JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. Today we’re doing something a bit different. As we mentioned last week, Jason DeRouchie is taking the summer off from GearTalk. However, we figured out a way to keep him around for another week. We’ll be kicking off our Summer of Story series in the weeks to come. Today, however, we’re replaying a podcast Jason recorded with Shane Rosenthal on the Humble Skeptic podcast titled, “How Did Jesus View the Old Testament?”

Jesus’ understanding of the first three quarters of the Bible should matter to all Christians. He had a biblical theology, and understanding his views proves critical in developing our own biblical theology. We want to rightly understand how the Bible progresses, integrates, and climaxes in Christ. Today’s podcast, again originally aired on the Humble Skeptic, will help us do that.

SR: Hey there, welcome back to the Humble Skeptic Podcast. I’m Shane Rosenthal.

According to Luke 24, after his resurrection, Jesus walked with two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, and during that journey, we’re told that, quote, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” So what passages did Jesus likely have in mind as he discussed the Hebrew Bible with these two disciples?

Joining me to discuss this question is Jason DeRouchie, who is research professor of Old Testament and biblical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He’s also the author of How to Understand and Apply the Old Testament and Delighting in the Old Testament.

On this episode, I’ll primarily be talking with him about a chapter he wrote for the book, 40 Questions about Biblical Theology. In this chapter, he observes that, quote, “the only Bible Jesus had was what we call the Old Testament, and he said that it was about him. Therefore, according to Jesus, when we faithfully understand the Scriptures, what we will see in the Old Testament is a message of the Messiah, his death and his resurrection, and the global mission he would generate. To him all redemptive history points, and through him God fulfills all previous promises.”

So when I first had the opportunity to speak with Dr. DeRouchie, I asked him to discuss those comments in more detail.

JD: Well, here at the culmination of Jesus’ time on earth, he declares after his resurrection to his disciples that he had come to fulfill everything that was written in his Bible—the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, which I believe is an echo of the three parts of Jewish Scriptures: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and then Jesus in his own words gives us what it means to understand them. If we understand his Old Testament rightly, what we will arrive at is this: “Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.”

So we have the suffering and sovereign Messiah and global missions. So when I approach the Old Testament, that is the synthesis of the message I’m anticipating to find, because Jesus tells me that’s what I should see.

SR: Isaiah 49—Yahweh himself says it’s too small a thing for this redemption to atone for the sins of Israel. This is going to go to the ends of the earth.

JD: Absolutely. And Luke himself in Acts 26 alludes to that exact text in verses 22 and 23, when he identifies Paul declaring, “I’m telling you nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said would come to pass,” and then it’s this restatement of Jesus’ own words. Acts 26:22 and 23, where he says that the Christ must suffer, and by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.

So once again, that synthesis of Jesus’ Bible—where is it heading? What is it ultimately declaring? It’s declaring a suffering and triumphant Messiah and the mission, a global mission that he alone would spark.

SR: And you certainly see that suffering aspect as you continue forward in Isaiah’s prophecy as you move from 49 down to 52 and 53. This is the Lamb who is bearing our sin and taking our guilt and then also being cut off from the land of the living and seeing light.

JD: That’s exactly right. That’s such an amazing picture that God was pleased to crush him, Isaiah 53:10, that he might become a sacrifice for guilt. And then Isaiah 53:11 just goes further where the Prophet just declares that the righteous one counted many righteous and he bore their iniquity. Our sins upon him, his righteousness counted for ours—it’s 2 Corinthians 5:21. He became sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might be regarded, counted, enjoyed, the righteousness of God.

And then he’s dividing spoils in a victory celebration. This same one who was just cut off and is laid in the grave with the wicked. So there’s death, burial, atonement, resurrection—it’s all there in Isaiah 53.

SR: you also say in your essay in this book that Jesus teaches this idea that he is the major subject of Scripture. He talks about this in various texts, not just in Luke 24 as he’s walking on the road to Emmaus. What are the places in the New Testament we can go to see Christ’s own way of pointing us to the fact that he’s the center of the Old Testament?

JD: Oh, we have texts like John chapter 5. It’s such a beautiful text where he declares, “You search the Scriptures”—John 5:39—”search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me.”

That is an amazing declaration on Jesus’ part. Matthew 13:17, or restated in just a little bit different way in Luke 10, where he says that many prophets and kings longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it, meaning they saw that he was coming, and yet they couldn’t grasp him like we are able to grasp him.

