and applicable, which leads to them getting a bad rap in the eyes of many.

It’s a real travesty to effectively ignore or eliminate the Old Testament from your Bible study. Without the Old Testament, you really cannot understand the New Testament. What comes before is foundational for what comes later. In fact, if you look at the sermon title for today it says, “Promises Made” for the Overview of the Old Testament. The Old Testament contains many promises from God, which are revealed as “Promises Kept” in the New Testament. But if you didn’t have or know the Old Testament, then you’d miss exactly what is being kept or accomplished in the New Testament! As Pastor Mark Dever puts it, “If Christ is the climax of the story, the Old Testament sets the stage and begins the plot.”

You see, across all 66 books of the Bible, which encompass many different literary genres (narrative, poetry, codes of law, prophecies, dramas, songs, hymns, epics, biographies, letters) there is one consistent plan being revealed throughout it. Through the hands of at least 30 distinct writers across some 1,500 years of history, from the ages of the Egyptian kingdom into the days of Augustus in Rome, the Bible declares a consistent message. This is absolutely incredible and unheard of in human history. The Bible is truly a literary masterpiece that has no comparison.

The consistent message of the Bible from start to finish is that God exists, and he has a plan to create a people for himself so that he can be their God and they will be his people. (Repeat) The Bible unveils God’s grand plan of redemption, as we like to call it, from Genesis to Revelation (start to finish). And it is absolutely crucial to understand the Old Testament if you’re going to get the bigger picture of the Bible.

Before we get into the actual meat of our sermon, I thought it would be helpful to give some facts about the Old Testament. This will help us all be on the same page as we approach our study for today.

I’ve already told you the Old Testament is made up of 39 books. These stretch from Genesis to Malachi. Now if you were to open up to the Table of Contents of your Bible, you’ll see there is a particular order of the books. Let’s talk about that. (CHART)

  • The first 17 books of the Old Testament follow the history of creation and the history of the nation of Israel all the way until the exiles’ return from Babylon. These 17 books are arranged in chronological order.
    • Within these 17, the first 5 (Genesis-Deuteronomy) are known as the Pentateuch or the Law and the next 12 (Joshua-Esther) are known as the Histories. These conclude roughly 400 years before the birth of Christ.
  • Following the first 17 books are a set of 5 books (Job-Song of Solomon) that are known as the Writings. These are wisdom literature and songs that describe individual experiences within Israel’s history.
  • The final 17 books stretch from Isaiah to Malachi and are known as the Prophecies. These provide God’s commentary on Israel’s history through many different prophets that he sends to them.

(TIMELINE) As you can see from this timeline view, there are multiple books overlapping at the same time. This is quite amazing because you have multiple testimonies about the same historic events. The Old Testament gives us a rich understanding of God’s world and the way he intended his people to function within it. Again, how incredible that across such a large length of time, with many different authors writing in many different genres, that the Bible tells a consistent narrative.

By the time we’re done today, I hope that you’ll be able to answer some questions:

  • What essential lessons about the Christian life does the Old Testament teach us?
  • Why is reading, studying, and understanding the history of God’s work with his people in the Old Testament helpful, even essential for understanding who God is?
  • What dangers do we risk by failing to understand how God has worked in history?
  • Is the God of the Old Testament different than the God of the New Testament?
  • What’s the riddle of the Old Testament? What is the answer to that riddle?

So, with those in mind, let’s turn our attention to the study of God’s Word. Our goal today is…

Growing in understanding of God’s plan and purposes

As you might expect, we’re going to start in the very beginning, on page one of the Bible in Genesis 1.

Genesis 1-2

Read verses 1:1-3. The Bible begins with the creation account. Here we have God speaking all things into existence from nothing. If we were to read chapters 1-2, we would see God move progressively through the creation account from making inanimate things such as earth, seas, the sun/moon/and stars, to making sea and land creatures, as well as the pinnacle of his creation – human beings in his own image.

