Time in the Old Testament

About a month ago, I decided that some time around September I would make the commitment to spend time in the first five books of the bible. Since I have made that decision, the Old Testament has come up in conversation three or four more times. The biggest questions that come up when you talk about the Old Testament seem to be, does it still matter and how much time should we spend in the Old Testament. Neither of those things crossed my mind when I was thinking of spending some time reading it. My focus has always been that I personally needed to spend more time reading the words that Jesus studied as a young child on earth. The words in the Old Testament are the words that God wanted everyone to read on a daily basis. When God was telling people to read his words in the temple, he wasn’t telling them to read John 3:16. God told the Kings to read what Moses said, not the letters of Paul. Now, I want to be very clear, I believe that we need to spend the majority of our time in the New Testament. I think if we are witnessing to new believers or people that do not know Jesus, we shouldn’t open to the book Leviticus and tell them to start reading. But do I think they need to know the story of creation, absolutely! Do I think that reading the book of Exodus and how the Israelite’s left Egypt is beneficial, yes, very much so! The book of Genesis is one of the greatest books in the bible. The story of how it all started, the fathers of the nation and everything about Joseph. All of it is amazing and important to the story of Jesus. The older I get, the more I see myself in the book of Exodus. I see myself as someone who is wandering in the desert just trying to get to the promised land. When I hear about the mistakes they make as they go along, it reminds me of my own life. If we don’t understand how many laws they had and how hard it was to follow all of them, then how do we know that with Jesus the burden is so much lighter? I worry that sometimes we live in a world that sees all the beauty of forgiveness, but we fail to see how horrible sin is. Because we fail to see how nasty sin is, we allow it to creep into our life. If we don’t see how in the Old Testament they failed to listen to God and follow his commands, we allow ourselves to compromise our beliefs. It’s hard to tell everyone about eternal life if you don’t read about a time when it wasn’t an option. I’ve mentioned this before but, the bible tells us to forgive others because we were forgiven. The bible tells us to love others because God loved us. How did he love us? He sent his son to die on the cross. He told us the true story about how we are all sinners. I can’t imagine never hearing the story of Ruth, or Esther. What about King David? I get caught up in the lives of Elijah and Elisha. What about Noah, and Moses? Of course, let’s not forget about Jonah! When Jesus talked about meditating on scripture, he was talking about the Old Testament. When he would spend time with his Father praying scripture, it was the Old Testament. I’ve spent a lot of time lately reading about the three missionary trips that Paul took in the book of Acts. I love reading that and thinking about how it was on those trips that he built the relationships that led him to write thirteen books in the New Testament. I love the gospels and hearing about the miracles that Jesus did. I love wondering what it was like for the disciples to spend so much time with Jesus. What a wretched man I am, but because of Jesus I can have eternal life. We were told to go to the whole world and preach the good news. I know that when that was said it was talking about Jesus and what he has done for us. I also know that we need to spend most of our time in the New Testament. But please don’t forget about the Old Testament. We can still learn so much from it!