One of the most important grids for any preacher tackling an Old Testament text is to ask if and then how it is used in the New Testament. The whole Bible is inspired and so it is always going to be instructive to see how inspired Scripture interprets inspired Scripture. I'm going to say a little more about this over the coming days. First, it's good to see that the New Testament uses the old in different ways.
1. Understanding the OT story
There are times when the NT sees the OT as a whole into which the story of salvation fits. This is evident in Stephen’s majestic overview in Acts 7, for example, or in the words of Jesus to his followers in Luke 24.27. In both of these cases, and others too, the OT Scripture is taken as a whole and the reader invited to see how the work of Christ (in particular) acts as the great climax to this story.
Most of us are well drilled in this kind of biblical theology and will often apply it to Old Testament texts. But it is worth noting that this is not the only way the Old Testament is understood. There is more than one sermon from the Old Testament, to which the answer is “Jesus is the coming King.”
2. Illustrative example
Sometimes the New Testament uses the Old Testament as an illustrative source book. This is often prefaced with the words “just as…” The Old Testament story (in particular) illustrates the point being made. A good example is Jesus’ reference to the widow of Zarephath (Luke 4.24-26 using 1 Kings 17.8-16).
We need to be careful here, though. Just because the story is referenced in the New Testament, does that narrow its interpretation to only this line? I think that depends very much on the context. Take the following illustration from Luke 4.
And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, only Namaan the Syiran.
If you go back to that story (2 Kings 5.1-14) I think careful study will reveal that the heart of the passage is Namaan’s confession “Now I know there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant.”
This is a story about the gospel going to all nations and nations being brought in, fulfilling the promise to Abraham. However, the widow story in 1 Kings 17 is about the word of the Lord through the prophet not failing.
Yet both are used by our Lord to illustrate that a prophet is not accepted in his home town. If you were to preach those 1 or 2 Kings passages, you would not want to make (I would suggest) the Luke 4 line your main thrust. Jesus is using those passages illustratively. (And therein lies an interesting aside. Why not take more of your illustrations from Bible stories?)
However, there is a different kind of example, which I will consider tomorrow.
3. Prophetic illustration
Some OT illustrations are more than illustrations for a particular point. We saw yesterday how stories from the life of Elijah and Elisha are used by Jesus to illustrate a point about his own ministry and how that does not change the meaning and significance of the original narrative.
However, there are also stories where the original meaning of the narrative is made clear by a NT use. A great example is found in Luke 11.29-32. There Jesus uses two well known Sunday School stories (the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon and Jonah’s preaching at Nineveh) to make a point about his own ministry.
These are not illustrations as such, but what I call prophetic illustrations. The OT stories have a natural trajectory which takes them in a certain direction and the preacher who does not follow Jesus’ pattern is, I would suggest, being cavalier with the whole Bible. Jesus is not just using the stories to illustrate, he is interpreting the stories in their wider Bible context.
4. Prophetic fulfilment
One of the more obvious ways the NT uses the Old is in terms of prophetic fulfilment. This is essentially the same point as yesterday. There we saw how stories can have a certain trajectory. It’s no coincidence that many of these stories come from books Jewish people call ‘former prophets.’ And the so the stories often work in terms of prophetic fulfilment.
Nevertheless, prophetic fulfilment does tend to be more direct. We often get markers in the text, “as the Scripture says” or “to fulfil what was written.” Sure, there will often be immediate fulfilment first. But any OT sermon that does not follow the NT trajectory in this case is sadly lacking. Sometimes that will be obvious; other times more thinking will be required. But, a sermon which takes a servant song from Isaiah and applies it only to Cyrus is clearly short changing a congregation.
There’s no substitute for knowing your Bible at this point. However, two resources I’ve found immensely helpful are (an older one), The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and (a newer one), Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old.
5. Example
It’s an undeniable fact that the NT uses the Old to reinforce moral teaching. It does this through using case law and example. We are, to be frank, a bit embarrassed about this. We are so anti-moralising, that we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. I am against moralising too. But there is a world of difference between “Samson grew his hair and so must you” to “These things were written for us.”
I like the way Ed Clowney writes about it in his excellent little book “Preaching and Biblical Theology.”
We do well then to avoid setting up a false antithesis between the redemptive-historical approach and what might be called an ethical approach to the Scriptures, particularly in the historical passages. The redemptive-historical approach necessarily yields ethical application, which is an essential part of the preaching of the Word.
From Proclamation Trust