I think of 1 Peter chapter 1, not spoken by Jesus, but reflecting on such realities, when Peter said, “The very grace that is ours was proclaimed by those prophets of old as they searched and inquired carefully, inquiring to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was foretelling when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but us.”

As I read that text, what I’m seeing is that people like Isaiah were searching and inquiring carefully to understand more about the person and the time of the Messiah’s coming.

Paul said that he was set apart as an apostle, Romans 1, to declare the gospel of God. So it’s good news that comes from God that was promised beforehand by the prophets in the sacred writings. So the very prophets themselves were the agents, the Scripture that is the Old Testament was the vehicle, it was a gospel concerning the Son, the coming of Christ. The good news that was hoped for is now realized. That which was shadow now becomes substance, that which was promised is now fulfilled. That’s what Jesus brings.

SR: Don’t you think that a lot of places, if you pop into an average church on an average Sunday, you’re going to get moral lessons from the Old Testament, but this theme of Christ in the Old Testament is harder to find. Would you agree with that?

JD: Well, I would. I think that not only is the fact that it’s three-fourths of our Bible that is even further removed from the church, and people are just less familiar, and it takes more interpretive work to rightly handle that part of Scripture. And so yes, I think it intimidates many, but may the Lord awaken increasingly a generation that recognizes that this was Jesus’ Scripture, and he, by his grace, becomes the means by which we can read it rightly.

I’m thinking about Paul in Romans 16, how he says a secret, a mystery that was kept hidden for long ages has now been revealed, disclosed to us in the very sacred writings that we call the Old Testament. That’s all there. The hope of the gospel is all there, and now, like Paul, in light of the resurrected Son of God, we should never read our Old Testament in the same way.

SR: Yeah, and the sermons that you find in the book of Acts tell that same story. They’re preaching Christ and all that he accomplished by means of Old Testament passages, right?

JD: It is exactly right. You think of Acts chapter 3—Peter declares what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he has fulfilled.

SR: Now, we’ve already talked about a text like Isaiah 53, but what other texts come to mind when you think of this idea of a suffering Messiah?

JD: That’s good. I’m going to jump all the way back. It begins in the garden. It begins in Genesis 3:15, when a single male offspring of the woman—he, it’s a single masculine pronoun—is associated with the woman who will ultimately bruise the head, a death blow to the serpent himself while enduring a bruise to his heel. Already from the very beginning of Genesis, before God even declares his judgment on man and woman, he’s anticipating a single individual who will rise and enter into great battle against the evil one himself, the one who has been a murderer from the beginning, who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. One will come, like Adam should have been, but unlike Adam, because where Adam failed, he will succeed. He will truly be the guardian, and he will overcome that power, and the implication is by that victory, the curse will go in reverse and give rise to global new creation blessing.

Jumping ahead—we could go to a number of other texts in the Pentateuch—but I just want to think about the Psalter. In the Psalter, it opens up with this blessed man: “Blessed is the man,” and then that’s Psalm 1:1. Psalm 2 has numerous allusions back to Psalm 1, and Psalm 2 ends with “blessed are those who find refuge in him.” Who’s the him? It’s this reigning, anointed one—we would translate that as the Messiah—who’s standing next to Yahweh. And my understanding is that the blessed man is not us; the blessed man is the Messiah. We get to Messiah, who stands in our stead, who himself went where we couldn’t go.

He is a new Joshua figure, who now not only is commanded to meditate—he is meditating on the law day and night, and all the nations are raging against him. And it’s intriguing that Psalm 2 is cited in Acts chapter 4. Peter is praying to God, and he’s saying, you know, who is it that killed the Messiah? And he says, “Why did the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against you, against the Lord and against his Messiah,” for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, oh God—Herod was there, Pontius Pilate was there, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

In the Psalter, we see a testimony of the tribulation and triumph of the Messiah. What we begin to see are these cycles of great animosity against the king, who endures intense suffering, and then comes on the other side victorious. And then after he comes out victorious, a community is birthed—there’s brothers, an entire generation that are following him and praising him. And it all begins in Psalm 1 and 2 where the nations are raging against the anointed, and then God declares, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Paul cites that text in Acts 13 in direct relationship to the resurrection. So there has been aggression from the nations standing against the Messiah, and it’s happening to this day. Oh my, is it happening. There’s aggression all around us, and the beast is trying to win, and yet Revelation declares victory will be ours, because first it was the victory of the Lamb.

