Disregard the Old Testament to Your Own Doom
Many professing Christians actually don’t believe that the Jews who reject Jesus Christ do so because they do not heed their own Scriptures (that is, the Hebrew Bible- what we know now as the Old Testament). Yet this is exactly what Jesus said as He spoke to Jews who did not believe in Him.
John 5:37-40: “And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”
Since they would not come to Him due to not heeding the Hebrew Scriptures, what makes anyone think that they can come to Him, on His terms, while they disregard the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament? To believe that anyone can actually do so is to reject what Jesus directly said. Anyone who disregards the Old Testament cannot be properly receiving Jesus then; and anyone who is not properly receiving Him cannot be properly related to the Father through Him.
Jesus said plainly that we must worship God in spirit and in truth; and that the definition of doing so comes from the Old Testament (the Hebrew or Jewish Scriptures).
John 4:19-24: “The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
And yet most professing Christians disregard the Old Testament. For many, this is even done in a rather blatant way. Yet even then, they are also typically not consistent in rejecting the Old Testament. They will still quote from it occasionally when it is suitable for them.
As an example of what I mean, most evangelicals know Isaiah 64:6 very well. They will quote it to try to claim that all anyone can do is continuously sin.
Isaiah 64:6: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities (lawless deeds), like the wind, have taken us away.”
Those who quote this verse typically quote it alone without mentioning that the context it was given in was as a rebuke to a religiously scrupulous nation which was morally departed from God in spite of their ceremonial scrupulousness. This departure did not need to happen. God established that at the very beginning of the Book of Isaiah and called Israel to repent in order to settle its controversy with Him and not be under His judgment. When you hear someone quote Isaiah 64:6 now, you can be almost certain that they will rather use it to say virtually the opposite.
Near the beginning of the book, we are told in Isaiah 1:16-17: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.”
Only in that context is there the offer of forgiveness and cleansing. Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
If you go back to verses eleven to fifteen of Isaiah chapter one, you’ll also see how God tells Israel not to even bring sacrifices to Him or keep holy days anymore in their wicked departure from Him and their cleaving to moral corruption.
Many know that the sacrifices which God prescribed for Israel were a temporary arrangement which testified of the ultimate sacrifice which the Messiah would make eventually that can actually take away sins. They also often know that God dealt with mankind before Christ in light of the sacrifice which Christ would eventually make on the cross, and He therefore could forgive and justify people even then in light of the atonement which Christ would one day make. Yet often even those who acknowledge these things have disconnects. They often don’t account that God did not forgive and justify Israelites simply because they offered the prescribed sacrifices. They also often don’t account that this obviously means those who trust in Christ to take away their sins without true repentance from their sins from their heart, and deeds in keeping therewith, have a false hope in Christ and will not actually be forgiven and justified by His sacrifice on the cross.
Isaiah 1:11-15: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.”
These things alone prove that those who would be authentic, faithful Christians actually need to read and understand the Old Testament. And these things alone blow the insufficient, false gospel which is common now in the realm of Evangelical Christianity out of the water. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Early on in the Gospel accounts we see Jesus quoting the Old Testament to the devil in resisting the devil’s temptations. Jesus is reiterating that man indeed needs to read and understand the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
Matthew 4:3-4: “And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
The New Testament had not even been written at this point.
That was likewise the case when the Gospel came to the Bereans in Acts chapter seventeen. Many don’t imitate the Bereans at all, yet they still try to say that they are Bereans at heart even while they foolishly don’t seek to understand and interpret the things in the New Testament according to their true foundation in the Old Testament.
Acts 17:10-12: “And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither (there) went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily (that is, the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament- the only existing Scriptures at the time), whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed; also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.”
They authentically believed in Jesus after searching the Old Testament Scriptures because Jesus came in fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures. Everything He did and taught in person in His incarnation, and taught through His Apostles, is consistent with the Old Testament Scriptures (and that is including the release of His church from the Mosaic ceremonies- even the time that would happen was spoken of in the Old Testament- and you can see how the Apostles saw that and judged accordingly at their council in Acts chapter 15).
Jesus would have been a false prophet if He had spoken contrary to the Hebrew Scriptures even the slightest bit.
Isaiah 8:20: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
As the Jews who blatantly rejected Jesus claimed (as many still do today) to heed the Hebrew Scriptures but not the New Testament, so many professing Christians today (and throughout church history) claim to heed the New Testament while not heeding the Old Testament. Both groups are delusional and are testified against continuously by even the group of Scriptures which they claim to revere, receive, and follow.
Many Jews today and throughout history have even considered it as wrong to rebuke another Jew or say that a Jew is lost spiritually or anything along those lines. Simply reading through the Law and the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible proves their error; and proves that they would have been persecutors of their own Prophets just like their natural and spiritual ancestors were. It is thus no wonder that the very Prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, whom the Jews as a people claim to revere and honor, were hated and persecuted by their very own people. A large part of their witness was exposing the evil deeds of those within the Jewish nation and the wicked concepts which had taken root within it, calling the Jews and the Jewish nation to repentance.
Here is just one of a vast multitude of examples of this.
Jeremiah 6:10-19: “To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear? behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it. Therefore I am full of the fury of the Lord; I am weary with holding in: I will pour it out upon the children abroad, and upon the assembly of young men together: for even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the aged with him that is full of days. And their houses shall be turned unto others, with their fields and wives together: for I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord. For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay (no), they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken. Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it.”
The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures certainly testified against the Jewish people’s sins. They also did not believe that the Jews have an unconditional right to the land, warning of their expulsion from the land for their disobedience to God’s Word.
Isaiah 1:19-20 (picking up where we left of at an earlier point in this message): “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”
It is no wonder at all that Jesus gave rebukes among the Jews such as the following.
Matthew 23:29-33: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”
Matthew 12:38-45: “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence (from where) I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.”
That explains the especially pathetic spiritual state of the Jewish people and the extraordinary sins among that people today which have been elaborated on in several of our other messages. That supposedly poor, oppressed people who happen to rule the banking, entertainment, pharmaceutical industries, etc. and the mainstream media. That group of people who are so poor and oppressed that you also have to be oh so very, very careful what you say about them lest you be censored and harmed in other ways.
That last scripture (Matthew 12:38-45) is also something which the professing Christians especially do not heed either. How could they do so when they disregard the Old Testament? Look at what the Old Testament says about the Ninevites’ repentance at the preaching of Jonah which Jesus referenced in the passage which we just looked at and warned that those who do not exercise repentance in a like manner, in relation to His coming, will be condemned at the Judgment for failing in. Many see salvation in Christ as being disconnected from this- since they disregard the Old Testament to their own doom. This is just one of a great multitude of examples.
Jonah chapter 3: “And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”
Then we all clearly need to heed the Hebrew Scriptures (or the Jewish Scriptures or the Old Testament- all the same thing) in order to truly heed the New Testament Scriptures. Those who do not do so are not in God’s grace, no matter what they claim and no matter what they profess.
Since the Jews are not, and never were, unconditionally in God’s favor, then neither are any of us.
Joshua 5:13-15: “And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay (No); but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant? And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.”
1 Corinthians 10:5-12: “But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play (that’s a reference to lascivious behavior). Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
Those who do not acknowledge the errors of the Jews who reject Jesus Christ- and receive the proper instruction from them- and act according to that proper instruction- cannot avoid the same condemnation.
John 3:17-19: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
Aaron’s email is: [email protected]
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