Doug McMasters: Thank you for your words and the way that you all prayed it was wonderful to be a part of.
Doug McMasters: So we are now coming into a new section of our Route 66 study by coming into the New Testament.
Doug McMasters: Tonight's going to be a little different.
Doug McMasters: I'm not going to give you a broad overview of all of the New Testament, so much as to try to give you a bridge between where we of the New Testament.
Doug McMasters: So much as to try to give you a bridge between where we're heading and where we've been, so to sort of pull together the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Doug McMasters: I'm sure many of you probably grew up in Sunday school.
Doug McMasters: I didn't have that opportunity and you learned a lot of Old Testament stories.
Doug McMasters: We had a service review time this evening and we were able to hear from a lot of Old Testament stories.
Doug McMasters: We had a service review time this evening and we're able to hear from a couple of our teachers and the children and just how they're focusing on a lot of Old Testament people and things, and Sunday school is filled with that.
Doug McMasters: My childhood didn't have any of that.
Doug McMasters: I wasn't taught anything other than the few little times I showed up at church during a vacation Bible school a couple of times with my aunt going to her Methodist church, where the only thing I can remember is lighting off matchsticks and putting them together in the shape of a cross.
Doug McMasters: That's all I can recall, and it wasn't until I found my mother's Bible that I really began to look into it and to read it.
Doug McMasters: But I think we might have something in common many of us is that unless someone has given us some clear and careful teaching from God's Word, we might not understand what all of that teaching in the Old Testament has to do with the church or with the New Testament, and so it's important that we have, as Paul said, I wanted to declare to you the whole counsel of God to be able to help us understand the importance of what is 39 of the 66 books that are in our Bible.
Doug McMasters: Just think about that.
Doug McMasters: The connecting, for instance, the first three chapters of the book of Genesis with the last two chapters of the book of Revelation, and to be able to understand that paradise lost becomes paradise regained, and just to feel the resonance of what's stated in those first three chapters with what's declared in the last two is an important thing.
Doug McMasters: Or to understand how Israel's Exodus story out of Egypt is in relationship to the wondrous redemption that we have in Jesus Christ, or to understand how the prophets when they speak to the nation of Israel in the time of the kings and all of its disobedience and ruin and then their return back to the land, but the prophets don't speak of that as a culmination but really as only a stopping point, with further promises yet ahead.
Doug McMasters: And then Malachi finishes and you're thinking this story is left unfinished.
Doug McMasters: And if you don't feel that when you flip open your Bible to the book of Matthew you might not understand that something directly connected to where we just left off is happening now.
Doug McMasters: So it's been my prayer and it's been our determination, micah and me, to be able to ensure that we get that whole counsel of God perspective to try to see the links between the Old and the New Testament.
Doug McMasters: Sadly, a lot of people go through life thinking that the Old Testament just doesn't mean much to them.
Doug McMasters: It can be confusing to a lot of people.
Doug McMasters: It can be unintelligible to them because they just are lost in the middle of a world that's completely unfamiliar to them.
Doug McMasters: I remember teaching at a friend's church.
Doug McMasters: He was starting a church in St Johnsbury, vermont, and up in that area preached a message and one of the people came afterwards and said I never thought we needed the Old Testament at all.
Doug McMasters: Can you imagine that?
Doug McMasters: But sadly, that person's perspective has also been seen throughout church history in different times and in different ways.
Doug McMasters: In fact, it started as early as the second century AD with a guy by the name of Marcion.
Doug McMasters: He was born in 85 AD and died in 160 AD, and Marcion saw a big separation between what he thought of as the God of the Old Testament of the God of the New Testament, and so he put together what could legitimately be called the first attempt at a canon listing of inspired scripture.
Doug McMasters: But he got it really, really wrong.
Doug McMasters: The only thing that was in his list was a very, very truncated edition of Luke that had missing from it all of the infancy accounts of Jesus, the baptism of Jesus and many, many other verses, and other than that, there were only 10 letters of Paul.
Doug McMasters: That was it.
Doug McMasters: Thankfully, marcion's perspective wasn't accepted.