SR: One text that comes to mind for me, in addition to Isaiah 53 and Psalm 2, is Zechariah 12, where you find Yahweh himself saying, “They will look upon me whom they have pierced.”

JD: Zechariah’s vision of the Messiah as one who brings forth new creation, who will reign on the very throne of God in the temple of God—it all comes about by this great battle, a singular battle that is anticipated, that includes Israel standing against Yahweh himself and standing against his priestly royal instrument.

As you already said in Zechariah 12 verse 10, God declares, “I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy,” so we have God saying he is going to alter the hearts of people and pour out grace and mercy when they look on him whom they have pierced. They shall mourn for him, and then just a few verses later, “On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.” So it is a beautiful picture there of what is going to be accomplished.

God himself is going to endure piercing. It’s similar language to Psalm 22, where you have this declaration, “They have pierced my hands and feet.”

SR: Or Isaiah, where it says he was pierced for our transgressions.

JD: Exactly. It is this graphic image of the type of realities that we see portrayed exactly in crucifixion, and it is the hope of the gospel.

SR: And that’s why the church’s mission today is not to be the gospel, but to proclaim the gospel that was achieved by Christ. I mean, that’s the trajectory that you find in Psalm 22 and Zechariah. I mean, Psalm 22—you talked about this where you had this language that Jesus himself quotes on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And it’s a prophecy of the fact that this Messiah’s hands and feet would be pierced, but it ends with, if you go down to verse 29, for example, of Psalm 22, “All the earth shall come and worship.” That’s the trajectory, which we see in the book of Acts. I mean, you find the death, burial, resurrection of the Messiah, and then you have the announcement that starts from Jerusalem to Judea to all the ends of the earth.

JD: That’s it. Just two verses before that in verse 27, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.” Remember what? Remember what Psalm 22 is declaring—this cross and resurrection experience. And then it says, “All the families of the nations shall worship before you.” That’s just Revelation 5 and Revelation 7 worked out right there in Psalm 22.

SR: Or even the promises that God made to Abraham in Genesis, you know, “Through your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That was the original mission.

JD: That’s right. And yet, just like Paul says in Galatians 3, verse 8, “The gospel was preached beforehand to Abraham saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.'” The promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring, 3:16. It doesn’t say “and to his offsprings,” referring to many, but “to his offspring,” that is Christ. And then, verse 29, “If you are in Christ, you become Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promises.” All who are in Jesus inherit all the promises of Abraham.

SR: So if you’re united to the head, you become a co-heir with Christ because of his victory, his achievement.

JD: That’s exactly right.

SR: What Old Testament passages would you say hint at Christ’s resurrection? We’ve already talked about the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, who’s laid in the grave and then sees light. But what other texts would you point us to?

JD: Jesus himself pointed to the story of Jonah. And Jesus points back to that—just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for those three days, so must the Son of Man be in that belly.

Beyond that, you have a text like Hosea chapter 6, where Hosea, who has already identified that Israel the people will become not God’s people—that’s one of the names that are given to Hosea’s daughter: “Not my people,” Lo-ammi. And this “not my people,” though… The vision is that those who are not God’s people will become God’s people. And Paul in Romans 9 cites Hosea chapter 1 and identifies, we’re talking about multi-ethnic inclusion, not just Jews, but Gentiles who were not God’s people becoming God’s people.

And it’ll happen, we’re told in Hosea chapter 3, through a second exodus that’s led by Yahweh their God and David, this Messianic King. In that context, we read of Israel that they will be saved in two days. Indeed, they will rise in three days, Hosea chapter 6. And I think that this is an image. How are the people of God going to rise out of their grave? They’re going to rise ultimately through this victory of the Messiah.

We could also go further back. We could go to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 32:39 says, “I am Yahweh, that is my name. See now that I am he, and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal.”

Now, in the book of Deuteronomy, exiled Israel’s ultimate curse is portrayed as their destruction. But that’s why it’s significant that after it says, “I kill, I make alive. I wound and I heal.” Because healing comes after wounding, we know that becoming alive comes after the dying. So God is here envisioning what Deuteronomy 30 then unpacks as ultimate restoration, a new covenant that is directly associated with a prophet like but better than Moses, who will mediate this new work of God.

SR: And that “I am he” language that you find there in Deuteronomy 32 comes up again and again throughout Isaiah, and also happens to be the basis of all the “I am” statements that Jesus himself makes in the fourth gospel—like when he declares, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

JD: That’s right.

