JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on Biblical Theology. Today’s podcast continues our focus on the contents and interpretation of the Old Testament. Today Tom and Jason talk about the light and the lens necessary in order to fully understand the content in the Old Testament. In Old Testament times, the people who loved God had the light. That was sufficient for the needs of the people at that time. It did not, however, reveal with 100% clarity the truths contained within the Old Testament. The coming of Christ gave a particular lens to New Covenant believers, allowing them to read the Old Testament based upon the coming of the Lord Jesus. 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: Hey Jason, we today are going to be back talking about something we talked about the last several podcasts, Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and For Christ. A book you wrote really to help us get in and see the message of the Old Testament and delight in it, not find it a chore. And we spent the last two podcasts talking about the Old Testament, well we started with a New Testament perspective, but on the Old Testament’s audience and their comprehension. What did the New Testament writers say about that, and then what did the Old Testament writers say about it? And we landed at a spot saying that the Old Testament writers knew that the people in their generation were hard-hearted and for the most part would not listen.  You’ve referred to a remnant who would, but for the most part wouldn’t, but they knew a day was coming when people would listen to the things they actually wrote. And that leads us to what we’re talking about today in this podcast is if the New Covenant people, people with circumcised hearts, are supposed to be able to look back to the Old Testament, how do we do it? What’s the lens we look through? So is that a good topic we can go down today?

JD: I think it is, Tom. To raise the question, what we’re doing is recalling this tension that we feel in Scripture itself where there were specific things like the Gospel of God concerning the Son, Romans 1:1-3, that were told these Old Testament prophets promised. They promised the Gospel, and today, we’re in the age where those promises are now being fulfilled. But it’s not only that they promised the Gospel, and it’s now fulfilled. There were also mysteries that were kept secret that are now revealed. So there were elements that were known, and elements that were unknown, and we’re living now in the day where even those that experienced temporary lack of sight can see. I’ve noted that I think so many in the Old Testament period, so many of the remnant, that is this minority of true believers like Moses and Rahab and Joshua and Ruth, like Hannah and David and Isaiah and the rest of the prophets. They actually saw something. They believed the Messiah was coming. They cherished him. They had eyes that were opened, like our eyes are opened. They embraced by faith the promise of the Messiah. And therefore, I think, for example, Abraham was justified before God, declared right by faith in the promise of the offspring. That is, his faith was in the offspring promise like ours is in the offspring promise. They were saved in the same way that we are saved, by embracing the hope of the Messiah.

TK: Not a different offspring.

JD: That’s right. They were saved like we are saved. And yet, we see and savor more than they saw and savored. And we have something they didn’t have. That is the end of the story.

TK: Do you think it would be fair to say, if we bump into the New Testament, but that kind of the last Old Covenant prophet, John the Baptist, we see this tension playing out in his life? Would that be fair to say it? Like, he knows who Jesus is, he’s actually met him and baptized him, but yet he’s struggling with what is in his mind, how he’s probably imagined the story, and it’s playing out different than he thought.

JD: Absolutely. We have figures like Hannah and Simeon in the temple when Jesus was an infant, and Zechariah as well, after his eyes were opened. When we read those early prayers and songs in the Gospel of Luke, what we’re seeing is a clear recognition, this child is the one that the prophets foretold. We see it, we believe it. But then we have someone like John the Baptist, who in Matthew 11 sends his own disciples to Jesus and asks, “Cousin, are you the one, or are we supposed to expect someone else?” And ironically, but probably part of the questioning grew out of the fact that he’s in prison. And the Messiah was supposed to set the captive free, and I’m still here. You know, that type of expression, and he’s wondering, are you the one or are we supposed to look for another? So, he’s feeling that sense of tension, because Jesus is appearing, while many saints recognized, he’s the one we hoped for, how he came, first, ultimately, as the object of God’s wrath on behalf of those he would save, and only later as the agent of God’s wrath. Many people expected, they didn’t expect the extended time. In fact, that language of mystery is most commonly in Paul’s letters associated with this period of intrusion, where the future enters into the present, and where the fulfillment is already but not yet, and where we know a new heaven and a new earth are coming, but they’re not quite here yet, and yet they’ve been secured. We know that the Messiah is going to overcome all evil, and yet He comes and He enters in as a servant and receives evil against Himself on behalf of the many.