Doug McMasters: In fact it was shut down fairly quickly and needfully.
Doug McMasters: But that idea still exists that there's something different and distinct from the Old Testament to the New Testament, to the New Testament.
Doug McMasters: But when we read the New Testament.
Doug McMasters: If we read it with a heart that's open to what it's about to tell us, we can't help but be convinced of the importance of the Old Testament, because the Old Testament does not allow us the luxury of ignoring or downplaying the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what Paul said in Romans 15.
Doug McMasters: Whatever was written in our former days was written for our instruction.
Doug McMasters: Or 1 Corinthians, 10, 11.
Doug McMasters: These things happened to Israel as an example and they were written down for our instruction.
Doug McMasters: Example and they were written down for our instruction.
Doug McMasters: Or 2 Timothy, 3, 16 and 17, where he's commending Timothy for the things that he was taught and learned.
Doug McMasters: And he said to them to him, all scripture, referring mainly to the Old Testament, is breathed out by God and profitable that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Doug McMasters: So the development of a minister of Christ comes through the understanding of the Old Testament scriptures, very, very important.
Doug McMasters: So Paul is clear, and the other New Testament authors are clear, that the Old Testament is not outdated or superseded and therefore left to be ignored.
Doug McMasters: By no means.
Doug McMasters: The scriptures tell us that Jesus himself is a hearty yes and amen to the promises of God.
Doug McMasters: What are those promises.
Doug McMasters: You have to go from Genesis to Malachi and find them out.
Doug McMasters: So let's just think for a minute of just how broadly the Old Testament is used in the New Testament.
Doug McMasters: First of all, the New Testament is literally bookended by the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: You can go to Matthew, chapter 1, and you open up to the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: Genealogies in the book of Genesis and the books of Chronicles give us an understanding that we're in familiar territory here.
Doug McMasters: Or you go to the last words of Jesus in the New Testament and find out that he's pulling from the book of Isaiah in Revelation 22, 16.
Doug McMasters: So the first and last bit of the New Testament is filled with the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: Each of the gospels lead off with discussions and statements from the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: Matthew, of course.
Doug McMasters: I just spoke about the genealogies.
Doug McMasters: Mark quotes Malachi, chapter three, and verse one in Isaiah, chapter 40.
Doug McMasters: Luke peppers the first two chapters with a number of images from the Old Testament and John begins with what In the beginning.
Doug McMasters: What other book starts with in the beginning?
Doug McMasters: It's remarkable, right Genesis and John with the same words.
Doug McMasters: We see it in the life of Christ, even in the preparation for his public ministry and his temptation.
Doug McMasters: What does he say to Satan who tempts him?
Doug McMasters: It is written Three quotes from the book of Deuteronomy.
Doug McMasters: And one of the last things that he did before he ascended into the heavenlies was to open up the minds and hearts of his disciples so that they might understand what, that the things were written were written about him, right.
Doug McMasters: Well, it doesn't stop there.
Doug McMasters: The authors of the New Testament who write the letters, pick up from the life of Jesus Christ and the focus of Jesus Christ, and they build Christian teaching and theology out of the Old Testament, the book of Romans, in all of its statements.
Doug McMasters: You'll find it filled with quotations.
Doug McMasters: You can simply just take the book of Romans in about that kind of pace, flip through it page by page, chapter by chapter, and just notice how the typeface indicates how much of the Old Testament is there.
Doug McMasters: The middle part of Galatians and the argument about justification by faith alone is filled with statements that come from the Old Testament, the covenant, discussions in the book of Hebrews, and so the New Testament authors quote, allude to or cite the Old Testament literally hundreds and hundreds of times.
Doug McMasters: Roughly 30 of the Old Testament books are quoted at least once and several things are quoted several times the Ten Commandments, leviticus, chapter 19,.
Doug McMasters: A number of Psalms like Psalm 2 and 22, and particularly 110.
Doug McMasters: Chapters in Isaiah, chapter 6, and we'll be looking at more when we get to chapter 40, chapter 52 and 53.
Doug McMasters: Particularly Now, some of the New Testament writings don't quote the Old Testament, like 1st, 2nd or 3rd John.
