Help, My Pastor Rejects the Old Testament! LIVE Q&A with David Guzik for August 1, 2024

Help, My Pastor Rejects the Old Testament!

From Karla E –

I heard a pastor say that as long as you believe in the resurrection of Jesus, you’re ok – it doesn’t matter if you can’t accept that He is the same as the angry God of the OT. Isn’t this dangerous?

• There is one God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.
• In the Old Testament, God is more gracious and loving than most think.
• In the New Testament, God is more judging and righteous than most think.
• Therefore, it’s wrong and dangerous to make a radical division between the “God of the Old Testament” and the “God of the New Testament.”
• This was one of the errors of Marcion, who was an early church false teacher (second century) who basically rejected the Old Testament and the “God of the Old Testament” as being angry and vengeful, different from the God revealed in Jesus Christ. He rejected a lot of the Old Testament.
• Look at how the New Testament honors and relies on the Old Testament, look at how the New Testament church taught the Scriptures (which were, at that time, primarily the Old Testament), look at how Jesus honored the Old Testament.
• We don’t need to “unhitch” from the Old Testament (as Pastor Andy Stanley said), and we must not unhitch from the Old Testament.
• It might be technically true that the Old Testament is “unnecessary” for salvation – that someone could genuinely repent and believe in Jesus with no knowledge of the Old Testament.
• But the Old Testament – that is, the truth of God as revealed in the Old Testament – is necessary for discipleship, and the Christian goal is not mere “salvation,” but discipleship.

If you are in a church that denies or ignores the Old Testament, that is a big danger signal.

This is different from a church that neglects the Old Testament – that is not good, and sadly common. Yet in itself (that is, if the church was healthy in many other ways) – in itself, that is not a good reason to leave a church.

How can I discern false prophets and real ones? In this day and age, it’s hard to know which prophecies are real and which are not.

I’ll be very straightforward with you. I think it is a foolish distraction for Christians to run about seeking prophecies from supposed prophets. Listen, if you want to seek a word from God, open your Bible. Now, I say that as someone who actually believes that God speaks through the gift of prophecy today. I do believe that God communicates through such spiritual gifts today. But I think it’s very important that we do what the Bible commands: we need to test those prophets and prophecies.

If somebody says, “Thus saith the LORD,” or, “This is what the Lord says,” then if you listen to them at all, you need to listen carefully in order to make sure that it is consistent with Scriptures, and that it bears witness with the leaders who are in the congregation, that this is actually something the Holy Spirit is communicating. If there is any predictive element to it, saying that something’s going to come to pass, it must come to pass. If it does not, that person can be disregarded; they are not a true prophet of God.

So yes, test the prophets. But many Christians run around from prophet to prophet because they want some hot prophetic word. We shouldn’t be like that. I believe that when God does have some communication to bring to us, He knows where to find us. We shouldn’t be out seeking it out. If you want to seek a word from God, open your Bible. There have been some remarkable and amazing times in my Christian life where God has spoken to me through the gift of prophecy, but I have not spent my time running after such words. God knows where to find us with such things when we need them.

How should we read prophecies like Isaiah? Should we look in secular writings for confirmation of these prophecies?

In some cases, yes. This is one instance in which a commentary can be very helpful for you. For example, there’s a very detailed prophecy in Ezekiel 26 about the conquest of Tyre. When you dig into the secular history that describes how Tyre was conquered, it is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy on an astounding level. So, in that kind of situation, knowing the secular history is very helpful in seeing how it worked out and how those prophecies were fulfilled. And that’s one of the great values of a good commentary. A good commentary will include notes from secular history and from the original languages which can be very helpful in your own understanding of the Scriptures. Read my commentary on Ezekiel 26 concerning the prophecy about the judgment of Tyre and its astoundingly accurate fulfillment as we know from secular history.

Can you explain the difference between asking for God’s protection and knowing that He does allow certain things to happen?

We don’t want to live our Christian lives supposing that if we honor the Lord and have faith, nothing bad will ever happen to us. I want you to know God makes no such promise to His people. God never promises us, “If you love Me, serve Me, and obey Me, then no calamity is ever going to befall you or your family, and no great sadness will come upon you.” Bad things happen, and sometimes bad things happen to very righteous people.

We don’t want to fall into the error of thinking that if we have enough faith, nothing bad will ever happen. However, there’s a flip side to that. The Bible does say, “You have not because you ask not.” There are times when God would want to give us a blessing, or give us protection against something, and we don’t have it because we didn’t ask. This is a very possible phenomenon for a person’s life, and we should never forget that.

So how do we do this? I think we boldly ask God. If I’m going forth on an endeavor, or I’m going into a place that’s kind of sketchy, then I want to pray for God’s provision and protection. I want to trust Him for that. However, I should not suppose that makes it impossible for something bad to happen. If it does, I know that God will be with me in it. I don’t despair. I trust that even difficult and challenging things have come through the good hand of God to me, and I can rest in that.

It’s important for us to keep on both sides of the equation. Yes, we should be bold, we should pray, and we should believe that God wants to bless His people, not because we’re so wonderful, but because He’s so wonderful. He has won for us in the victory on the cross. We should be free in asking for God’s blessing and good things from our Father, while at the same time knowing that Jesus said, “In the world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

Are Christian believers today considered Israel?

Mostly no. The Bible does not talk about the concept of there being “spiritual Israel.” It’s not used very much, but it is presented in Romans. There is the concept of spiritual Israel: Abraham’s spiritual descendants, all believers in Christ today, are part of what we might call spiritual Israel, the spiritual descendants of Abraham. In my opinion, a great error is made by many people when they think that the truth of spiritual Israel and the spiritual descendants of Abraham negates the fact that there is still a literal, physical Israel, that God still has a unique place in His unfolding plan of the ages for the people of Israel, the Jewish people, the covenant descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So yes, there is one sense in which believers are considered Israel, but not in a sense that excludes the Jewish people from having a unique and important role in God’s unfolding plan of the ages.

Is Covenant Theology biblical?

Is “covenant theology” (the idea of being blessed/punished based on obedience/disobedience) biblical? Some teach it is despite we’re not under the old covenant.

I’m going to give you a very insufficient answer to this. I don’t believe in the Reformed idea of Covenant Theology. I’m preparing to hopefully produce some special videos on this, because I think that the classical Reformed understanding of Covenant Theology is unbiblical and greatly mistaken and has huge consequences. Again, I would need a whole video to develop this.

Now, I do believe very strongly about the prominent role of covenants in God’s unfolding plan of the ages. The covenant that God made with Noah had an important purpose. The covenant that God made with Abraham was absolutely foundational. The covenant that God made with Israel at Mount Sinai was vitally important. The covenant God made with David about the coming of the Messiah was super important. And then all of them culminated in the New Covenant, so all of those things are very important. So, I’m very big on the idea of theology of covenants in that sense, but not in what our Reformed brothers and sisters call Covenant Theology, where they see an overarching covenant of grace over everything. Here’s the problem with that in my mind. There is no “covenant of grace” described in the Bible. It’s just not there. It doesn’t exist. The Bible does use the language of covenant, so if there was a covenant of grace in the way that our Reformed brothers and sisters think there is, surely the Bible would describe it, but it doesn’t. It’s just not there, period. And I think that’s not a small thing. I don’t think that’s a scratch on the paint. I think that’s a blown engine. I think that car won’t move.