The Old Testament’s Message to our Culture

By David Murray - Posted at HeadHeartHand:

"In principio creavit deus..."
First page of Genesis in a Latin bible dated 1481
(Bodleian Library)

What can the Old Testament possibly say to our culture? It seems a million miles and sometimes a million years away from our time, our generation, and our problems. How can something so old address all the new challenges of globalization, sex-trafficking, the digital revolution, etc.

There’s no question that the Old Testament is a challenging read; it doesn’t yield its wisdom quite as easily as fortune cookies. However, it does repay disciplined and prayerful reading and research. Remember it was the Old Testament Paul was referring to when he said: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

So let me suggest five ways the Old Testament speaks profitably to our times.

1. It explains our culture

If you enter a play at the half-time interval you wouldn’t expect to understand the second half of the drama. You’d be left scratching your head at much of what followed, and make numerous false conclusions and judgments as well.

Similarly, if we only read the New Testament, we are coming in half-way through the third of four acts, and can’t really have a hope of grasping where the story has been or is going.

The Old Testament unfolds the drama of a perfectly good and beautiful creation in Act I followed by humanity’s tragic fall into sin in Act II. Act III, which opens in Genesis 3, begins the story of redemption, and gives us hope of a climactic final Act IV when all things will be made new for those who follow the story and don’t walk out to write their own ending.

We’ll never understand or be able to explain our culture without watching the whole drama from the beginning.

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