JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on Biblical theology. Today, Tom and Jason talk about the New Testament’s perspective on the Old Testament. It turns out the New Testament authors had a lot to say about what for them was their only Bible. Hopefully, today’s podcast will make you want to pick up the Old Testament and read or, if you’re a preacher, to use the text in your preaching. You’ll find a whole chapter on this topic in Jason’s new book, Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and for Christ. We’ll put a link to the book in our show notes.

TK: Jason, I am holding in my hand a burgundy book. I got it in the mail a couple of weeks ago. The title says, Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and for Christ. Do you know about this book?

JD: I do, Tom. I praise the Lord that God has allowed it to be published with Crossway just on February 13th. It went live, and it’s a joy to have it done. What that meant was my family got a Costco cake.

TK: Nice.

JD: When God brings a book in, we want all the family who’s invested in this to be able to celebrate together. The kids were excited. The Costco cake arrived and we praised the Lord. Then we got to have a second one at our small group because they were like, “We want to be a part. We prayed for you,” so we got another one. I rejoice in God’s faithfulness and my prayer truly is that God would let this book—being in the Old Testament, the initial three-fourths of the Christian Scriptures—that God would use this book to help people truly be able to use the Old Testament more for their devotions, to be able to see God and celebrate God, to encounter his glory, to hope in his promises, to understand how Moses’s law matters for us through Jesus, to be able to meet the Divine Son and the resurrected Messiah in his Scriptures. That’s my hope—that the initial three-fourths of the Christian Bible would increasingly be opened up as God’s Word for believers today. May God let it happen.

TK: Okay, well, go get a Costco cake if you listen to this, because we’re celebrating all of us now that we have this. I’ll put a link to this in the show notes. I think for me the title Delighting in the Old Testament really does define something that happened in my life, but it wasn’t always the case. I think I found I was perplexed maybe by the Old Testament. That would be a fair statement. I delighted in parts of it, but there were whole portions that I found confusing, boring—take your pick on whole parts. And what I like in a book like this, other books like this, is it can open windows to seeing things that maybe I’ve missed before. “Oh, I didn’t know this did this. I didn’t know Moses was doing this when he wrote a particular section,” and it really does open up delight.

So Jason, I’m looking at—I wanted to ask you about the first chapter here, and we’re not necessarily talking about the first chapter. We’re talking about an idea here. And you kind of put two chapters back-to-back. One was “The New Testament’s Perspective on the Old Testament’s Audience and Comprehension.” So that’s a funny—it’s a funny way to say it, but when I think about the Old Testament audience and what they knew, their comprehension, what does the New Testament say about that? Apparently, just based on your title, you’re saying the New Testament authors have some thoughts about it, and they say things about the people who listened in Old Testament times and what they understood. So let’s start with New Testament authors talking about that. What do they say about the big picture of the Old Testament? Who were the Old Testament authors writing for? Because you’ll frequently hear they were writing for their own generation primarily. I read that quite a bit. Do you read that?

JD: Yes, I read it this morning just how important it is when we approach the Old Testament that we allow the discrete voice of the Old Testament itself to stand without being influenced by the New, as if we are to be readers who act as though Christ hasn’t come. And yet when we read the New Testament, we see that from the New Testament perspective, those prophets who were writing in the Old were serving—it was revealed to them that is, Moses and Isaiah and Nahum—it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you, the church of Jesus this side of the cross. And so that’s First Peter, chapter one, verse 12. And seeing such a statement is very significant.

I’ll just say Tom, this is chapter one, but it used to be chapter two originally. When I first wrote the book, I had the Old Testament perspective on the Old Testament’s audience and comprehension. And one of those who read the book thought most of our readers are more familiar with the New Testament, right? And they live in the world of the apostles. They don’t live in the world of the Old Testament prophets. So how about you open with what’s most familiar? Let’s go to the New Testament and allow the New Testament to offer its reflections. And then in chapter two, go back and see that the prophets themselves—that these aren’t New Testament concepts alone, these New Testament concepts are grounded in the prophets’ own perspective.

But this first chapter really was talking about the reality—what is, what does it mean that it was revealed to them, that is the Old Testament prophets who spoke of the grace, the saving grace that is ours? What does it mean that they were serving not themselves, but you? This is the New Testament perspective that the Old Testament Scriptures were for Christians today.