TK: John the Baptist said it, he said the ax is at the root of the tree, but he didn’t realize the part and the one who’s going to bear the initial blow is actually the Savior of the world.

JD: Even though He’s able to call him, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” he saw and yet the expectations were playing out in some unexpected ways.

TK: Right.

JD: And when we read the Old Testament prophets, it’s important, you already drew attention on a previous podcast, you drew attention to the fact that the prophets are often talking about the exact same thing from numerous angles. So all of a sudden, we’re moving ahead in time, and then we’ll go back in time, and then we’ll move ahead in time. And it becomes difficult at points to discern, as they’re predicting the future, is this an immediate Day of the Lord judgment against Jerusalem and 586 by the Babylonians? Or is this the granddaddy global judgment that God promises on the whole world? And we anticipate the coming of the Messiah. He is portrayed both as a suffering servant and as a victorious, conquering Redeemer. And if Jesus shows up and he’s the Messiah, yes, there’s going to be, and I think we can already see it in the prophets, there’s some sort of overlap such that the Day of the Lord can be described as a day where God is there, his presence is with his people, he is there and he will save. Meaning that the Day of the Lord has started and yet amidst that day there are still enemies that God has to say, fear not. He tells his people, fear not. So the Day of the Lord has come and yet already in the Old Testament, the way it’s describing it is, it’s not like happening in a moment. It’s happening in a day. And yet even amidst that day, what we’ve found now in the New Testament era is that that day of the Lord has been stretched out over now to millennia.

TK: Right.

JD: Meaning that the future entered into the middle of history and with it, it brought mystery. That is, gradually being revealed in the New Testament books. Most of it focuses on this intrusion at the end of the ages. We call it eschatology, this movement of what’s going to happen at the end when the Messiah comes. And the mystery that is revealed is principally focused on the Messiah’s coming and this already but not yet reality.

TK: So you mentioned Paul, and he uses this word mystery or mysteries more than anybody else. And there’s lots of places we could go, but have a chunk here that we were going to talk about. So mystery associated with Christ and the Gospel. So can we go through kind of maybe ten or so verses? Jason, you can kind of walk us through this, the language he’s using here.

JD: Absolutely. So, for example, 1 Corinthians 4:1, Paul says, “as you think about who we are, you should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” So, he sees himself bearing a unique role as an apostle of God, something that we didn’t have in the Old Testament in the same way. They’re now sent out by Christ himself, and he says, we are servants of Christ. And by that, he’s even using the language of Isaiah, where Christ was called the servant, and he has numerous offspring who are called the servants. The servant gives rise to servants who carry out his work. Paul is one of those. And even to use that language, that’s end times language. But then his role is to be a steward of the mysteries of God. So, it suggests these mysteries have something to do specifically with this end times era. And he’s the one who is like Daniel in Daniel chapter 2 to Nebuchadnezzar. Now it’s Paul who is designed to give clarity to what the Old Testament mystery was all about. Paul is providing the answer as he testifies to the purposes of God in space and time. First Corinthians, no, let’s jump to Ephesians chapter 1. You get this real sense that the mystery is associated with God’s purposes in redemption, climaxing in Christ. He says in Ephesians 1:8, “God has lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight,” making known to us what was not made known earlier, “making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Jesus, things in heaven and things on earth.” Something is happening in the New Testament era in relation to the ministry of Paul and the writing of God’s New Testament Word that is about making known the mystery of God’s will set forth in Jesus. So, it’s like God’s purposes throughout time are just being played out, and the climax of these purposes is Jesus, and the mystery of God’s will is directly related. Like what God has been doing in all of history has been about this moment, and he is now, through Paul and the rest of the apostles, disclosing, making known the mystery of his will set forth in Christ.