Doug McMasters: But you can't look at the Old Testament and say it doesn't have anything to do with the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: That's just simply not a possibility.
Doug McMasters: So let's kind of dive a little deeper and understand how some of this develops from the old testament to the new testament.
Doug McMasters: As we look at god's actions in the old testament, we see a continuity of intervention of god into human affairs right, which, of course, with the creation of all things.
Doug McMasters: But he interacts intimately with humanity in the garden, having prepared it for people and given them responsibilities.
Doug McMasters: As we go through the Old Testament, we find that he speaks to individuals with promise, such as he does to Adam and Eve immediately after giving them a promise in the midst of judgment, but also making clear to Abraham in a covenant that speaks to us of salvation, moving forward to the people of God in Egypt and God bringing Moses and calling him to be the leader of the people, to bring them out and to bring them into a relationship with him that we understand.
Doug McMasters: That comes through not only the exodus event but into the mount sinai and the covenant.
Doug McMasters: There we find god interacting and bringing about the kings.
Doug McMasters: We see him acting in the decline, in the exile of babylon and and also His intervention in its return, and again through the prophets, who speak about judgment and disobedience and yet promises of redemption which leave us wondering is God going to continue to act?
Doug McMasters: And so we come into the New Testament and find that those things are picked back up again and God intervenes by coming himself to bring the arm of salvation to humanity.
Doug McMasters: Not too long ago, we started a series that brought us into an understanding of a key theme, or overarching understanding of all of Scripture and God's big picture.
Doug McMasters: We called it.
Doug McMasters: You might remember going through that where we talked about the kingdom of God as an overarching theme, and so some of this will sound familiar to you.
Doug McMasters: We just want to highlight the points that the kingdom of God is patterned in Eden, that it was lost to humanity, it perished in the fall.
Doug McMasters: You might remember kingdom, patterned kingdom, perishing kingdom promised in sort of implicit ways in the proto-evangelion, where God spoke to Adam and Eve about crushing the head of the serpent, but also given directly to Abraham.
Doug McMasters: We began to see the kingdom partially seen in Moses and his leadership of the people and their exodus out of Egypt, and as that kingdom developed through the course of the nation of Israel, we saw sort of little instances of what that might look like, particularly when we saw the reign of David and Solomon.
Doug McMasters: But as Solomon's kingdom goes into decline and as it leads to the destruction of Jerusalem and the people brought into exile in Babylon, the prophets take up the front stage and they begin to speak about a prophesied kingdom that even reaches, as I said, beyond the return from exile back to the land.
Doug McMasters: One thing that we do need to take note of, though, is that, as the Old Testament comes to a close, those proclamations are still hanging in the air, still waiting for something said or done that tells us they're never going to materialize or that they're actually coming into existence, and that anticipation brings us into the New Testament, which is called the present kingdom.
Doug McMasters: And now, with Christ ascended into the heavenlies and sending out, the Holy Spirit has empowered his people to be proclaimers of the kingdom, as we share the gospel and we anticipate the day in which Jesus will bring it all to a close and into a consummation of the perfected kingdom and every enemy of God will be brought down and every one of his children brought into a blissful relationship in which he is with us and we're with him.
Doug McMasters: And so, when you understand these things, one of the things that you come into the Old Testament to feel deeply and should feel deeply is this word promise.
Doug McMasters: And one of the things that you should feel deeply when you read and understand the New Testament is a word fulfillment, right?
Doug McMasters: So let me just talk about promise for just a second.
Doug McMasters: One of the things that I used to love with my parents was to be given some little encouragement that there was going to be some ice cream at the end of the afternoon, right, and so just going to take that up.
Doug McMasters: Maybe you had an experience like that too, and I'll take my grandmother this time instead of my mother and my father.
Doug McMasters: So let's say, my grandmother promises me some ice cream, but first of all we have to go to my uncle and aunt's house and then we're going to drop off at the pharmacy, and then we have to do a few other things at the grocery store and after all that's finished, we get to have some ice cream.
Doug McMasters: So what's that going to build in a little child's mind and heart?