TK: So you make a point here, and I’m just reading it. You say it’s from—for Paul, this is on page 20, “The Old Testament was Christian Scripture and fully applicable to believers when read through Christ.” So there were—there were no Christians when the Old Testament was written. They were old covenant believers in Yahweh, yet you’re describing it as Christian Scripture. So get me there.

JD: Well, I’m building off of texts like Romans 15:4 where right after citing Psalm 69 and noting the struggles that Christ endured as represented in Psalm 69, Paul simply says, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, in order that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we as believers today might have hope.” That God wrote the Old Testament for the instruction of Christians. And so that’s what I mean when I say for Paul, the Old Testament was Christian Scripture. It had valuable information clarifying who God was, what his purposes were for reality. It gave us, according to Romans chapter one, the very Gospel of God was promised beforehand by the prophets in the Holy Scriptures. That is the gospel concerning the Son. Paul’s Bible was about Christ, and once he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he realized that. It was like a veil was removed from his eyes so that he could now see what was there. And what he found was a text deeply valuable for believers today.

TK: And obviously you are arguing here this is not just Paul saying it’s Christian Scripture. You’re saying this would be universally held by the apostles.

JD: That’s right. Peter would be stressing, as I already opened up, that the very prophets who spoke of the grace that would be ours, the saving grace of God that would be ours—that’s what they were speaking about. Those very prophets were searching and inquiring carefully, inquiring to know what person and time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

So these prophets like Jeremiah, like Zechariah, were searching and inquiring—inquiring to know something about who Jesus would be and when Jesus would come as the Spirit guided them. And so I think that they were—I mean, individuals like Habakkuk, he was wrestling with Isaiah, and individuals like Haggai was thinking about Moses, and they were seeking as spiritual men to interpret spiritual revelation. And as they were doing it, they were doing it for a future generation.

TK: And you’re saying they knew this, they knew it.

JD: They knew it. That’s what—when Peter says it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but us, that means that Moses understood that his audience was in the dark and his words would matter little for them, but his words would matter a lot for the restoration community living in the other side of exile. That Ezekiel understood that in his thirty-year ministry, though we have no evidence in the book that anyone ever listened to him—in all of his shepherding, no signs that any person ever listened to him. Instead, we’re told in Ezekiel 33 that to him they were but an entertainer, a singer of love songs. But as soon as what he declared came true, they would know that a prophet had been in their midst. And what he was declaring would come true was first the destruction of Jerusalem, and then after that, the greater day of the Lord that would include a resurrection of the people of God under the new King David.

So Ezekiel recognized that, though his audience wasn’t listening, there was a future generation that would listen. And I think that’s what Peter is getting at. Jesus in Mark chapter 4 says, “To those outside, I speak in parables. But to you, my disciples, I disclose mysteries.” That is the mysteries of the Kingdom, mysteries that were kept secret for long ages, as Paul says. There was a mystery—a mystery related to the person of Christ, Romans 16:25 and 26, a mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been revealed, and in the very prophetic writings of the Old Testament is disclosed to all nations.

So as we’re wrestling with the New Testament, the language of the text is that there were promises, like the promise of the Gospel of God concerning the Son, Romans chapter one verses one through three—promises that Paul would say are now being fulfilled. But there were also mysteries that were kept secret that are now being revealed. So the promise—the move from promise to fulfillment is a move of continuity. There’s slight discontinuity because we’re moving from shadow to substance, that is to the reality. There is a shift, there’s some discontinuity, but it’s mostly a movement of continuity. There’s fulfillment of what was promised. But then we also have this discontinuity where there was something hidden that’s now revealed.

TK: But you’re saying it’s not a change though. A change would be thinking Old Testament is an angry God of wrath, New Testament is a kindly God of mercy. That would be a change. You’re talking continuity—know that God is the same. We’re just seeing new things we didn’t see before.

JD: That’s right. That’s right. Same God. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, it was God who spoke to our fathers by the prophets.” That same God “now in these last days has spoken to us by his Son,” Hebrews 1:1-2. Same God. And spoke through the prophets, now through Jesus.