TK: So, just to be clear, the way we use that word in day-to-day things is, wow, that’s a mystery to me, and what I mean is, I don’t get it, I’m in a complete fog about this particular thing, whatever it is, and you’re saying Paul’s not saying that.

JD: No, he’s actually saying, I’m the revealer of the mysteries. You want to understand your whole Bible and what God’s purposes are, from Genesis to Revelation, I’m clarifying for you now the answers. So, he’s not saying I’m–there’s all kinds of mysteries to me, like I don’t understand. No, he’s actually saying, God has given me clarity. I met Jesus on the road to Damascus, and I saw the creator of heaven and earth, the source of all things, and the one to whom all of God’s purposes since creation have been pointed. He’s the one who is overcoming darkness, breaking into the curse with blessing, and making a way to restore relationship with God that was not possible any other way. There is a mystery now being revealed. And he, as we read his letters, as he talks about Jesus, he is one of the disclosers of the mystery, and that’s what the apostles were. They were disclosures of the mystery of God related to Jesus. There is a whole series of texts that show this mystery is indeed about Christ, that it is focused on the Gospel. Here is Paul in Romans 16:25-26. Now to him, that is to the God of all the earth, who is able to strengthen you. How do Christians get strength? They get strengthened according to my Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. That is, according to the revelation of the mystery. So I think, just right there, the way that he structures his prepositional phrases, that when he says, God is able to strengthen you church, in accordance with my Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, in accordance with the revelation of the mystery, he’s just told us what the mystery is about. It’s about the good news breaking in to every tongue and tribe and people and nation. It’s about the preaching of Jesus the Messiah. And God is able to strengthen you by this. But what he’s strengthening us in is something that people long to see in the Old Testament era. Righteous men and prophets and kings, but they didn’t see it. Those people died in hope, longing for the days of the Messiah, knowing something about his person and time. And yet, they died before he arrived. They never saw it fulfilled. And Paul is saying, we’re living in the days of fulfillment. God is able to strengthen you, according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed, and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations.

TK: Makes you want to go and look at them, doesn’t it?

JD: Oh, it does. The prophetic writings, we’re talking about the Old Testament prophets. In Romans 1, he said, they’re the ones who promised, in the Holy Scriptures, the Gospel of God concerning the Son. And now we read, there was a mystery kept secret for long ages, and now it’s been revealed, and it’s disclosed in the prophetic writings themselves. And what is that mystery? The revelation of the mystery? It has to do with the Gospel. It has to do with the preaching of Christ.

TK: 1 Corinthians 2:7 says, “We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.” And then it says, it directly connects it to the Gospel, because it says, “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.”

JD: Wow. So good.

TK: So give us a couple more, Jason. Just a sampling of this idea that there was a mystery hidden here, not intended to stay mystery, but it’s something that the apostles are saying, yes, we’ve been granted to be stewards of this, so it can be revealed.

JD: So good. So, Paul says in Ephesians 3, “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 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 by the Spirit.” So they understood something about it. That’s what I think it means when it says, it was not made known to them as it has been revealed now. That suggests to me, they did understand something, at least some of them did, but not in the way that we understand it today. And it’s the mystery of Christ. The next text, just a few verses later, he says, “Though I am the least of the saints, to me this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and in doing so to bring to light,” key word, we’re going to develop that in just a few minutes, “to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” When we celebrate the coming of Christ, the unsearchable riches of Jesus, when we read the Old Testament, recognizing that Jesus has come, that he was the end of the story, we’re making known something to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. It’s like Satan and his minions are watching in. And as we proclaim the Gospel, they take notice because they know their end is soon. The mystery has been revealed, and that mystery directly relates to Christ. Paul says as much in Colossians. Oh, go ahead.

TK: Well, I was just going to say, and the point here then is not that New Testament writers are reading something back in there that wasn’t there. What you’re arguing is from the text, it was there, it just was mystery to people who were reading it in that age.

