Reading the Old Testament

Last year at this time, I was knee-deep in Hebrew words and verb forms.  This year, I'm reading through the Pentateuch.  In addition, I've had a couple classes that looked at David, Jonah, and Ruth.  It strikes me that in the past year, I've spend more time in the Old Testament than I have in a long time.

Each year, I try to accomplish the "Read the Bible in a Year" project.  Sometimes, I succeed, but more often than not, I get bogged down in Deuteronomy and quit reading.  At church, we rarely look at the first Testament, and I sometimes wonder what newer Christians think about it as it is never used!

But these courses have taught me to be more intentional about using the Old Testament.  I think Christians like to toss it out, as it has a lot of hard stories.  Hard stories about death, violence, bad treatment of women and children.  But, the New Testament covers many of these topics too. 

What we miss when we skip over to the New Testament without engaging the Old Testament is the unending faithfulness of God and his desire to have his people in relationship with Him.  We see a people longing for Jesus and waiting in expectation for his arrival.  In many ways, we live with a similar expectation - the expectation of Jesus' return.  I suspect that like the Israelites, we have fallen short of the way God would have us live.  The Old Testament tells us what we can expect from God - faithfulness in Jesus return even if we are not as faithful as we could be.