What I’m getting at is that we have texts like 2 Corinthians 3:14 that declares when the Jews read Moses, their minds are hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, says Paul, there’s a veil that remains unlifted because only through Christ Jesus is that veil removed. So how is the mystery revealed to a hard heart? They have to have their eyes enlightened. They have to have their hearts changed. And in Jesus’s coming, he’s doing that on a wide scale that was never experienced in the Old Testament age. The prophets understood in what they were writing, I believe for the most part. But now there’s even more understood.

I’m thinking about here Ephesians, chapter 3. Paul says when you read this letter, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. So that’s that mystery that was kept secret but is now revealed. But it’s revealed in the very sacred texts of the Old Testament Scriptures where it was hidden.

TK: It was there all along.

JD: It was there all along. And it’s not just like a light’s been turned on. But rather that there were lots of people that couldn’t see what was there because the veil was over their eyes. Paul says, “If our gospel is veiled, it’s veiled to those who are perishing. For them the prince of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing light.”

TK: Hmm.

JD: But it’s that light of the gospel of the glory of Christ that is found in the Old Testament itself. And when the veil is removed through a relationship with Christ, all of a sudden what was there all along can be seen. Here’s what Paul says: “When you read what I’m writing, you can perceive insight into the mystery of Christ.” And then he says this, “which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets.”

So that little word “as”—it was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been made known to the apostles and prophets—it suggests that there was some understanding, but not the same level of understanding that we have today. So I’ll just give an example. Here’s a New Testament perspective on the Old Testament prophets themselves. What did they understand about Christ’s person and time? And we have texts like Jesus saying in John 8:56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

Now I think we have to say Jesus is seeing that in Genesis. As Genesis is unpacking what he’s seeing is a story of a patriarch who was actually himself anticipating the coming of Christ. Jesus says Abraham saw my day. He rejoiced in that day and was glad. There is this eager expectation of the Messiah. And that’s what Jesus saw when he read Genesis. It’s how he describes Abraham. He was one who saw the Messiah’s day and was delighted in it.

Or in Acts 2, right after quoting Psalm 16, Peter calls King David a prophet. And then he says, “Knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on the throne, David foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of Christ,” Acts 2:30-31. So here’s New Testament perspective on the Old Testament prophets who gave us the word—prophets like David. It says David knew that God had promised that he would have a son on the throne, one who would indeed last forever. And so he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of Christ. These are New Testament thoughts on the Old Testament.

To whom was the Old Testament given? Well, this was a prophet who received revelation and understood something about the person and the timing of Christ, the makeup of his coming, the circumstances associated with his arrival. And the New Testament authors have no problem talking about the Old Testament peoples like that.

TK: Jason, we were talking about what the Old Testament prophets, authors—what they knew, and apparently they knew, based on what the New Testament authors say, quite a bit. There were certain things they didn’t know, correct?

JD: Well, it does appear it’s not complete continuity because we have, for example, the writer of Hebrews saying these people died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar. So that’s Hebrews 11:13. So there’s continuity in that they actually did see something—Moses wrote of me, Abraham saw my day. But then we get text like Hebrews 11:13 or Luke 10:24 where he says, “I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and didn’t see it, and to hear what you hear and didn’t hear it.” So there’s that sense of discontinuity in that they actually—they knew something was coming and they longed to embrace it, but they couldn’t embrace it because they died before the appearing of Jesus. So they saw from a distance but didn’t get to enjoy like you and I get to enjoy. And so they truly did understand. When we read in First Peter 1 that they were searching and inquiring carefully to know what person and time the Spirit of Christ in them was foretelling when he foretold the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories, we’re seeing that this was a conscious effort—that one of the ways the Spirit was working through these prophets was not simply in giving them dreams and visions, but in using his revealed Scripture such that Isaiah was doing exegesis of Moses. He was reading Genesis and reading Exodus, Deuteronomy to discern with the help of the Spirit what the Spirit had revealed about the person of the Messiah and the timing or circumstances of his coming.

And so the Old Testament prophets from the New Testament perspective truly saw Jesus. So they were hoping in Jesus, and yet they didn’t see him like we see him.

TK: Which goes back to that earlier comment we made when someone would say something like, “You need to read the Old Testament from an Old Testament perspective,” almost setting aside what you know and have seen. You already said it is—first of all, that’s impossible for somebody to set aside their beliefs. But in a sense, they wrote better than they knew, though they didn’t write a flawed version of Christ. They just didn’t fully comprehend all that which they were writing, correct?