Doug McMasters: Right, just think about that for a second.
Doug McMasters: Now let's just sort of dissect this in a little more of a categorical way.
Doug McMasters: That very thing when we make a promise, we're making it an announcement about a reality that isn't yet in existence.
Doug McMasters: The reality now is different from the reality that's being talked about, and so what it does is it binds that reality with the present one, that there's a connection there.
Doug McMasters: And because there's a connection between the moment of the promise and the period in between, we realize that all of these things aren't just life happening in happenstance or simply in some cyclical manner, but that time in human history actually has a progression, and as a little boy I could mark down that progression.
Doug McMasters: First of all, we have to go to aunt and uncle's house, and then we have to go to the pharmacy, and then we have to go to the grocery store and then, after all the things are done ice cream, right.
Doug McMasters: But there's a linear movement, that life isn't just simply happening haphazardly, that there is definitely movement, and we can mark out that movement as it gets closer to the time of fulfillment.
Doug McMasters: And when the Old Testament speaks it moves us a little more deeply and more progressively toward that time of absolute fulfillment.
Doug McMasters: And so you have the whispers of redemption in Genesis, chapter 3, the promise granted to Abraham.
Doug McMasters: And as it begins to move forward, we begin to understand more of the one who gave the promise and more of what the promise would look like when it comes, as we move through Moses and as we move into David.
Doug McMasters: And these covenants are brought into existence are spoken about in anticipation as we talk about the new covenant in the prophets of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Doug McMasters: So what that does, like it would do for any child who's wondering how quickly we're going to be able to get through all of this, is that it builds attention, right.
Doug McMasters: It builds an anticipation that is full of tension.
Doug McMasters: Any little child.
Doug McMasters: One thing they don't have is patience, right.
Doug McMasters: I would like my ice cream now, please.
Doug McMasters: Right?
Doug McMasters: And so that tension in the Old Testament needs to be felt because what happens is those who have been entrusted with this promise are not in control of making that promise actualized.
Doug McMasters: Just as a five-year-old Doug cannot tell my grandmother I want my ice cream now, I have to wait on her to be able to give it to me.
Doug McMasters: So the people of God had to wait, in the tension, dependent upon God, for the actualization of those things.
Doug McMasters: And so when we enter into the New Testament, when you open up the gospel of Matthew, remember you're coming into a world that is filled with promise and tension and anticipation, looking for fulfillment, looking for fulfillment.
Doug McMasters: And so it should have been immediately clear to everyone, when the words come forth out of the mouth of John the Baptist, when he quotes Malachi and he quotes Isaiah, that he is the forerunner of the man of promise, the Messiah.
Doug McMasters: There should have been no hesitation for any of the people living in that time.
Doug McMasters: Had they really felt the promise in all of those little dimensions, they would have said he's here, we're at Dairy Queen, right, we're here, it's finally here.
Doug McMasters: And that's why it was so disheartening and disruptive for John the Baptist to sit and to see himself under judgment from the religious leaders, or Jesus to have to explain himself to these men over and over and over again, when his behavior was so clearly marked by what was promised in the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: And so, when we come into the New Testament, what the New Testament is giving us is this sense that Jesus has filled up this preparatory, incomplete revelation of the Old Testament through the people of Israel, that he has come to bring it to culmination, to give it its high point, its climax, in the sense that it's all pointing to him and finalized in him.
Doug McMasters: It's brought to completion, and that's what we mean by the word fulfillment.
Doug McMasters: Christ is, as Paul said in Romans, the end of the law.
Doug McMasters: It is the very finishing point, the teleos, the end point of which it was all anticipated.
Doug McMasters: It's wrapped up in him.
Doug McMasters: And so when we talk about the Old and New Testament, we're not just talking about things that are related to each other simply, but things that are actually interdependent to one another.
Doug McMasters: That's how closely bound they are.
Doug McMasters: And so when you come, for instance, into the gospel of Matthew, you find that word being brought out over and, over and over again.
Doug McMasters: Remember, the Old Testament word was promise and the New Testament word is fulfillment.