Read 1:26-31. What you’re hearing in these passages is that God has…

  1. A specific plan

God is intentionally going about the fulfillment of his plan. He chose to create. He speaks and brings it into existence. And he created human beings specially to represent and reflect him. They are made in his image and likeness and given the creation mandate to rule and have dominion over the rest of the created order. This reflects the authority God has delegated to humanity. This image-bearing and authority uniquely sets them apart and above the rest of creation.

By the time God gets through with his creation, he looks over it all and sees it is very good. He is pleased with his design. Now chapter 2 of Genesis further zooms in on the creation account of man and woman. In the process of sharing this account, we find that God not only breathed life into man, but he is actively communicating with man about his role on earth. God sets the ground rules of living on earth, and he also forms a woman to be the fitting companion for the man. He clearly cares about his creation and is intimately involved in the details of it.

This is just the start of our understanding of the plan of God to make a people for himself so that he could be in relationship with them as their God. It begins in Genesis 1-2, but we will see that this plan is further unveiled as the Old Testament progresses. In fact, in just the next chapter, we hear of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. It is assumed that this was a normal occurrence in the interactions Adam and Eve had with God. That they were able to enjoy complete and unhindered fellowship with God in the wonderful Garden he had made for them and placed them in.

Can you imagine such a paradise? Perfect beauty, unstained by sin or death, spent with the one you love by your side, unhindered by anything, and to top it all off, in the daily presence of your Creator!? That sounds incredible. God with man. Man with God. Enjoying one another forever.

Yet it wasn’t too last. If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you know that Genesis 3 contains a lot more than just the presence of God in the garden. It also reveals…

  1. A distinct problem

Read Genesis 3:1-7. The distinct problem is sin. Rebellion against God. Adam and Eve chose to listen to the devil and their own desire for knowledge rather than obey God who had forbidden eating of this specific tree.

Their sin is magnified by the identity of the one it is against – a perfectly holy God. God is the most excellent being who is without fault or flaw or sin. And their decision to disobey him is rebellion of the highest order, because he is the King of Kings. There is literally no higher authority for them to have disobeyed.

The narrative of Genesis 3 reveals that God must act in swift judgment upon Adam and Eve. There are immediate consequences for their sin, as their roles become cursed – childbearing becomes hard for the woman and her relationship with man’s leadership over her is twisted while the ground becomes hard for the man to work and care for, his labor will come by sweat and pains where it had been easy before. The consequences didn’t end there as they were then sent from the garden of Eden so that they would not eat of the tree of life and live forever in their sin.

We’re not even out of chapter 3 of Genesis and sin has already done so much damage! It has changed Adam and Eve’s relationship to one another, to their specific roles and interactions with the rest of creation, and their relationship with God. They are now afflicted by the pains of sin and the sting of death. As the book of Genesis progresses in recounting human history, it almost seems like the “plan” has been ruined by man’s sinfulness. Genesis 4-6 recount increasing corruption on the earth. Adam & Eve’s son, Cain, kills his brother, Abel. A man by the name of Lamech brags about his anger and vengeance. By the time we get to Genesis 6, we read this:

Genesis 6:5-8

Read Genesis 6:5-8. God is grieved by the utter wickedness of humanity! How bad do things have to get for God to be in that mindset!? It was really bad. Sin is a major problem throughout human history. Of course, what happens next is God sends the flood upon the earth, yet saves one man’s family – this is the family of Noah.

Unfortunately, even though Noah and his family survived the flood, they eventually succumb to sin as well. By the time we get to Genesis 11, we find humanity joining together to make a great tower to the heavens to make their name great. This becomes known as the Tower of Babel when God confuses their language and makes them unable to communicate with one another. Soon the human race is divided up into distinct language groups that spread over all the earth.

This is just a preview of the destructiveness of sin. It’s clearly a problem that affects all of humanity and it seems as if there is no answer for it. Humanity continues to spiral downward from the height of intimate fellowship with God they had known in the Garden of Eden. What will it take for things to change?!

That’s where Genesis 12 comes into play. After the incident with the Tower of Babel, Scripture zooms into focus on…

  1. A particular people

From Genesis 12-50, we are introduced to a particular people whom God chooses to be his people. It begins with a couple – Abram and Sarai – but God reveals his intentions to make a great nation out of this couple. As you progress through the rest of the book of Genesis, God reveals his plan to create the nation of Israel through Abram and Sarai’s descendants. They are told that through their descendants all the nations would be blessed.