JD: That’s right. I think they had a very good grasp of what they were writing from the New Testament perspective, but they still didn’t see everything as we see it because Jesus hadn’t arrived yet. So it could be compared to an acorn versus an oak tree.

TK: Right.

JD: Or a sapling versus the full-blown tree. But they recognized that they were looking at—organically, what would ultimately be fulfilled. And by that I mean from the New Testament perspective, these prophets wouldn’t have been surprised when Jesus came, but they would have recognized Jesus

JD: …is indeed the ultimate one that we were talking about. He is the true temple. He is the ultimate leader of the Exodus. He is the new Adam. He is the ultimate king. And that’s what happened to Paul when he encountered the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. His entire worldview was reshaped, and it’s not that Jesus became the king, it’s that Paul finally recognized what was true.

And but there was an entire not only one generation, but hundreds of generations or hundreds of years of generations of men and women whose eyes were blind, whose hearts were hard, whose ears were deaf. And according to the New Testament perspective, it was simply fulfilling the judgment of God on Israel. There’s all these rebels from the New Testament perspective who are unable to understand the Old Testament and their hardness is merely continuing a hardness that reached all the way back into the Old Testament period. They were rejecting the Messiah, just as centuries of Israelites had rejected the Messiah.

TK: Sometimes you’ll read things and they’ll say we need to interpret them as the generation of the Prophet would have interpreted things—like how would they have heard it. And the point the New Testament authors are making is they didn’t listen, they wouldn’t listen. They couldn’t hear. So saying, how did, for instance, the people in David’s generation receive the Psalms? The fact is most of them did not hear the true voice of God in the Psalms.

JD: That’s right, we should be less concerned about how the audience, the original contemporaries of the prophets heard. Because most of them were hard-hearted and spiritually deaf. But we should recognize that the prophets themselves were writing the revelation for a future generation. That’s the perspective—it appears to be for Peter to say, it was revealed to Isaiah, it was revealed to Jeremiah, to Ezekiel, to Haggai that they were writing not for themselves, but for you. That puts the focus of the Old Testament audience on the future generation, not on the Old Testament generation, which both the New Testament and the Old Testament clarifies, was spiritually disabled.

TK: It makes it—I was just going to say like, if that idea of the prophet is kind of like you said—seeing a sapling, but he knows there’s a bigger—he knows it’s a bigger tree. He just can’t see it yet. It hasn’t been fully birthed yet. But when we go back and read, for instance, Isaiah 53, we’re not reading a sapling text. We’re not reading something that’s a like almost a junior varsity version of the true gospel. It’s there. Isaiah just didn’t see all of it as fully as he would if he had lived when Christ was on Earth.

JD: But he still saw so much.

TK: He still saw so much.

JD: But so many of his contemporaries didn’t. I’m thinking—I mean, we’re talking about Isaiah. Think about how John talks in John 12. Though Jesus had done so many signs before his Jewish contemporaries, they still did not believe in him. And then it says so that the word of the Prophet, specifically the prophet Isaiah, might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Though he was revealed to the Jewish nation, they didn’t believe. Therefore, they could not believe for again, Isaiah said, says John: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts lest they see with their eyes and understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” Isaiah said these things because he saw Jesus’s glory and spoke of him, John 12:37-41.

So here we’re talking about how so many in Jesus’ day, in Paul’s day, were just hard-hearted. That was the context of so many Israelites. For Paul to say Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking—now there was an elect group who obtained it, this is Romans 11:7 and 8, but the rest were hardened as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see, ears that would not hear down to this very day.”

Now to speak that way, Paul here—here’s Paul now, we already saw John in his gospel—Paul simply saying what Isaiah said in Isaiah 29:10, that the Lord has poured upon Israel a spirit of deep sleep and closed their eyes. He’s saying that’s being fulfilled still to this day. There’s a judgment of God on the nation. So was Isaiah’s book for his contemporaries? Well, not for most of them.

TK: Right.

JD: Isaiah had some disciples, we’re told in Isaiah 8, but from Paul’s perspective, and that’s what we’re looking at—the New Testament perspective on these things. And they’re significantly, they’re citing Old Testament texts for their justification. But what they’re seeing is that the disability that was part of the Old Testament age is actually continuing all the way down into the New Testament age.