Doug McMasters: And so when you come to Matthew, there are 10 explicit fulfillment passages Matthew 1 and 2, in several different places in that chapter, chapter 4, chapter 8, chapter 12, chapter 13, chapter 21, chapter 27,.
Doug McMasters: All over it.
Doug McMasters: Just to give you an example, matthew 4,.
Doug McMasters: Jesus left Nazareth, went to live in Capernaum, by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.
Doug McMasters: This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah.
Doug McMasters: Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, along the road by the sea, beyond the Jordan, galilee of the Gentiles, the people who live in darkness have seen a great light.
Doug McMasters: And for those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.
Doug McMasters: Who is that light?
Doug McMasters: It is Christ.
Doug McMasters: And what is the light?
Doug McMasters: How do you come into that light?
Doug McMasters: The very next verse, from then on, jesus began to preach repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.
Doug McMasters: There are 10 of those very clear fulfillment passages.
Doug McMasters: There's another one which uses a form of the fulfillment word in Matthew 13.
Doug McMasters: Isaiah's prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says you will listen and listen but never understand.
Doug McMasters: You will look and look but never understand.
Doug McMasters: You will look and look but never perceive.
Doug McMasters: And in addition to those fulfillment statements, those very clear statements, are several other fulfillment passages that don't have the formulaic introduction of fulfillment but actually are statements of fulfillment.
Doug McMasters: For instance Matthew 2.
Doug McMasters: In Bethlehem of Judea, they told him, because that is what was written in the prophet.
Doug McMasters: And you, bethlehem, in the land of Judah, by no means are the least among the rulers of Judah.
Doug McMasters: So there's several more of those, in addition to the ones that are explicitly stating fulfillment language, in addition to the ones that are explicitly stating fulfillment language.
Doug McMasters: The emphasis here is that God is sovereignly controlling history, he's governing all of human history to bring it to a place of fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: And so Jesus himself said in Matthew 5, I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, to bring it to its fullness, to bring it to its climax, to bring it to its completed, designated purpose and end.
Doug McMasters: So we see promise and fulfillment through that fulfillment language, and Matthew is just one example of that.
Doug McMasters: But there's also fulfillment of the Old Testament by way of another thing called typology.
Doug McMasters: Typology, fulfillment language, looks forward and it speaks directly and predicts a new testament event.
Doug McMasters: But typology is a little more indirect and a little more analogous in the sense that it takes people and places and institutions, such as king david or the temple itself or the temple worship sacrificial system, and shows in the antitype, the fulfillment, jesus Christ, paralleling those things in a fulfilling kind of way.
Doug McMasters: We often have to look differently at reality in this sense, because what we have are the shadows before the reality rather than the reality, and then see the trailing shadow, and that's a little opposite of how we think.
Doug McMasters: But when you see the Old Testament shadows, we need to look up and wonder what is the reality that those things are foreshadowing for us, the type and the anti-type, the type being the mark of the reality.
Doug McMasters: And if my ring were a seal, I would take my ring and stamp it and say there's King David, there's the temple, there's the sacrificial system, and you would look at those things and they're real marks.
Doug McMasters: But David and the temple and the sacrificial system are only marks of the thing which actually imprints them, the seal itself, who is Jesus Christ?
Doug McMasters: And so, for an example, as was brought out when we sang, adam is a type, christ is the anti-type.
Doug McMasters: Paul makes this argument in Adam all die, but in Christ all shall be made alive.
Doug McMasters: So here is Christ as the anti-type of which Adam is, but the type.
Doug McMasters: Just as death from sin entered the world through one man, adam, and thus cursing all of humanity, life enters the world through one man, jesus, that becomes available to all who believe on him.
Doug McMasters: So all who are in Christ live and all who are in Adam, if Christ hadn't intervened, would die.
Doug McMasters: The Word of God also sees God working out his plan in typology by Jesus, not only marking those people and places and institutions, but also the actions of the nation of Israel and even Israel itself become types of what Christ does.
Doug McMasters: So that, for instance, matthew speaks about Jesus being brought as an infant out of Egypt and brought back into the land of promise as an antitype of what Hosea was speaking about, about the exodus and the exile, when he was speaking to the people there, when he was speaking to the people there.