As the plot of Genesis develops, we find that the human descendants of Abram and Sarai are just as plagued by the problem of sin as everyone else. There are all kinds of dysfunctional people in their family tree. However, by the time Genesis is ending, their 12 great-grandchildren end up living in the nation of Egypt. We find out that God is still working out his plan to create a people for himself by protecting them from famine in the land of Egypt.

Wrapping up Genesis moves out of what is known as the Patriarch era into the Exodus era. The next four books (Exodus-Deuteronomy) recount the sending of God’s people from the nation of Egypt to what is known as the Promised Land or the Land of Canaan.  Over the course of these books, God rescues and redeems his people from their captivity in Egypt through the blood of a lamb, he commissions the nation to be his people through the giving of the law at Mount Sinai through the prophet Moses, and this law becomes the process whereby they can be his holy people. Unfortunately, they are unable and unwilling to keep the law. They consistently choose to live however they want and think that they know better than God. Sin is still the very fundamental problem of the human race. Even though they are getting to experience God’s power and presence in incredible ways, they still value their own desires over doing what pleases God.

This pattern of sin is what leads them to disobey God when it comes to entering into the Promised Land to conquer it for their own possession. They are fearful of the nations there and try to come up with another way. God disciplines them for this further rebellion by sending them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years! The entire generation of rebellious Israelites dies during this time and it is the next generation that ends up back on the border of the Promised Land, ready to conquer it. Moses reads the law to them again to prepare them to enter into the Promised Land and be God’s holy people.

This is where the book of Joshua comes into play. Joshua is the successor to Moses, and he is the one who will be tasked with leading Israel into battle. He is told to be strong and courageous by the Lord, because God is with him and will provide the victories. You would think the realization that God is able to establish them where he wants them would be sufficient for Joshua and the Israelites, but they still struggle to trust and obey God. Though they have some initial success in conquering the Promised Land, the people begin to disobey and not follow God’s plan (there’s that sin problem again!).

The books of Judges and Ruth recount for us the period of the judges, where everyone did what was right in their own eyes. We studied this in depth at the beginning of 2022 and heard about the inner turmoil of the sinful nation of Israel. Unfortunately, the characters who rose up to lead Israel during this time were often of deficient character and morality. They and the people around them persisted in sin rather than obedience and it had incredibly detrimental effects on the nation at large. They were quickly becoming just like the pagan nations around them rather than standing out as God’s holy people.

Thankfully, God doesn’t give up on his plan or his people. Throughout their disobedience across the years, he is faithfully at work to accomplish his grand plan of redemption. We get glimpses of it along the way, many of which I have bypassed for now. One example in the Judges era is Ruth and Boaz. These two are a faithful, godly couple against the backdrop of a wicked nation around them. In fact, they will become part of the kingly lineage that is coming.

As the era of the Judges is coming to an end, the Israelites are demanding a king to rule them. They look around at the nations surrounding them and see kings everywhere and decided, “We want one too!” This is further evidence of their sin. They already had a ruler – a divine one – God. But that was not sufficient for them. They wanted a human king. They were not content to be God’s holy nation ruled by God alone.

So, the books of 1 + 2 Samuel and 1 + 2 Kings and 1 + 2 Chronicles go into great detail about the formation and future division of the kingdom of Israel. God gives them what they ask for, a human king, but things go south quickly. It begins with King Saul, who was a handsome man without a lot of character. He disobeys God early on in his kingship and subsequently loses God’s favor. With his power and position threatened, he becomes quite angry and hostile towards his successor – David. These books go into great detail capturing the transition from King Saul to King David and, eventually, King Solomon. Solomon, though the wisest man to ever live, led the nation of Israel very poorly by the end of his life and left a legacy of sinfulness to his heirs. After Solomon, Israel split into the northern and southern kingdoms. The northern kingdom was known as Israel and the southern kingdom as Judah. From here forward the history of these nations gets very tumultuous. Sin abounds in both the men and women leading the nation, as well as the citizens themselves.

