What is the story of the Old Testament?

Here, as all know, closes the great volume of O.T. inspiration. There only is found the authentic account of creation and of early mankind; there of the deluge, and of nations and tongues subsequently, of the promises given to the fathers, and of Israel, their offspring, the people chosen of God, but failing under trial, and worst of all (as the prophets predicted) when they rejected their Messiah. But the prophets as certainly predicted that He will surely restore them penitent and believing in the latter day.

Now, dear Christian reader, having got to the historical close of the Old Testament, in which we have the sum of all history as connected with the Jews and as bearing upon the glory of Christ, let us briefly review the steps of this wonderful journey. As creatures, we necessarily commence with the enquiry — What about creation? Who created? What, too, are the salient features of the early ages of the world? We get a full and Divine answer in the book of Genesis. What next commands our attention? All nature is disturbed; there is agony in the depths and in the heights. Here hearts are broken, tears are shed, and a seething mass of human misery and sin calls aloud for redemption from Satan's grasp and slavery; yea, and from God's judgment, too, righteously pressing upon the ruined sinner. God in holiness and righteousness provides redemption in the person and by the work of His beloved Son — the grand theme of Exodus.

The popular thing is to eulogize the New Testament and to treat the Old as mythical and legendary, a mass of fables and parables, and that in spite of the fact that the spade of the archaeologist, digging in Bible lands, is constantly proving the truth of Bible history, and that “in all the wide scope of their investigations they have found nothing that discredits the book as a narrator of facts” (Kyle). This is not an honest treatment of the Bible, for whoever reads it with any care must see that the Old Testament is woven into the very texture of the New, and it cannot be torn from the book and cast upon the rubbish heap without leaving the New in hopeless tatters. How bewildered we should be in our reading of the New Testament if the Old were worthy of no better treatment than this. There are many questions that arise as we read the New—Who was Adam, and from whence did he come, and how did sin enter into the world through him? Who was Abraham and what were the promises that God made to him, and why did He make them? Who was Moses and what was the law that came by him, and why and how did it come? And David, what were the sure mercies that God guaranteed to him? And the woman's Seed, the Child of the virgin mother, Him whose name is Immanuel, and to whom all the prophets gave witness, what and where are the words that were spoken of Him? And the great red dragon, who is the Devil and Satan, who hates the Man-child, the Seed of the woman: how did he gain the ascendancy over man and become the prince of this world and its god? The New Testament raises these questions and they are vital questions, and the Old Testament answers them, and no other book does, and as we read it, we learn how the sore bondage of sin commenced, and how the first light of mercy dawned on man when God announced that the Seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent. We learn as we read those ancient God-given words the necessity for regeneration and redemption of which the New Testament speaks, even if we have not learnt this necessity in our own experience of sin in our own hearts and lives, and how futile are all our own efforts to overcome it.

The popular thing is to eulogize the New Testament and to treat the Old as mythical and legendary, a mass of fables and parables, and that in spite of the fact that the spade of the archaeologist, digging in Bible lands, is constantly proving the truth of Bible history, and that "in all the wide scope of their investigations they have found nothing that discredits the book as a narrator of facts" (Kyle). This is not an honest treatment of the Bible, for whoever reads it with any care must see that the Old Testament is woven into the very texture of the New, and it cannot be torn from the book and cast upon the rubbish heap without leaving the New in hopeless tatters. How bewildered we should be in our reading of the New Testament if the Old were worthy of no better treatment than this. There are many questions that arise as we read the New — Who was Adam, and from whence did he come, and how did sin enter into the world through him? Who was Abraham and what were the promises that God made to him, and why did He make them? Who was Moses and what was the law that came by him, and why and how did it come? And David, what were the sure mercies that God guaranteed to him? And the woman's Seed, the Child of the virgin mother, Him whose name is Immanuel, and to whom all the prophets gave witness, what and where are the words that were spoken of Him? And the great red dragon, who is the Devil and Satan, who hates the Man-child, the Seed of the woman: how did he gain the ascendancy over man and become the prince of this world and its god? The New Testament raises these questions and they are vital questions, and the Old Testament answers them, and no other book does, and as we read it, we learn how the sore bondage of sin commenced, and how the first light of mercy dawned on man when God announced that the Seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent. We learn as we read those ancient God-given words the necessity for regeneration and redemption of which the New Testament speaks, even if we have not learnt this necessity in our own experience of sin in our own hearts and lives, and how futile are all our own efforts to overcome it.

All Scripture is the history of two men, who are thus described: “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the Second Man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). The New Testament unfolds the heavenly character and the heavenly work of the “Second Man”. The Old Testament treats of the relations of these two men with the earth. It records the history of the first man, created in innocence, falling under the power of sin, and ever manifesting in darker colours his ruin and his alienation from God. It foretells the triumphs of the Second Man, who retrieved the ruin brought in by the first, and glorified God in the scene in which sin had dishonoured Him. It was the entrance of sin and the ruin of the first creation that gave God the opportunity (if we may so speak) of bringing forth this Second Man, in whom all the glories of His person are displayed and all the treasures of His love unfolded. We shall see the character and extent of the ruin, and the failure of the first man in every position in which God placed him; and we shall see how the Second Man takes up the broken thread and carries to perfection the Divine purposes.