Doug McMasters: And so there's a direct connect in Jesus experiencing, as the true Israel and as the perfect Israel, some of the things that the nation of Israel itself experienced.
Doug McMasters: And so the New Testament writers saw the Old Testament through the fact of Christ coming, and the Old Testament context gave them a better understanding of who Christ is and what Christ has accomplished.
Doug McMasters: So I want to just take a moment and show what you're going to see when you read your New Testament and how it brings the Old Testament in.
Doug McMasters: First of all, we have what we call citations.
Doug McMasters: Citations Citations use an introductory formula.
Doug McMasters: It is written.
Doug McMasters: That's the formula and you can see that several different times in several different ways.
Doug McMasters: And what the New Testament writer is saying is that the Old Testament is very clearly being used and by using this formula, it is written is really just saying look, don't miss this Right, don't mistake the authority from which this has come.
Doug McMasters: It's come from God's word in the Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: It is written, and sometimes they're very specific about where that comes from and other times they're non-specific, but the citation is there.
Doug McMasters: For instance, a specific one would be Matthew 2.17, spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.
Doug McMasters: A non-specific one would be John 6, as it is written, as it is written where is not given.
Doug McMasters: It's non-specific.
Doug McMasters: Acts 13.33, written in the second Psalm Boy.
Doug McMasters: That's very specific.
Doug McMasters: 33, written in the second Psalm Boy.
Doug McMasters: That's very specific.
Doug McMasters: Ephesians 4.8.
Doug McMasters: Therefore, it says Very, very nonspecific.
Doug McMasters: Then there are quotations.
Doug McMasters: So there's not only citations but there's quotations.
Doug McMasters: And quotations are similar to citations but they don't use the formula it is written.
Doug McMasters: So, for instance, a good example would be Romans 9, 7.
Doug McMasters: Neither is it the case that all of Abraham's children are his descendants.
Doug McMasters: On the contrary, your offspring will be traced through Isaac.
Doug McMasters: And that last little phrase, your offspring shall be traced through Isaac.
Doug McMasters: And that last little phrase, your offspring shall be traced through Isaac is a quote from the Old Testament, but it doesn't have the citation.
Doug McMasters: It is written either specifically or non-specifically, and so it's a signal that the Old Testament is significant and that the New Testament is bringing in the ideas of the Old Testament into his argumentation, but is doing so in such a way that if you didn't know the Old Testament, you may not be able to catch what he's doing.
Doug McMasters: Let's kind of talk about a different one.
Doug McMasters: Let's say, if you're going somewhere that you're not accustomed to living at all, david soon is going to be living in Vancouver.
Doug McMasters: Right, have you ever lived in Vancouver?
Doug McMasters: You've never lived in Vancouver.
Doug McMasters: So what David might say when he gets to Vancouver and he starts to realize that Canadian culture is not New York City culture, he might say something like boy, I'm sure not in Kansas anymore.
Doug McMasters: What is that a quote of?
Doug McMasters: He didn't say, as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz in Act 3, scene 2, but he did quote the movie right, and if you knew the movie you'd understand the connection.
Doug McMasters: That's what a quote is compared to a citation.
Doug McMasters: But back to Romans 9 and verse 7.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what Paul's saying.
Doug McMasters: In fact you could turn there just for a second just to give us a better feel for it.
Doug McMasters: We'll be done in just a moment, but I want to give you an understanding of these things.
Doug McMasters: Romans 9, 7.
Doug McMasters: Now it's not as though the word of God has failed, because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
Doug McMasters: Neither is it the case that all of Abraham's children are his descendants.
Doug McMasters: On the contrary and there's the bold print we're given some help there by the people who set up our Bible's typeface your offspring will be traced through Isaac.
Doug McMasters: So what is Paul doing there?
Doug McMasters: He's going back to the Old Testament and the unstated person of Ishmael, right.
Doug McMasters: And the whole backstory of Ishmael and Isaac is just left unstated but understood as a living illustration of the opposition and the variance between those who are of the flesh and those who are of the spirit, whether or not they're descendants physically of Abraham.