This coincides with God sending prophets to confront the nations. God has not given up on his people being his people and he being their God. Though they are incredibly rebellious and wicked, he seeks to confront them repeatedly and call them to repentance (to turn back to him). This is where many of the prophets fit in… God sent them to promise discipline for sin. This was the fulfillment of the curses given to their ancestors all the way back on Mount Sinai with the law. God had told them if they failed to keep their end of the covenant, he would send conquering nations to rule over them and take them into exile. And that is exactly what happens. God judges Israel and Judah through exile. Israel was conquered first by the nation of Assyria and taken away. Then, later, Judah was conquered by the nation of Babylon and taken away.

However, even though they had been sent into exile, God had not given up on his plan or purposes. He continued to send prophets to call them back to himself. He promised to restore them and make a way for them to be his people and he their God. This is captured in multiple of the prophetic books of the Old Testament. And the outcome, of their return from exile, is revealed in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

Thankfully, God did not abandon his people in their sin. He rescued them from exile and brought them back to the Promised Land. However, even though they began rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and the temple within the city, it seemed like the people were all too quick to go back to their sinful ways. Time and again, throughout the Old Testament, the people cannot overcome their sin problem. No matter how great the discipline or how great the rescue, they are unable to change their hearts. They are experiencing the fundamental problem of all humanity – the corruption of sin.

Now, if we stopped here, it would be a depressing ending. Truly humanity has repeatedly turned away from God to their own plans and purposes – usually in rebellion against God. Even when he narrowed his focus down to a single nation to work with to represent and reflect him, they still couldn’t obey. This highlights the power of sin and the destructive bent of the human heart apart from God’s redemptive work within it. Though we are created in God’s image, the problem of sin goes to the core of our personhood. We need an answer for it if we’re ever going to be able to be the people God calls and created us to be!

Thankfully, this is not the ending. In fact, throughout the Old Testament some significant promises and commitments were made by God to his people. I intentionally did not highlight these on our initial flyover of the Old Testament, but now it is time to turn our attention to them. You see, you cannot understand the plan and purposes of God without studying…

  1. His wonderful promises

These promises begin early in the pages of Scripture. Even in the midst of the problem of sin rearing its ugly head in Genesis 3. You see in Genesis 3:15 we have the promise of redemption through a deliverer.

Genesis 3:15 (ESV)

15     I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring;

        he shall bruise your head,

and you shall bruise his heel.”

This is the beginning of a wonderful thread that will continue to be developed throughout Scripture. God has a plan to provide a deliverer – one who will rescue and redeem us from the curse of our sin. This deliverer will conquer the devil and remove the sting of death.

By the time we get to Genesis 12, we are presented with another promise of God that coincides with this earlier one.

Genesis 12:1–3 (ESV)

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

God promises Abram that he will provide land, seed (offspring/descendants), and blessing. That through Abram all the nations would be blessed. The Israelites originally thought this was fulfilled in Abram and Sarai’s son, Isaac, but it turns out that this was foreshadowing a much later descendant, the same promised seed of a woman who would crush the serpent’s head…

As world history and the narrative of Scripture advances, more promises are made by God to his people. One of these promises that is of incredible significance is found in God’s interactions with Moses on top of Mount Sinai. It is found in Exodus 34 when God reveals himself to Moses on the mountaintop.

Exodus 34:4–7 (ESV)

4 So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. 5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

In this interaction, God provides an incredible amount of self-revelation about himself that dictates how he will respond to the people. What does he reveal about his character? He is a merciful and gracious God. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The Israelites would personally experience these attributes throughout their rebellious history with God. He is a God who keeps steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, BUT who will be no means clear the guilty… Now that’s quite the riddle, isn’t it? How can God be both forgiving of sin BUT also not clear the guilty? If we’re all sinners, then aren’t we all guilty? How can God forgive any of us if we have rebelled against him!? This is the problem of sin that we’ve seen afflicts everyone, everywhere. And this is the riddle of the Old Testament that needs an answer.

