The Lord Jesus used the Old Testament Scriptures in several different ways.
He observed them obediently, ordering His life and forming His character, as I may speak, according to them.
He used them as weapons of war, or shield of defense, when assailed by the tempter or by the world.
He treated them as authority when teaching or reasoning.
He avowed and averred their divine origin, and their indestructible character, and that too in every jot and tittle of them.
He fulfilled them, not withdrawing Himself from His place of service and of suffering till He could survey the whole of them (as far as that service and suffering had respect to them) as realized, verified, and accomplished.
In such ways as these, and it may be in others, the Lord honored the Scriptures. What a sight! What a precious fact! How blessed to see Him in such relationship to the Word of God-that Word which is the ground and witness of all the confidence and liberty and peace we know before God.
Then, when the ministry of the Lord is over, when the Son has returned to heaven, and the Spirit comes down, He appears (as in the apostles whom He filled to write the epistles) doing the like service for us. For in the epistles we get quotations from the writings of the Old Testament.
And there is no limit to this. These quotations are found in every part of the New Testament, and are taken from every part of the Old, from Genesis to Malachi—and that very largely. So we have, in the structure of the divine volume, nothing less than the closest, fullest, and most intricate interweaving of all parts of it together, the end too returning to the beginning, and the beginning anticipating the end. In a certain sense, we are in all parts of the volume when we are in any part of it, though
the variety of communications in disclosing the dispensations of God is infinite.
And surely we say, these qualities of the holy Book are in the highest sense divine, as its contents or material have in them a comprehension and display of moral glories in all unsullied excellency which in the clearest manner speak of God unmistakably to heart and conscience.