As most of you know, the Bible is split into two main sections; the Old Testament and the New Testament. Many people often assume that all the Good News is in the New Testament and that all the rules and judgement are in the Old Testament. But this simply is not true. The only reason for this split is the quite large time gap between the two Testaments, about 400 years. Even though Jesus, salvation and the disciples are all in the New Testament, Jesus’ story begins way back in Genesis. The first reference to Jesus’ power over death and evil can be found in Genesis 3:15: “...he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”  Here God is talking to the serpent, who was Satan. After The Fall of Man, God makes reference to how even though Jesus will one day die on the Cross (the strike on his heel), rise from the dead and defeat evil and death forever (crushing the head of evil). This is only one example of how the Bible speaks of Jesus thousands of years before He was born in Bethlehem. 

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We also need to remember that it is from the Old Testament Jesus preached in the New Testament: “And beginning with Moses and ALL the prophets, he explained to them what was said in ALL the Scriptures concerning himself.” Luke 24:27. The New Testament manuscripts, letters and writings weren’t collected until a couple of decades after Jesus’ ascension and so in Jesus’ time on the earth, the Scripture they used was, in fact, all from the Old Testament. 

 

Even though the Bible includes many books and sections that are written in different ways, such as history books, poetry books, prophecies and letters, we must remember that it is one book and that it is the same true story all the way through from Genesis to Revelation. When we read the Bible according to its outstanding storylines instead of book by book, we see that the same story and truth of God’s faithfulness love, righteous justice, judgment, and salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ is engraved deep into every page of the Bible and will forever be relevant to our lives. 

 

We read in Matthew 24:35 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Here Jesus is declaring that His words; the Bible, is eternally and infinitely relevant. There is no situation or cultural context that can discredit the inspired word of the living God. We believe that the history in the book of Genesis was roughly 4,000 years before Jesus was born yet he still deemed it relevant and preached from it. Therefore it is highly illogical for anyone to assume that a further 2,000 years to today would change everything and deem the Old Testament irrelevant.   

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