SR: And so when you put all that together with the fact that in John 11, he brings his friend Lazarus back to life, it becomes clear, doesn’t it, that we’re not just dealing with some kind of prophet. This is the very one who has the power of life itself.

JD: Yes. I’ll add one more using the—maybe I’ll add two more, using the imagery of Paul. Two of the images that he uses commonly for resurrection: water, as in baptism, and a seed having to die in the ground and becoming new creation.

It seems to me very likely based on texts like 1 Peter that portrays the flood as baptism or Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 who portrays the Red Sea as a baptism. Right. What we have here is a judgment ordeal—in the language of Meredith Kline, a water ordeal—where God himself declares judgment against his enemy, and yet through this judgment come some who are saved, be it Noah and his family or Israel as a people. There is a new creation dawning through the flood. There is a new creation dawning through the birth of Israel in the waters, and both of them, typologically, as pointers, these events anticipate something greater.

I’d just go back one step further. I mentioned the seed in the ground. This wasn’t brought up by me, but it’s significant that it’s on day three, a third day resurrection. That’s what we need to find—not only that the Bible, the Old Testament, tells us that Jesus would rise, but that he would rise on the third day, according to the Scriptures. We saw that in Hosea 6. We see the potential third day resurrection already anticipated in Genesis chapter 1. This is original creation in contrast to new creation that Jesus brings. When is it that we first see signs in the terrestrial sphere of new creation that a seed that was once dead has become alive? It’s on day three. This is when the plants sprout on day three in the original creation week. And it may be one small sign that Paul has in mind in 1 Corinthians 15 when he identifies the growth of a seed as the start of new creation and identifies it with the resurrection of Jesus.

SR: There’s a line in the book of Hebrews, isn’t there, about Abraham receiving back his son Isaac? And in a sense, it was a kind of resurrection. And that too was a third day. He told his servants that they would be back after three days. Do you see anything significant about that?

JD: I do. Genesis 22 is a beautiful text, and it includes both the suffering and the triumph, the imagery. But it was a three days’ journey we were told from when Abraham left with his son Isaac and with his servants. And then they arrive at Moriah, which 1 Chronicles tells us is the very place where Jerusalem is established, where David builds the first altar that becomes the temple mount and ultimately foreshadows the very place where Jesus would die.

But like you said, Abraham, who knew—God told him sacrifice your son, Isaac, whom you love. Abraham also knew in the previous chapter, Genesis 21, that God said it was through Isaac that your offspring—that is the ultimate offspring of promise, Messiah Jesus—would be reckoned. It’s going to happen through Isaac, which Abraham knew that whatever happens at Mount Moriah is going to result in something greater. So he said to his servants, “I and my son will go and sacrifice and then we will return.” And the writer of Hebrews rightly says Abraham believed in the resurrection.

SR: So you’re talking in your book about the way that biblical theology highlights Old Testament characters and events, not as ends in themselves, but in a way that anticipates and helps to clarify the Messiah’s coming work. Can you talk about that?

JD: Yeah, what I’m wanting to highlight there is that there are throughout the Old Testament what theologians often call types. And these types are persons like Moses or events like the exodus or institutions like the temple, all of which in some way anticipate the coming of Jesus.

So Moses—we’re told in Deuteronomy 18, we’re looking for a prophet like Moses, and then it specifies it’s specifically a covenant-mediating prophet, just like you were set apart at Mount Sinai to stand between me and the people. So too, this greater prophet will be one who mediates a covenant. That’s why I don’t believe any Old Testament prophets fit the bill. All of them were merely covenant enforcers. Jesus alone becomes the covenant-mediating prophet.

SR: Yeah, in the days of that new covenant that Jeremiah said would not be like the covenant made at Mount Sinai.

JD: That’s right. It’s going to be better because the law is going to be internalized and ultimately it’s going to magnify God through the people’s obedience

SR: and through the forgiveness of sins that would be communicated. And everyone will be enjoying that forgiveness in this new covenant.

JD: So an event like the exodus—the exodus is a type that anticipates the greater exodus. And in Luke chapter 9, it’s the only place in the New Testament where the term “exodus” shows up. My ESV translates it “departure,” but Moses and Elijah are on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus talking with him about the exodus that he would undergo in Jerusalem.