But why these different modes of acting? Why this long concealment of the heavenly hope, and then, after its fulfilment, a return to the earthly hope, so long announced and so long deferred? The question is one of deepest interest, and, like all other subjects which bring out the counsels and purposes of God, cannot fail, if rightly apprehended, to display in brighter lustre the riches of His glory and the depths of His wisdom. All Scripture is the history of two men, who are thus described — "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the Second Man is the Lord from heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47). The New Testament unfolds the heavenly character and the heavenly work of the "Second Man." The Old Testament treats of the relations of these two men with the earth. It records the history of the first man, created in innocence, falling under the power of sin, and ever manifesting in darker colours his ruin and his alienation from God. It foretells the triumphs of the Second Man, who retrieves the ruin brought in by the first, and glorifies God in the scene in which sin has dishonoured Him. It was the entrance of sin and the ruin of the first creation, that gave God the opportunity (if we may so speak) of bringing forth this Second Man, in whom all the glories of His person are displayed and all the treasures of His love unfolded. We shall see the character and extent of the ruin, and the failure of the first man in every position in which God placed him; and we shall see how the Second Man takes up the broken thread, and carries to perfection the Divine purposes.

It is a wonderful thing for our souls to be carried back, as we are in Ephesians, to God's counsels for us from all eternity, in contrast with His ways with man on earth. There are these two distinct lines in Scripture-the history of the first man, and God's counsels in the second. How blessed to have all that belongs to the first man blotted out, so that nothing remains before our eyes but the perfection of the second. Have we been able so to learn the history of the old man, as to have done with it, so that we may be free to bask in the wondrous truth of Ephesians 1. We cannot begin there. The first thing is that God has to deal with us about our sins, that our links may be broken with the first man. All through the Old Testament we have the history of the failure of the first man when tried in every way. Placed in innocence in Eden man is given one command, and he breaks it: Noah, set over all the world after the flood, fails to govern himself: God chooses one nation and commits to them His testimony, and the first and cardinal commandment is broken before it reaches the camp: He sets up priesthood, strange fire is offered before Him, and the priesthood breaks down: He gives them a king, and how soon the kingdom fails. Turn where we will, we find the same thing. The last test was applied to man when God said, I have yet one son it may be they will reverence my son. The only answer to this was, "This is the heir, come let us kill him." Stephen sums up that history in Acts 7. the promises despised, the law transgressed, the prophets slain. What a history! From the first act to the culmination, nothing but sin, and all this is ended in the cross of Christ. It is a blessed thing when the trial of the ages, carried into the conscience, discovers me to myself as belonging to a lost race before God.

In the Old Testament we have related the history of man from the creation to the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, as far as God has been pleased to make it known, when for the first time there existed upon earth, and was seen, a people which the Lord Jehovah owned, and would have others to know were His peculiar people. To them the law was given, God's revelation of that which was suited to man in the flesh (Rom. 7:5), and which was holy, just, and good. What response there was to that revelation on the part of the people of Israel, or rather how they failed to respond to it, the historical books are chiefly concerned in narrating. The failure after the death of Joshua, and of the elders which outlived Joshua, was great and general. (Judges 2:7.) The solemn warnings of Moses recounted in Deuteronomy, the earnest entreaties of Joshua a little time before his death (Joshua 23, 24), as well as the predictions of judgments, including captivity, if they continued obdurate, and which were written in the law; all these failed to make any lasting or deep impression on them.

God had a nation, indeed, in Old Testament times; and the history of this nation, with the prophetic details of the counsels and purposes of God respecting it, form the principal subjects of the Old Testament Scriptures. Israel was not manifested as a nation until its redemption out of Egypt by the hand of Moses. Long before this, God had promised to the patriarchs, that their seed should possess the land of Canaan; but now this promise was to be accomplished.

Thus we find, in looking through the Old Testament, that everything is of a partial or fragmentary character. We learn lessons of sin, and of atonement for sin. At the very beginning, outside Eden, we see God providing a covering for our guilty parents. We find Him teaching the lesson of judgment in the Flood, and of shelter from that judgment through the ark. We find Him teaching His sufficiency for those who trust Him, in the life of Abraham. We find Him illustrating the fact that He is a God who fulfils His promise, in the birth of Isaac, and an unfolding of the precious truths of sonship in connection with Isaac's life. We find Him chastening and disciplining His people in the history of Jacob, and in Joseph we see Him revealing those secrets which ever, if I may say, struggle for expression — secrets as to the glory of His own beloved Son; for God was ever yearning to express His thoughts of Christ.