Cornerstone Curriculum, Official Certification Edition

LESSON 3 | THE OT WITNESS TO CHRIST AND HIS KINGDOM: THE PROMISE GIVEN / 149

remedy this difficulty, the youth group leader started a Bible teaching series entitled “Defining Moments” which would take selected key points of the OT and show how it related to Christ and his Kingdom spoken of in the NT. After a few weeks, the character of the youth group changed greatly. Some students, finding the stories and materials too hard and not real exciting, quit the group altogether, and another group has found the stories intriguing, but not relevant to where they see themselves at. A small group, however, have flourished under the teaching, and for the first time believe that they are coming to understand the OT. Pressure is growing in the church to go back to the good ol’ days of teaching on contemporary issues that were easier to teach (and to hear!), but the leader has determined to finish the series, which has another three months to go. If the youth group leader asked your opinion, how would you advise him on making the OT come alive in his group without alienating and confusing some of the “weaker brethren” complaining about it? The relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament can be effectively understood through the idea of progressive revelation, which affirms that God has revealed himself progressively and definitively throughout the history of his people, and finally through Jesus Christ. God in diverse manners and at different times made himself known to the nation of Israel in limited ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son. Jesus of Nazareth is God’s final and full revelation of himself, now testified of in Scripture. As Augustine suggests: “In the OT the NT lies hidden; in the NT the OT stands revealed.” The Testaments have a complementary relationship, the OT providing the introduction to the NT’s conclusion about Christ, the OT as anticipation to the NT’s climax about God’s salvation story in Christ. Furthermore, the OT prefigures Christ’s person and work fully embodied in the NT. While the OT is the ineffective former revelation of God’s salvation, the NT can be seen as the consummated latter and universalized call of which the OT is particularized to the nation of Israel. The connection of the testaments can be seen in the promise and fulfillment motif, especially in the way the NT affirms how the OT’s work is to provide compelling and definitive witness to the person of Messiah fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ in the history of the patriarchs, the nation of Israel, the Messianic prophecies, and the moral standards of the Law. The major motif that links all biblical revelation in Scripture is the promise and fulfillment motif. This theme affirms the unity of the Scriptures; God intends to reveal himself and redeem his people through the seed, the one promised to Abraham and his descendants. This

Restatement of the Lesson’s Thesis

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