Not the Old Testament again

 This week we've started a new Sunday morning teaching series called 'An unchanging God in an ever-changing world'.

The Old Testament is not always the easiest part of the Bible to read and teach from. Not that is is necessarily difficult to understand - although at times it is - but we often come across parts that are: 

• hard to read - maybe it's a story about God's people killing a whole people group including women and children,
• hard to apply - what have ancient laws about mildew or wearing clothes made from cotton and polyester got to do with my life in 2020,
• hard to reconcile with the nature of God that we see in the New Testament in the life of Jesus.

But when Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16 about all Scripture being God-breathed and useful - the only Scripture Paul had was the Old Testament.

Jesus' understanding of a compassionate and gracious God came from his reading of the Old Testament.

If you just look at your Bible you will see that about 3/4 of it are the Old Testament and therefore it is really important that we engage with this part as well as the bit we might be more familiar and comfortable with.

This is one of the reasons why, here at CBC, we return to the Old Testament for a term every year. Since 2014 we have spent each Autumn working through the story of Israel's history from their escape from Egypt in Exodus through to the division of the kingdom in 1 Kings and the encounters between Elijah and Ahab. And this term we're picking up where we left off at the start of 2 Kings.

Over the last few years, there have certainly been passages that I would not choose to preach from. They have not been easy. But if we believe that 'all Scripture' is inspired by God then we need to engage with all of it - and the discipline of working our way through the books of the Old Testament in this way is a good one.

(We won't be doing 1 Chronicles next year though - for reasons that will become clear in this series.)

Whilst the story of 2 Kings happened a long time ago, in a culture very different to ours, to people who had a very different view of the world to us, if we believe that all Scripture is inspired and we believe that the Bible is a living word then these stories will speak to us as the Holy Spirit takes them and applies them to our lives.

And, what is more, these stories will speak to us in our current context - living through a global pandemic with all the medical, financial, social etc implications and impact that that brings.

You'll find the first talk in this series, from 2 Kings 2 below.