Doug McMasters: So it is only those who, by faith are children of Abraham, are the ones who are called into the promise, not just physical descendants.
Doug McMasters: He goes on to say that very clearly.
Doug McMasters: That is, it is not children by physical descent who are God's children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring, for this is the statement of the promise.
Doug McMasters: At this time I will come and Sarah will have a son.
Doug McMasters: Sarah will have a son.
Doug McMasters: So we have citations, we have quotations, citations that are specific or nonspecific quotations, which don't give us the formula but give us the passage.
Doug McMasters: And then there's another one called allusions, allusions and allusions.
Doug McMasters: Again they don't have a citation formula, but they're sort of little brief snippets of Old Testament passages where there's a broad idea or person or place or scene in the Old Testament that's brought into the discussion of the New Testament, and they're only fragments or summaries of Old Testament passages.
Doug McMasters: And so it's easy for these to slip by you unless you know your Old Testament.
Doug McMasters: And you might have recognized that many, many times in Matthew there were little nuances of argument that were being used by Matthew to explain Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
Doug McMasters: That if you didn't know the Old Testament you wouldn't catch it at all.
Doug McMasters: But if you're tuned into the Old Testament, a whole new level of understanding opens up for you.
Doug McMasters: We find those in a lot of movies, and someone said this and I think it's a great way to illustrate that, when you watch different children's movies that are popular these days, they've realized that they need to put into those movies things that will keep the parents as interested as the children.
Doug McMasters: But there's a lot of pop culture references that the kids don't even understand and sometimes better, they don't that the parents do understand.
Doug McMasters: And when the parents see it they go that's great, you know, they laugh and enjoy it and the kid is enjoying it at their level too.
Doug McMasters: So, for instance, in DreamWorks movies, in Shrek 2, there is Farbuck's coffee, right, of course we know what that is.
Doug McMasters: A little kid probably just didn't even think about it.
Doug McMasters: So unless you know your Old Testament, you're not even going to think about it.
Doug McMasters: But if you know your Old Testament, you're going even going to think about it.
Doug McMasters: But if you know your Old Testament, you're going to really think about it and it's going to open up new vistas for you.
Doug McMasters: Let me give you an example of what I mean by that Genesis, chapter 28,.
Doug McMasters: Right after we have Jacob tricking his brother Esau and having to flee.
Doug McMasters: We come into chapter 28 and Jacob is at leaves Beersheba and he comes toward Haran and he comes to a certain place and he spends the night there because it's gotten dark by then and he takes one of the stones that is just lying around and he lays down.
Doug McMasters: So it doesn't, it's no place to go.
Doug McMasters: It's not like there's a Motel 6 there or Holiday Inn or anything.
Doug McMasters: He just finds a rock and lays down and goes to bed because it's dark.
Doug McMasters: He's running away and as he lays down he dreams, and in verse 12 of Genesis 28, we have this really strange statement.
Doug McMasters: He dreamed a stairway was set on the ground, with its top reaching the sky, and God's angels were going up and down the stairway.
Doug McMasters: You know, pretty vivid dream.
Doug McMasters: Might have had a little too much of Bono's pizza before he went to bed, you know.
Doug McMasters: And here's this bizarre dream.
Doug McMasters: Why are we given that information?
Doug McMasters: We just go on.
Doug McMasters: The Lord was standing there beside him saying I am the Lord, the God of your father, abraham, and the God of Isaac.
Doug McMasters: I will give you and your offspring the land of which you're lying.
Doug McMasters: This guy's just had to run away from home.
Doug McMasters: And God meets him in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, and tells him the promise I gave Abraham is the promise I gave to Isaac, is the promise I'm giving to you.
Doug McMasters: Look, I'm with you, I'll watch over you wherever you go.
Doug McMasters: I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I've done what I've promised you.
Doug McMasters: And when Jacob awoke he said surely the Lord was in this place and I did not know it.
Doug McMasters: He was afraid.
Doug McMasters: And he said what an awesome place this is.
Doug McMasters: This is none other than the house of God.