And Jesus says in Mark 4, as I already said, citing Isaiah 6: “This is why he speaks to all of them outside in parables, but to you is given the secret or the mystery of the Kingdom of God. That they may indeed see, but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.” So he recalls the mission of Isaiah to bring judgment on Israel through his proclamation and Jesus says, “I’m just continuing that same vision of bringing judgment on the nation. Except to you, you get to actually understand the mysteries being revealed to you.”

This is how the New Testament authors think of their—there is a majority rebel population that has continuity with the original prophets’ Old Testament prophets’ contemporaries. And the continuity is one of blindness. It’s one of spiritual deafness such that as the word is proclaimed, all it does is bring condemnation on the people because their hearts remained hard. And so God would have to enter into space and time, doing a new work, overcoming spiritual disability, bringing healing.

And as we look at the remnant—think about the disciples. The many of the Gospels actually portray a delayed yet progressive growing understanding, such that as Jesus moves closer and closer to Jerusalem, the disciples are understanding more and more. But in John 2 and John 12, what we learned is that once Jesus was raised from the dead and they realized he’s the one—he’s been declared righteous by God, he’s been vindicated, he is indeed the Messiah, he’s overcome death, he’s overcome the powers of darkness, he’s defeated what no other person could defeat, he is our savior—when they saw him raised from the dead, accompanied by those realities, they remember what Jesus taught. And then we’re told, and they understood the Scriptures. That is, they understood that the Old Testament was really pointing to Jesus.

So here I mean, I just jumped ahead just but noting that you have these—for some, the lack of understanding or the mystery was constant. They never understood. They never had that revelation. They remained in the dark. And they remained unable to fully grasp what the Old Testament was talking about. But for others, that ignorance was only temporary. And for those—they are the disciples, they are the followers of God. And what the resurrection did was provide the end of the story. It provided the definitive clarifying lens that when you look through it, now you can see how all along this is where everything in Scripture was pointing.

TK: It was saying this all along.

JD: That’s right. You’re given a rubric for rightly evaluating what was there in the text. The mystery is now revealed, and in the very sacred writings of the prophets it’s disclosed to all the nations.

TK: People can see it right there. So to wrap it up, Jason, if going to summarize, you start this book on delighting in the Old Testament and you already said it, you said you were first going to start with, well, what’s the Old Testament’s perspective on itself, but being challenged, you might have to start with what’s the New Testament say about that. The New Testament is not telling me this is old covenant material for an old covenant people, correct? It’s not saying that.

JD: That’s right, it’s not denying that there’s an old covenant built into the material, but that in the writing of the material itself, the prophets knew they were writing for a future generation that would have ears to hear, whereas most of their audience was spiritually unable to hear, their hearts were wicked. And so when they wrote, they were actually writing—from this is how I understand the New Testament talking—that the Old Testament prophets were writing for a future generation. It’s as if—I mean, they would have associated that future generation with the Messiah. And so you could legitimately say they understood they were writing Christian Scripture.

TK: Yep.

JD: Because most in the old covenant audience were rejecting all the words that the prophets proclaimed.

TK: And what this really means is that then instead of looking at my Old Testament as a book that’s kind of an “other” from me—I have my New Testament which is familiar and known, and it’s my gospel, if I want to say that—something like that—and the Old Testament is different and strange, but I go there periodically because it speaks about Christ. I should look at it instead and say no, this was written for me. This is just like the New Testament. This is Christian Scripture that I need to be using. And I can find encouragement and help and comfort and things I need to obey here.

Jason, it’s actually one of the things I’m eager to talk about. We can’t do it today. But if this is indeed Christian Scripture, there’s things here that—and that we’re going to say—how do we as Christians handle them? For instance, all the laws? What do I do as a Christian with the laws written in the Book of Moses?

JD: And that’s a huge question. But what’s clear is that—

TK: I can’t just discard them, right? I can’t just throw them away.

JD: That’s right because Paul, for example, can draw on Deuteronomy 25, the law about muzzling an ox while it’s threshing. Don’t do that. Allow that ox to keep eating. And he then applies that law to the church. Or he takes a law on capital punishment in Deuteronomy 22:22 and he applies it to the church in First Corinthians 5. He takes from the Ten Commandments to talk about how kids should honor their parents in Ephesians 6. Peter calls the church to be holy in all their conduct because Leviticus tells us to. So all of a sudden, yeah, we have to have some framework for recognizing that though these words were spoken through Moses and are part of a different covenant, somehow through Jesus they still have relevance to me as a believer.