JD: And significantly, Tom, I think, yeah, the Old Testament authors themselves knew they were talking about the Messiah, but most of the people didn’t. But nevertheless, even though they knew they were talking about the Messiah, there were elements that were still left out. They can know they are setting up a pattern. The number two is followed by the number four. But we need the New Testament to fully understand whether what follows is a six or an eight. Two, four, eight? And if the New Testament says it’s eight, then that says how we understand the relationship between this pattern of events or persons or institutions in the Old Testament. When we’re seeing this story played over and over again, the way we’re supposed to put them together is like the multiplication sign. Two, four, eight. Or does the New Testament tell us it’s an addition sign? The New Testament provides both the answer key and the algorithm. The New Testament has been compared to what in modern day, we often call–sorry, the whole Bible has been compared to what in modern days, we often call a double narrative. A double narrative is one such that when you begin the story, you’re reading, you’re learning about the characters, you’re trying to track the plot, there’s major events, there’s drama, there’s peak, there’s challenge, and you finally come to the end of the story, and there’s a resolve. If it’s a mystery novel, all of a sudden, the chief detective clarifies for us, reveals the mystery. Now all of a sudden, all kinds of elements in the story come together, and it makes you want to go back and watch from the beginning to see what you want to read, what was there all the while, but we didn’t have eyes to see it. Because what happens when you get to the end and the mystery is revealed, you can no longer read the first level narrative again. No, you know the mystery, but it doesn’t make the story less appealing. Now, the whole story has been raised up to this double narrative, this higher plane. You know where the story is going. And I think that’s how the Bible is intended to be read. We start at the beginning with the Holy Creator God and what He calls humanity to. We see the rebellion and that they, rather than operating as royal priestly children of God, they give that authority over to the prince of this world, over to the serpent. And now God stops resting and starts working again to reestablish right order in the world. And we find ourselves, when we are born, indeed, from the time of fertilization forward, we are in Adam, outside the garden, separated from God, under God’s wrath. And the solution comes in the person of Christ. We read the Old Testament story, and it’s our story of death and destruction and rebellion. And then we come to the New. So we start, we are reading the Bible forward, but now we meet Jesus, and we find our hearts overwhelmed with gratitude. We find our lives transformed as our heart of stone is taken out and our heart of flesh is put in. We find new desires awakened within us, new delights. We treasure Christ. We want to honor Him. We want to follow Him. We want to say no to sin and value what God values and hate what God hates. We’ve become a new person. Well, we don’t go back and start reading the Old Testament as if none of that’s happened. No, the story got us to Jesus, and now we go and we begin to read backward, and we begin to read forward again and backward and forward, all the while knowing the end of the story. The mystery has been revealed. Who Jesus is and how He would work out all the details of time. It’s as if we, in the Old Testament, it’s like we were driving up from Denver into the mountains, and we begin to see miles and miles of mountaintops, and it’s not all clear which peaks are first and which are second, because bigger peaks could just be closer. And we don’t know how everything is going to be working its way out, but in the New Testament now, all of a sudden we paused and we’re up in a chopper, and we’re getting to see more the vast landscape and we can pinpoint different mountain peaks and see what they’re named and when they come in the journey. We’re able to see so much more now that the mystery has been revealed and it becomes implanted in our soul. It changes the way we read, the way we think, and it’s supposed to. And it would be, I believe, foolish. And improper to try to read the Old Testament now as if Jesus hasn’t come. God used the story to get us to Christ. And now that we’ve met Christ, like Paul did on the road to Damascus, we cannot look at anything. We can’t think about any truths in the world. We can’t think about the Creator God, the redeeming God, about the fellowship of God’s people, spiritual gifts, sexual ethics. We can’t think about any of that outside of its direct relationship to Christ. And this is why Paul, I believe, could say in a text like 1 Corinthians 2:2, “I resigned to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified.”

TK: He gives light to everything.

JD: He knew a lot of Old Testament. He preached it. He talked about all kinds of topics. And yet everything he said, he was thinking about it in relationship to Jesus because he truly becomes the key to understand rightly all of God’s purposes from Genesis to Revelation.