Which is why it is so important to understand that God promises to send a Messiah. One who would make a way for the people.

Isaiah 53

Read all of Isaiah 53. This passage is the clearest revelation of the coming Messiah, the Suffering Servant of the Lord, the answer to the riddle of the Old Testament. He would make it possible for sinners to be forgiven by bearing the guilt of our sins upon himself, taking the punishment we deserved, and in exchange giving us righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Old Testament ends without this Suffering Servant being revealed to us. The Israelites were left waiting in anticipation for the Messiah, the Davidic King who would rule forever, whom had been promised to them. The One who would be their sacrificial lamb that took away their sins. They would have to wait for over 400 years until the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. For the next 400 years, it was silent. No prophets were sent from God. They were just waiting and watching. Hoping that one would come to rescue them from the penalty of their sin and death.

Thankfully, we don’t have to wait 400 years for our answer! We have the benefit of being aware of the person and work of Jesus Christ. The Son of God, the light and life of the world, the One who did come down and made a way for us. He is the answer to the problem of our sin in light of the holiness of God. And that is what the New Testament unpacks for us.

You may be familiar with the 4-fold breakdown of the plan of God in Scripture:

  • Creation
  • Fall
  • Redemption
  • New Creation

Only the first two are seen in the Old Testament. The latter two are only hinted at in the Old Testament, but they are fulfilled in the New Testament (Promises Kept). We’ll cover those in detail later this year when we do an overview of the New Testament. For now, I hope you are more confident and comfortable with how to approach and study the Old Testament, as well as convinced of its necessity for our lives today.

You may recall I posed some questions earlier. Let’s make sure we’ve answered them clearly.

  • What essential lessons about the Christian life does the Old Testament teach us?

As we just stated, primarily that we are all dead in our sin and in need of a Savior. That we cannot work our way to holiness or heaven. We need rescue and redemption!

  • Why is reading, studying, and understanding the history of God’s work with his people in the Old Testament helpful, even essential for understanding who God is?

There is so much revealed about God’s character and plan/purposes in history in the Old Testament that without it we would arrive at a misguided view of him. By spending time and effort in the Old Testament, we better understand the glories of God and our position in relationship to him. It gives us an increased awe of God and an increased humility about ourselves. We need to realize life isn’t primarily about us. It’s about him and bringing him glory. We are made to represent and reflect him!

  • What dangers do we risk by failing to understand how God has worked in history?

We risk puffing ourselves up and repeating the same sinful choices as those who have gone before us. We would downplay the significance of our sin and act like it’s no big deal. We might devalue the things God says are valuable – such as holiness, human life, human sexuality, kindness, sacrificial service, and so on. We certainly see this happening in the secular world around us. And we would arrive at a warped view of life on this earth and what God expects of us.

  • Is the God of the Old Testament different than the God of the New Testament?

No. He is the unchanging God. He is steadfastly loving, patient, long-suffering, yet righteous and wrathful in both the Old and New Testaments. By studying both Testaments, we arrive at robust, rich view of God.

  • What’s the riddle of the Old Testament? What is the answer to that riddle?

The riddle is how can a holy God forgive sin yet not let the guilty go unpunished? The answer is Jesus Christ bearing the guilt of our sins for us and exchanging his righteousness for our sin. He is the only hope of humanity, and we must believe in him!

If you have questions about that, I’d love to talk with you more after the service.

Let’s pray.

Pray

  • Lord, give us understanding. Give us a desire to know you above all else. Help us to have a hunger for knowing you and living for you. May we be dissatisfied with sin. May we see that going our own way and living for our own selfish desires does not satisfy and that it produces death and separation from you! For anyone who is here this morning wrestling with what they believe, help them to see the clarity of your design and plan and purposes from the Scriptures. Help them to be in awe of the consistency of your plan as revealed in the Bible. Give them the courage to ask the questions that are on their heart and mind this morning and to be willing to listen to the answers from your Word. Thank you for the privilege of a new day and new year to represent and reflect you. We pray that we would be good ambassadors for Christ in 2023.