SR: Yeah, he’s about to accomplish a departure, which is weird because you don’t usually accomplish a departure, but if you translate that as you say, the exodus, this is the ultimate exodus. He is the Paschal Lamb that is slain, and that’s how the people enter into the new promised land. And as he says throughout the gospel of John, you know, he is the living water. He is the bread from heaven. Those things were the temporal pointers, the indicators, but he is the reality to which all those things point.

JD: He is the reality. So you just mentioned a number of institutions—the Passover Lamb, we could add the temple. In John, Jesus is the temple. That’s an institution.

Now, one element you drew up in your question was in what way are these types not only pointers, but how do they clarify? My point in bringing that up—often when types are talked about, they are only referred to as pointers. They are prophecies, predictions that God set in motion in space and time in order to anticipate the work of Christ. My point in talking about how they clarify and not only anticipate is that when we come to Jesus and we learn that he accomplished an exodus in Jerusalem, we are given the account of the first exodus to better understand what Luke is saying when he identifies that Jesus did an exodus, or when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5 that he is indeed the Passover Lamb.

We can’t, once we arrive at the antitype, at the substance that the shadows pointed to—we can’t say we don’t need the shadows anymore. Yes, the shadows have passed, but what I mean by clarifying is that we still need all of Scripture in order to rightly understand who Jesus is and the work that he accomplished. We need the first exodus event in order to provide clarity about what Jesus is doing as an exodus, but then we also need Jesus’ work as the ultimate answer to give clarity, more clarity to what the whole purpose of the first exodus was about.

SR: Exactly.

JD: So in my chapter on mystery in “40 Questions,” I talk about how the patterns, these types in the Old Testament, they set up a system that still needs resolution, and I think the New Testament sends us back to the Old Testament to understand the relationship of the patterns and how we’re supposed to read them ultimately for the glory of God and the exaltation of Jesus.

SR: Now in John 1:18, we’re told that, quote, “No one has ever seen God. The only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” And similarly in his letter to the Colossians, Paul refers to Jesus as, quote, “the image of the invisible God.” And texts of this kind lead you to conclude that, quote, “whenever Yahweh becomes embodied in a human form in the Old Testament, we are most likely meeting the pre-incarnate Son.” So what Old Testament passages come to mind when you think of Yahweh appearing in a human form?

JD: In the story of the three visitors to Abraham,

SR: Genesis 18—

JD: That’s right, the two visitors are angels, but the other figure is there. And the text just says “Yahweh said,” it’s when he talks, it’s Yahweh’s words.

SR: This is the same individual whom Abraham had just said, “Let a little water be brought so that you can wash your feet.”

JD: That’s right. This is an embodiment of one whose very identity is like Yahweh. In Joshua chapter 5, we see Joshua right on the cusp of the Promised Land. And one shows up. And Joshua says, “Are you for us or for them?” And he says, “No, I’m the commander of the army of Yahweh of hosts.” And then “Take off your sandals, for the place you’re standing is holy ground,” in echo of Exodus 3. This individual demands—it’s like he’s embodying the very holiness of the Lord.

And we could jump ahead to a text like Isaiah chapter 6, where “I saw the Lord seated on the throne.” And these heavenly beings were flying around saying, “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh Almighty. The whole earth will be full of his glory.” And then in John chapter 12, what we’re told is Isaiah saw Jesus’s glory. So it leads me to think that at least many of these manifestations are nothing less than Christ himself.

SR: One of my favorite scenes is Genesis 32 where Jacob has a mysterious wrestling partner show up in the middle of the night. And at the end of that ordeal, he says, “I have seen God face to face.” So what you’re saying is that if it’s God in human form, and you combine that with the language we find in the gospel of John—”No one has ever seen God, except for the one who is at his right hand has made him known”—so anytime you see an embodiment of God in the Old Testament, that must be or is more likely to be Jesus in the Old Testament.

JD: It seems to me, yes, that it needs to be that it likely is a manifestation of the divine Son. It takes me all the way back to Exodus 33, where Moses himself says, “Let me see your glory.”

SR: And he says, “You can’t handle the glory.

JD: You can’t handle the glory.” So at one level, we have to say that if people are seeing God fully embodied, then it has to be the Son, not the Father, according to the gospel.

SR: Would you read that into Genesis 3 in light of what we’ve read? you know, in Genesis 3, we’re told that Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden. So apparently he has feet and he can walk, and then they hide from his presence because they’ve just committed sin. So do you think that we should at least think about that possibly being the pre-incarnate Christ since it seems to be an embodiment of God?