TK: So Jason, I’m looking in your book and there’s a figure that’s pretty helpful. I think you used two key words. You have our light and lens as we think about this whole thought about Christians interpreting the Old Testament. But what would you say that, how should I think about those words, that a lens and light?

JD: By light, I’m using the very language of the New Testament. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, to those who don’t receive the Gospel from us, to whom the Gospel is veiled, he says the Prince of this world has put a veil over their eyes to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But what happens is the very God who said, let light shine out of darkness, he shows himself into our hearts, giving us light. That’s Paul’s language in 2 Corinthians 4:4, 6. He gives us light. And I believe that Abraham had that light. Moses had that light. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all the other twelve minor prophets had that light. The remnant among the Old Testament, who were truly believers, were believing in the promised Messiah. They, like us, had light. Whereas the majority in Israel were living in the darkness. So in the Old Testament, there is light. And the key point here is that a relationship with Christ is necessary for understanding any of the Old Testament. And I’m saying that the Old Testament prophets themselves and remnant folks like Rahab and Ruth and Hannah, they had light. They knew the Messiah was coming. We know that He has come. The light has shown, and the light was already shining among the remnant.

TK: Like when you’re–you see it in the woods, maybe you’re hunting something like that, and the sun is rising, but it’s not over the horizon yet. But you can already see the light spilling into the spot you’re at, but it’s not clear. But there is light already, but you know a greater light is coming.

JD: Yes, yes. The key to the language of lens is this. So light–what I’m saying is the majority lived in darkness, but the light was still shining, had shown into the hearts of the remnant few, even in the Old Testament era. And it’s that light that has shown into our hearts. Now, Jesus has come, we’re enjoying the same light, but we have something more. And this is my point. Christ’s person and work clarify more fully the Old Testament’s meaning. And by that, what I mean is that Christ’s person and work becomes a lens that Abraham and David and Nehemiah never had. So like a pair of glasses, are you talking? That’s right. That’s right. Lenses of certain forms are shaped like an oval. And the light, when it moves through the center, it remains unbent. But if the light refracts off the angles, that light actually gets bent through the edges of the lens. But Jesus is the lens that actually provides us clarity for seeing things, reading things that are even more than the Old Testament saints had. So, with respect to light, both the prophets of the Old Testament and us today who are redeemed by Jesus have light, but we alone have lens. We alone have the lens. Jesus has come. Because Jesus has come. Exactly. So, what I’m proposing is that because Jesus is the lens, to rightly understand the Old Testament in all of its fullness, now that the end of the story has come and all mystery has been disclosed, in the very sacred writings, we are to read them with–through the lens of Christ. So the visions and declarations that are made in the Old Testament, we now look to the New Testament to understand the full interpretation and meaning of that original text. We wrestle with the text as much as we can. We establish warrant from the Old Testament exegesis, but we can’t stop there. We need to move beyond the close context to consider the continuing context in the flow of redemptive history. And we have to ultimately come to the complete context, which includes now the New Testament’s declarations, reflections on the meaning of those Old Testament texts. Direct promises and predictions come through Jesus and are now fulfilled. Types and shadows, persons and events and things that foreshadowed Christ now find their antitype or substance in Jesus as they move through Christ as the lens. And things like the Law of Moses is now looked at in light of Christ, and we gain greater clarity now about the law, analyzing the Law of Moses, through Jesus we gain greater clarity about the nature of the Law of Christ.

TK: So with none of it, I’m not acting–I never act like he hasn’t come, correct?

JD: Correct.

TK: Like, as a believer, but as anyone, you don’t put the–say I want to take the Old Testament on its own terms, a New Testament believer would not do that, and say, therefore I’m putting the lens of Christ to the side, and just reading it as if that never happened.

JD: No, because from the beginning, the author of the story is drawing us in, drawing us forward, wanting us to get to the end.

TK: And saying, like we looked at, it’s only at the end that they will understand these things, fully.

