The Testimony of the New Testament to the Old Testament
Before we turn back to examine the ancient writings as a whole, it will help us to remember how our Lord set them as such before His disciples after He was risen from among the dead. Not only, as before observed, did He open their understandings that they might understand the scriptures; but we are told that “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.” What a marvelous exposition it must have been! Is it surprising that they said one to another, “Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the scriptures?” Yes, when He applies scripture to our hearts and consciences it brings its own evidence of its divinity. When our Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria, she felt at once it was in a divine way, so that her conscience being reached she said, “Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet;” and on learning that He was the Messiah, she left all to go into the city and say, “Come see a man that told me all things that ever I did, is not this the Christ?” Our Lord in life said the scripture cannot be broken; in death He consciously fulfilled scripture and spoke of it; in resurrection, as we have seen, He brought scripture to His disciples. Again, having eaten before them to show He was not a spirit but a body of flesh and bones, He said, “These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning Me.” “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.” Our Lord not only testified of His having fulfilled the Old Testament scriptures in His death and resurrection, but He authenticated the entire body of writings in all their divisions of books of Moses, prophets, and Psalms; much as we still, through God’s great mercy and guardian care, have them.
In looking into the books of Moses, we find that our Lord recognized their divine authority, and referred to each of them as such. We hear Him saying on one occasion, “Have ye not read that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female?” (Gen. 1:27). And again He quotes from Genesis 2:24, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” He was Himself, as the woman’s Seed, to be the fulfiller of the bruising of Satan’s head, after He Himself had suffered from him. This we find in Genesis 3; as also in the typical clothing of man’s nakedness through the death of Another; the result of the death of the cross. Our Lord also spoke of the death of “righteous Abel,” as recorded in Genesis 4; endorsed the doctrine of man’s utter ruin of Genesis 6, when He said, “the flesh profiteth nothing,” and “out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts,” etc., and largely dwelt on the details of the days of Noah and the flood as typical of the sad state He will find the world in when He comes from heaven to judge (Matt. 24:37-41). Our Lord also referred to Abraham, saying, “he rejoiced to see My day.... and was glad, “but asserted the divine glory of His Person, when He said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
Our Savior also quoted the words of Jehovah, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,” to show they were still spiritually alive and to prove the reality of the resurrection of the body, and thus refute the false doctrine of the Sadducees; and this scripture also authenticated their patriarchal history as detailed in Genesis (Matt. 22:32). The tabernacle, with its priesthood and sacrifices, gave much typical instruction as to our Lord’s death and High Priestly office for us.
The Lord’s death was the fulfillment of the typical sacrifices of Leviticus, and He often quoted from it; and from Numbers also, for most will remember that He used the lifting up of the brazen serpent in the wilderness as a simple illustration of faith, and the effectual and everlasting blessing those have who in their need and danger look simply to Him as the Object of faith. From Deuteronomy our Lord took words, and used them with “It is written,” to overcome the devil in his temptations. Thus the Lord practically authenticated all the books of Moses as God’s words, and repeated that we should live “by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
We have lingered over the writings of Moses because of the bold attacks that have been made on them by learned skeptics. It is asserted by some of them, that it is only the first five books of Scripture to which they object; but as the writings of Moses are quoted as having divine authority throughout the Old and New Testament, to disallow them as not divinely inspired, is not merely to lose them, but to deprive us of all the Scriptures. This, no doubt, was anticipated by our Lord who knew all things, so that He said, “If ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” It is most interesting, however, to know that Joshua is not only told to obey Moses writings, but at the end of his course as Jehovah’s servant, he records the history of the children of Israel from the call of Abraham to that time (Josh. 24). About a thousand years after that, Nehemiah also recorded their history from the call of Abraham, traces them out of Egypt across the Red Sea, through the wilderness under God’s care and goodness for forty years, their ways of disobedience in the land, and God’s deliverances; and adds that. “God testified against them by His Spirit in the prophets.” Thus He authenticated not only all the books of Moses and Joshua, but all the prophets before His time (Neh. 9). Nor should it be forgotten, that the facts in the history of the children of Israel, recorded in the books of Moses, right on to their captivity, and taken up in detail in the Psalms 78, 105, and 106, thus endorsing many of the books of the Old Testament as divinely authenticated. In the divisional part of the Old Testament called “the Psalms” are included the book of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
In reference to the book of Psalms, our Lord quoted from Psalm 110, and said David wrote it by the Holy Spirit (Mark 12:26) He said to His hearers who refused Him, “Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?” (Psa. 118:22). And when under, as it were, the shadow of the cross, He said “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be?” (Matt. 26:53-54). What Scriptures? No doubt largely Moses and the prophets, but also the Psalms, which not only spoke of His death and sufferings as crucified, but also of His resurrection, glorification, and sitting at God’s right hand, and coming reign.
(To be continued.)