TK: So I can’t—I can’t afford to ignore them and say, well, that’s the Old Testament. Doesn’t matter. Clearly it does matter.

JD: That’s right. And we would say the same thing about all those promises. I mean, promises given to individuals, promises given to the nation of Israel. How are we to be thinking about those promises? Can I really claim that God knows the plans he has for me—plans to prosper me, to do good and not evil? Can I just reach into Jeremiah 29:11 and claim that promise for myself when it was given to a different people at a different time? How am I supposed to understand that all the promises are yes in Christ, 2 Corinthians 1:20? What does that exactly mean and how do I need to be thinking about it?

TK: Yeah.

JD: And all these are extremely practical Christian questions that we need to be considering. But what today we focused on was just that, these New Testament authors really believe that all Scripture—and for Paul, that would have meant first and foremost his Bible, the Old Testament—all Scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. That Old Testament that Christian preachers are supposed to preach the word, that is preached from the Bible, which for Paul and those early apostles would have been the Old Testament. How do we do that in a Christian way when we’re part of the new covenant?

I think it’s just realizing that though the Old Testament talks about the old covenant, the Old Testament itself is not like a document only for old covenant Israel. It’s actually a bigger book that includes even other covenants like the Covenant with creation through Adam and Noah, the Covenant with Abraham, the Covenant with David, not just the covenant with Moses. And it’s unpacking an overarching story that climaxes in Jesus. And all of this story relates to us as believers today. And all of the Scripture, including the instructions given to Adam and Eve in the garden and the instructions given to Abraham, and then the instructions given to Moses—all of this has relevance for us through Jesus, and we need to think about how.

TK: I—something I say to people sometimes who study one of the biblical languages, Hebrew or Greek, is to make sure after they’ve gone through the course of studies to make sure you are using them on a regular basis just so that you are familiar with them. And I would say in the same way for people who are well-versed in their New Testament, feel at home there in their time reading God’s Word, to make sure you are slotting in some time to be reading portions of the Old Testament, even if there’s parts where you say, “Well, I’m struggling here.” A book like this certainly helps—the Delighting in the Old Testament. But just spending time there is really important. And I would say the same thing for pastors. If I’m at home preaching from the New Testament, to challenge myself to—I am going to spend time preaching from the Old Testament as well.

JD: I think that’s a good word and one of the key ways that we learn how to do that rightly is by looking at the believers who gave us examples. I think of how Acts at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, it talks about the early church—they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.

TK: Hmm.

JD: And it’s these apostles alongside the prophets who shape the foundation of the church, Ephesians 2, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone. They provide us clarity in how to read the initial three-fourths of the Christian Scripture. And so taking their lead, we enter in and even model for our people what it would look like to argue for Jesus from the law of Moses and the prophets like Paul did in Rome.

TK: Right.

JD: And we begin to recognize all this before us is, as my friend Jim Hamilton says, a messianic book written from a messianic perspective to instill messianic hope. And by that just meaning this is a book about Jesus designed to help us hope in Jesus. That’s—or as Paul said in Romans 1, “the gospel of God concerning the Son was promised beforehand through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures.” The very good news you and I celebrate as fulfilled today was anticipated long ago, and we get to read about it and see our own hope in Christ nurtured and encouraged and challenged.

TK: All right. Well, Jason, I appreciate—like when you read a book that somebody did a lot of work putting Scriptures together so that I can study carefully and just want to say I have appreciated this. It’s been encouraging to me going through. And your purpose wasn’t so that we would delight in something you wrote, but it was that we would delight in the Old Testament, so thanks for working hard. It makes us—it should make us grateful for people who work hard to make Scripture accessible to us. And I look forward to future conversations down this road.

JD: Wonderful, Tom. It’s been a joy to talk about the New Testament perspective on the Old Testament’s audience and to be able to celebrate that we’re right in the middle of that—God’s purposes in giving the Old Testament.

TK: Let us take it up and read it.

JD: Amen.

TK: Amen.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. You’ll find a large number of resources, including lectures, outlines, articles and sermons at jasonderouchie.com. You’ll find many resources for teaching and preaching in a number of languages at handstotheplow.org.