JD: It certainly could be. That’s possible. I mean, Jude 5 says who was it that saved Israel out of Egypt? he says, Christ. Jesus led you out of Egypt. We have to have some category that’s able to understand that the second person of the Trinity led the exodus. And I think in that instance, it’s that this person is bound up with this category of the arm of God, the arm of Yahweh. How is it that God… It’s fleshed out all the way through Isaiah, and it culminates in Isaiah 53 verses 1 and 2, where the very arm of God is the very one who suffers on behalf of the many. It’s the arm of Yahweh who grows up like a shoot before Yahweh himself, and who experiences great oppression at the hands of the nation, and then suffers on behalf of the many and brings victory. That arm is none other than the second person of the Trinity. The servant Israel, personally, the Messiah himself.

SR: You know, along those lines, one of my favorite passages is from Isaiah 59, where God looks around and sees that there’s no one to help, no one to intercede. And so then his own arm brings them salvation.

JD: And then that very arm dresses for battle with this armor that Paul builds on in Ephesians—

JD: Oh, right. Yeah.

JD: —chapter 6, the armor of God is none other than the armor of the Messiah straight out of Isaiah.

SR: And so, yeah, I totally agree with you. So the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness, we should think of as objective—this is Christ’s righteousness that I wear.

JD: That’s exactly the very means by which he accomplished his victory, his perfect righteousness, his belt of truth, his embodiment of all that honors God—is what allowed him to gain that vindication, that declaration of righteousness at the resurrection. And that’s what we are wearing, and it’s what we stand against the devil with. We stand in with such armor.

So numerous images of Yahweh in the Old Testament, I argue in that chapter, that they set us up to celebrate, to see and to savor the divine Son, because Jesus is the one who makes this God known to us. And as John says, we have seen him, we have heard him, the one who is the only begotten of the Father, full of grace, full of truth.

SR: And that language that you find throughout the Old Testament with the angel of the Lord, basically the messenger of Yahweh, the one sent by Yahweh—is the very language you find on the lips of Jesus throughout the fourth gospel again, where he says, “I’m the one sent by the Father.” So he’s basically identifying as that same one, right?

JD: That’s really good. Really good. Yes.

SR: One last question I’d like to put to you before we conclude, and that’s how does the study of biblical theology help us to celebrate Christ as we attempt to apply the moral instruction we find in the Old Testament to our lives today?

JD: Well, this is huge. The Old Testament is loaded with ethical imperatives, whether in the Mosaic law or in the wisdom literature. And I believe we should never approach the Old Testament apart from Christ. It’s not only that the Old Testament points to him—and that’s what much of this episode has been about—it’s that we don’t enter into the Scripture rightly; we should not apart from him. We need grace to engage in every ethical imperative. And therefore, when we’re told by Moses, “Love the Lord your God with all,” and then we see that Jesus reaffirms that in a text like Mark 12, we have to do so in light of, and only in light of the beautiful pattern that Jesus has set that Abraham and Moses never had. Jesus in his life sets a perfect pattern of what living for the glory of God looks like. “Not my will, but yours be done.”

But much more than a pattern. Jesus provides power for our living. And how does he do that? he provides us pardon. I should not approach my pursuit of holiness apart from blood-bought grace. God’s grace does not make my working unnecessary. God’s grace is what makes my working possible. He shapes our will, our desire. He’s the one who shapes our work, our activity, every behavioral change, every overcoming of sin in our lives. It’s blood-bought. And so I think the pursuit of ethical imperatives in the Old Testament is done in a context of radical glorifying to Jesus because at the cross and through his resurrection, he purchased our pardon and he purchased promises. And that frames our entire pursuit of holiness.

SR: And this is why you point out that Second Timothy 3:15 talks about the fact that the sacred writings—there referring to the Old Testament—are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ. Again, Jesus is the point. It directs our attention to him, and now we live a life of gratitude, honoring Christ and following his new commandment of loving and serving one another.

JD: That’s exactly right. He has used another section of Peter. He has given us all that we need for life and for godliness. We have a living hope. And we can only rightly appropriate the Old Testament, not only as a document pointing to Christ, but when we approach the Old Testament through Christ, from Christ, he operates as a lens for right reading and he also operates as the very generator of right living.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Today’s podcast originally played on the Humble Skeptic podcast. Go check it out. For resources related to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org and jasonderouchie.com. In addition to ongoing work like GearTalk and trips to train pastors and leaders, we’re working on a number of exciting new projects. To donate to the work of Hands to the Plow, visit handstotheplow.org.