JD: That’s right. Daniel the prophet didn’t understand at least one of the mysteries that were given to him. He, in that instance, was more like Nebuchadnezzar, saying, I don’t understand, and it’s the New Testament authors who give us clarity. Isaiah, Jeremiah commanded, write your words in a book for a future generation, who will have eyes to see and ears to hear, who will understand. Where does that understanding come? Well, John chapter 2, John chapter 12. What we’re told is, after Jesus was resurrected, or after Jesus was glorified, they remembered the words that Jesus had spoken, and they remembered the Scripture. So, something happens. In Jesus’ resurrection, all of a sudden, the disciples know fully who Jesus was and what God’s purposes were, or at least more fully. They understand, and they also understand the Scriptures. All of a sudden, having clarity on the identity of Christ and on the work of Christ, they have a proper lens for reading Isaiah, for reading Deuteronomy and Jeremiah and Daniel. They have been given something. They’ve been given an answer key and an algorithm. They’ve been given the ultimate substance that has now filled up all of those types. The type is, the word for type is, it’s like a mold. And what Jesus comes is fills up that mold. This is the substance that the shadow or the type simply pointed to. And now that the substance has come, they can truly see what everything was about. What all of it was anticipating. And it goes both ways. Jesus, we’re told in Luke 9, dialogued with Elijah and with Moses about the Exodus that he would undergo in Jerusalem. When we read that Jesus’ cross event and resurrection is portrayed as an Exodus, if we don’t have the Old Testament, we won’t understand it. We won’t understand what Luke is wanting us to discern. I think that’s one of the examples of what would Jesus have disclosed to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. What would when he went through the Law and the Prophets and he disclosed the things concerning himself. Well, Luke and Acts actually give us clarity as to what the nature of that dialog would have looked like, because now Luke is unpacking for us in his own story. And certainly there’s texts like Isaiah 4, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he’s anointed me to bring good news to the poor. And Jesus rolls up the scroll and says, this is fulfilled in your midst. A direct prophecy is being fulfilled. But now we get a sense for something like an event, the Exodus. But we won’t understand that unless we go back to the Old Testament. So it’s not that now that the mystery has been revealed, we don’t need those sacred writings. No, they not only point ahead, they clarify. And now we’re supposed to go back and bathe ourselves in the Exodus account, as it’s given to us by Moses, and consider how is it that Luke and Moses and Elijah and Jesus saw the work of Christ anticipated in the Exodus. And what is it about the Exodus that we’re supposed to be thinking about in relationship to the person and work of Jesus, and what he does in Jerusalem. It’s going back and forth. It’s the types, the patterns are not only pointing ahead, they are clarifying. And then we see, though, the end. We see the end of the story, and all of a sudden, the whole ultimate purpose of the Exodus, in space and time, redeeming Israel from slavery in Egypt, finds its ultimate resolve. We see the, in the same way that God redeemed his firstborn son, Israel, through the waters of chaos, and delivered them from the serpent king Pharaoh. Exodus 3 and 4, Exodus 15. Now we see how God ultimately redeemed his own son through fiery judgment from the clutches of the serpent, and how he ultimately fulfills Genesis 3:15, bruising the very head of the serpent, how he brings a death blow to the powers of darkness. And what is he doing? He’s leading an Exodus, where he is overcoming the curse on behalf of the many. We need both the–we need the Old Testament, because in it now, it’s in those very texts that the mystery is now revealed. But we also need the lens of Christ. So if we were to picture four quadrants, picture a box, and just put a plus sign in the middle, so that you have four quadrants, we have a group for whom in the top left, they have light, but they have no lens. That’s the remnant in the Old Testament.

TK: Christ hasn’t come yet, so they have no lens.

