The Gospel In The Old Testament & The New Testament

CATM Sermon for September 10, 2023

We’re in the middle of a month-long discussion about evangelism, or sharing our faith.

We decided to focus on this area for this month because we’re exploring for the whole year what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Sharing Jesus is an important aspect of being a follower of Jesus, being a disciple or student of Jesus Christ.

It’s important for us to learn and gain confidence in how we share the gospel, how we share our faith in Jesus.

And think for a moment, just in your own mind, about how you came to follow Jesus.

If you were like me and came to faith not as a child but as a teen or adult, you likely can think of someone who was influential in helping you become a Christian and/or starting to figure out what it means to be a disciple of Jesus

If you were raised in the church and you’re a teen or late teen or an adult, that means that you made the decision to continue to follow Jesus. Or you might still be in the process of making this decision, which is awesome.

So let’s pause for a moment while we think about who it is or was who had a significant impact on your decision to make following Jesus a part of your life. (Pause)

The truth is that the Christian faith was shared with us, and that’s why we are following Jesus.

Someone, maybe a pastor, much more likely a friend or acquaintance, shared Jesus with you.

God was in the sharing and the Holy Spirit was at work in you, and so eventually you responded yes.

Last week Pastor Jonathan had the daunting task of preaching on “What is the gospel?”, and he did an excellent job. Here’s his summary statement:

“The Gospel: The loving creator God is restoring his creation through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. And we can be part of it!”

I think it’s an excellent summary statement, but of course the gospel is actually too large and too impactful and too beautiful to be completely summarized by any human being in a paragraph. But kudos to Jonathan for giving us this very helpful definition.

Another thing that Pastor Jonathan highlighted is that Jesus is the Jewish messiah. That is an extremely important detail that Pastor Jan added to the conversation.

In order to understand the gospel, we need to understand the Jewishness of Jesus, and in particular how the coming of Jesus, the incarnation of Jesus is really all over the Old Testament.

So today we’re going be looking at the gospel in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.

In the Old Testament we get some seemingly gentle hints about the coming of the Messiah.

They are often in short statements that happen to be absolutely packed with meaning. But they are where we find the gospel in the Old Testament.

Here and Genesis chapter 3, after the creation of humankind, Adam and Eve sin by doing precisely what they are told not to do.

Of course it is not just God and Adam and Eve, but Satan is in the garden, in the form of a serpent, and it is in fact Satan who tempts and who capitalizes on Adam and Eve's willingness to be deceived. So Satan is a significant player in this narrative.

Gen 3:14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this: “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring[a] and hers; he will crush[b] your head, and you will strike his heel.”

We see Satan’s punishment in the manner in which he is to exist on the Earth, in a very lowly form, as a snake. This is creative and poetic language, but we need to take the point seriously.

And then we see the Gospel here in this passage in the Old Testament, when God makes the promise that there will be enmity, or active opposition, between Satan and the woman and in particular between Satan and the offspring of the woman.

Eve, being the mother of all humankind, also represents humanity, and her “offspring”, is ultimately the Messiah who is born of a woman.

And what do we see happening to Satan, and between Satan and the woman’s offspring, the Messiah?

Satan will strike the Messiah’s heal, while the Messiah will crush Satan’s head. So the Messiah will be injured, perhaps severely.

But Satan will be destroyed. This of course is fleshed out in the crucifixion, but then more importantly in the resurrection of Jesus, and in Jesus’ defeat of Satan on the cross, where Jesus defeats death.