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How the Old Testament Fits into the Bible

(Read Time: 7.5 mins)
As goes Adam, So goes Israel

         Since February I have read the Old Testament and as  I look over my time there certain themes emerge over and again. The First Testament by itself creates a compelling narrative about God and the journey of his people. In many ways the story almost seems to end appropriately with a reunited people once again returning from exile trying to understand who they are as a people of God. Like a postmodern film, the story ends much the same way it begins. The story arches only to land in a place of familiarity, the characters have changed but they live in the same unresolved conflict of those who came before them, stuck in an inescapable cycle. They continually find themselves positioned and purposed by a God, who loves them, to become the people he promised they could become, but instead of living up to who they were meant to be they take misguided shortcuts (Micah 2:1-5), and the result is a failure to launch. 

If the First Testament were to end on that note we could easily draw an Ecclesiastic meaning from the Israelite saga, but it doesn’t end there. It finishes with the hope of a Messiah, and in order to understand how the plight of the Israelites contributes to the overarching story of the biblical message we have to see their story not as anticlimactic. Instead it must be understood as the build up to the most climatic event in all of history; the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the hope of the Israelites and all mankind.