JD: Christ hasn’t come yet, so they have no lens. Christ hasn’t come yet. That’s right. In the bottom left quadrant, you have those who have no lens and no light. This is the Old Testament era on the left side of the quadrants, but at the bottom is the rebels, at the top is the remnant. They have light, but they don’t have the lens. The actual lens of seeing the end of the story, of seeing Jesus risen from the dead. As you move to the right side, the two quadrants over there, at the bottom, you have those who have lens. Jesus is revealed, but they don’t have light, so they still can’t see and read appropriately. Think about 2 Corinthians 3:14, which says, the Jews of Paul’s day, when they read Moses, they don’t understand it, because a veil remains over their eyes, because only through Jesus is the veil removed. So we’ve got this quadrant, and the bottom right is those who–I mean, Jesus has come, they have a lens, but they have no light, so they still can’t see anything. The top right is those who have both lens and light, and that’s where we’re living today. And Jesus is that light and lens, and so even the title of my book, Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ, what I’m getting at is recognizing Jesus is the right lens, through which we read what is there in the Old Testament. And in doing so, we grow to see the holiness of God, the purposes of that holiness. We grow to see all the patterns that anticipate the coming of Christ. We see our perfect substitute. Through all the wisdom and the laws, we’re getting a picture of who Jesus is for us as the perfect, righteous one. We’re understanding what God’s purposes are from creation to consummation and how all of those purposes climax in Jesus. He is the end of all the history. The fullness of time has come. He is the yes of every promise. He is the terminus of the prophecies. They were hoping in Him. He fulfills them. And He is the end of the law of Moses. He–in Him, the New Covenant supersedes the old. And the New Covenant people of God are recognized as now an international, global people attached with the ultimate Israelite, Jesus.

TK: The image you have here of a lens, so imagine a lens, like if you popped one out of, like you said, a lens out of a pair of glasses, but it’s kind of bowed out on both sides, that type of lens. And so I’m just looking at it, and the section, for instance, where it says, law of Moses. So on the left-hand side of this lens, if you imagine the lens is sitting vertically, on the left-hand side it says, law of Moses. And then there’s a line going through the lens, but what you said earlier makes sense is when light hits this type of lens, it actually, if it hits it at a certain spot, it will bend. And so the light bends, or the line law of Moses bends, and it says on the other side, law of Christ, this picture of the law of Moses does not come in a straight path to believers. We have to account for the coming of Christ. That’s what you’re saying, correct?

JD: That’s right. Moses is not the direct authority in the Christian’s life. Jesus is.

TK: I can’t act like he is.

JD: And yet we saw in Deuteronomy 30:8–

TK: I’m supposed to obey it.

JD: –that Moses anticipated, that’s right, that I’m supposed to obey Moses. And yet only in light of this new era, and as Jesus says in Matthew 5, we appropriate Moses in light of how he fulfills Moses. And so Moses still matters, but not directly to us, now through the mediation of Christ, that is through the lens of Christ, we grow to read Moses rightly.

TK: That’s really good. That’s really good. Jason, I know we’ll return to this image and these images, but it’s really helpful to think of what we have and to actually rely upon it. It’s almost like when you have a flashlight, which we all do now with our phones at different times, and you remember, oh, I have one, I don’t have to stumble in the darkness here. I should be using this light that I have. But remembering, for instance, the Old Testament–I was thinking of John 2 when you said it, the idea of the temple, the disciples are wanting, they are wanting to follow Christ. They’ve given up everything. He has not died and rose again yet. The idea is that lens isn’t there yet for them to see the true temple through yet. So then it says in John 2, they understood this after his resurrection. After his resurrection, that idea of the temple made sense as it passed through the lens of Christ.

JD: And they not only understood what Jesus was saying about himself, they understood the Scriptures. Meaning all of a sudden, they recognized that the Spirit, in giving these accounts of God’s sacred space, on the mountain, in the Garden of Eden, the tabernacle in the wilderness, the temple number one, and then the temple number two, in the Old Testament story, all of them were telling us something about the coming of Christ. They saw it. They not only understood Jesus’ words, they understood the Scriptures.

TK: All right. All right. Well, thank you, Jason. This has been good to look at, and I am hoping that for all of us, as we read our Old Testaments now, we will be thinking about these things. What is already there? And seeing this come to us through the light that we have and the lens of Christ.

JD: Sounds good.

TK: I like that the apostles gave us a pattern to follow. All right, brother, blessings to you.

JD: Bye, brother.

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.