Doug McMasters: And he called the place Bethel.
Doug McMasters: This is the gateway of heaven.
Doug McMasters: Did you hear that?
Doug McMasters: This is the gateway of heaven?
Doug McMasters: And so he set a stone that was near his head, set it up as a marker, he poured oil on top of it and named the place Bethel the house of God.
Doug McMasters: We could easily pass by that, not really giving a whole lot of understanding to the dream.
Doug McMasters: We might even remember the dream, but the stairway and the angels coming up and down, maybe not, until we get to the Gospel of John, and in John, chapter 1, these men are starting to come into an interaction with Jesus.
Doug McMasters: Philip finds Nathanael and told him we found the one that Moses has written about in the law, and so did the prophets Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.
Doug McMasters: Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?
Doug McMasters: Nathanael asks Come and see.
Doug McMasters: Philip answers and Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him here truly is an Israelite in whom there's no deceit.
Doug McMasters: Nathanael's shocked him and said about him here truly is an Israelite in whom there's no deceit.
Doug McMasters: Nathanael shocked how did you know me Before?
Doug McMasters: Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
Doug McMasters: Jesus answered Rabbi, you're the son of God, you're the king of Israel.
Doug McMasters: Seems like an awfully rash and hearty thing to say, but remember the Old Testament is filled with what Promise, intention and anticipation.
Doug McMasters: That's why these guys said what they did so quickly Because there was promise, intention and anticipation that made them ready to find the Messiah.
Doug McMasters: Jesus responds to him do you believe?
Doug McMasters: Because I told you I saw you under the fig tree?
Doug McMasters: Why should he believe?
Doug McMasters: Listen to what Jesus says.
Doug McMasters: Next You'll see greater things than this.
Doug McMasters: Then he said truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man, descending on the Son of man.
Doug McMasters: That's an allusion to Genesis, chapter 28, where Jacob said this is the place where God was, this is the house of God, this is the gateway to heaven.
Doug McMasters: And Jesus is making a very clear statement, by way of an illusion, that he is the house of God, that he is the gateway to heaven.
Doug McMasters: If you don't read your Old Testament, you're not going to know that, you're not going to catch these things, and so, as best we can, I want you to read the New Testament and love Matthew and Mark and Luke and John and Acts and Romans and 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and on.
Doug McMasters: We go, but don't forget where we've been, and, for those of us who are teaching all of the New Testament books, let's remember to bring what we've learned into where we're at as we go through them, so that we might continue to see these interactions.
Doug McMasters: Remember, the early church wasn't just Jewish.
Doug McMasters: It very shortly began to reach into the Gentile nations, and many of them, just like us, have not had the luxury of being taught the scriptures from our youth, and so Genesis was just as much a mystery to them as it is to us when we first read it, and so they learned, as the apostles didn't hold back on forcing them to read the Old Testament and to understand it and to realize that that promise has now come to fruition in Jesus Christ.
Doug McMasters: So don't be afraid of being challenged to reach back time and time again as we continue to move forward into the New Testament more deeply.
Doug McMasters: Right, so let's pray more deeply.
Doug McMasters: All right, so let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we thank you for granting us a position in time to know that Christ has come, that he has come in response to all of your purpose plan and your promise plan to bring about life to the nations, so that people from every place might declare you as Lord and Savior.
Doug McMasters: Lord, what a wondrous privilege it is not to be in the tension and anticipation of promise, but to be in the wondrous place of fulfillment and completion.
Doug McMasters: But to be in the wondrous place of fulfillment and completion.
Doug McMasters: And yet we can understand some of those points of tension and anticipation, because we still hope in steadfast confidence and wait for that coming day when all that Christ's kingdom will be in its full unveiling as it brings the last enemy to defeat and death is finished, finally, and life will reign, and where holiness will be home and we will be your people and you will declare yourself to be our God.
Doug McMasters: Lord, as we continue to venture through your word, help us to understand all that you have for us, in all the ways that you've given it to us, so that we might truly grasp a hold of Christ all the more, and to rejoice in him and to display him as we live our life, in light of who he is and what he's done for us.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.