Show Notes
In this thought-provoking episode of Peaceable and Kind, host Derek Vreeland tackles a question many Christians quietly wrestle with: Why do we need the Old Testament?
From bloody battles and strange laws to a God who calls His people to peace, the Old Testament can feel confusing—even contradictory to the way of Jesus. But Derek shares why this ancient collection of writings is not only essential, but life-giving for followers of Christ in a modern world.
Drawing from his own journey—from avoiding the Old Testament as a young pastor to delighting in it through daily reading—Derek explores how these Scriptures shape our faith, deepen our understanding of Jesus, and connect us to the ancient people of God. You’ll hear stories from seminary days with his Old Testament professor, insights from the world of Bible translation, and even a Star Wars analogy that will forever change how you see the “backstory” of Scripture.
Whether you’ve loved the Old Testament for years or have quietly ignored it in your Bible reading plan, this episode will give you fresh eyes for its beauty, depth, and indispensable role in the story of redemption.
Key Takeaways ✔️ Why the Old Testament is essential for understanding Jesus and the New Testament ✔️ How it connects us to the ancient story of God’s people ✔️ Why not every Old Testament passage should be read as a moral directive ✔️ How to find Jesus throughout the Old Testament ✔️ Why the Psalms still shape our prayer life today
🎧 Listen now and rediscover the Old Testament as the essential prequel to the story of Jesus.
Scriptures Mentioned in This Episode:
- Exodus 12
- Leviticus 16
- Deuteronomy 21:18–21
- John 1:29
Preorder Derek’s new book, Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us here: https://amzn.to/42jSZAs
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Get to know the host: https://derekvreeland.com
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Transcript
Welcome
Welcome back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind.
I’m your host, Derek Vreeland, and I’m glad that you have joined me for this episode.
We are together sowing seeds of
Peace and kindness in our world.
And I want to begin a series of conversations with you about the Old Testament.
But before we get into that on this episode, let me invite you to subscribe to Peaceable and Kind wherever you’re listening to this podcast episode.
And if you like the kind of content we are producing.
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On this episode, I want to answer the question, why do we need the Old Testament?
Do you have a copy of the Gideon’s New Testament?
I don’t even know if the Gideon still do this, but back in my day when I was in college
The Gideons would show up on our college campus and they would hand out copies of the New Testament.
I actually have a green one in my collection of Bibles, as you know.
I’m a Bible nerd.
I am a lover of the Bible.
I have all sorts of Bibles.
But one that I’ve had for 30 years is this little green Gideon’s New Testament
And they hand out these New Testaments all over college campuses, at least they used to
Because they want to get scripture in the hands of people.
But it’s just the New Testament.
Now they also include the Psalms and Proverbs from the Old Testament, but it’s not a complete Bible
It’s just the New Testament because they want to get people starting to read in the Gospels, which I think is helpful.
I believe if a person is new to the Bible,
You don’t start in Genesis, you start with Jesus.
So you start in the New Testament.
That’s to me the best way to
orient yourself to the scriptures is to start with Jesus.
So starting in the New Testament is good.
And so handing out New Testaments like the Gideons do, I’m a huge fan.
I think it’s great.
But some people have asked me over the years, why do we even need the Old Testament?
I mean, if Jesus is King, if Jesus is our Lord and Savior, if Jesus comes to show us the way
Because Jesus proclaimed himself to be the way and the truth and the life.
If this whole story is about Jesus, why do we even need the Old Testament
And I understand where some of those questions come from, because reading in the Old Testament can be confusing.
It can be a little off-putting at times.
And if you are a committed follower of Jesus,
Who is the Prince of Peace reigning and ruling over a peaceable kingdom?
In the Old Testament, there’s lots of wars and fighting and bloodshed and violence
I have been reading through uh 1 Samuel in my daily Bible reading.
I read from the Old Testament and the New Testament every day.
And my Old Testament reading has me in 1 Samuel, and there is in that book the recounting
of the life of David.
King David is one of the predominant figures in the Old Testament.
In fact, Jesus comes in the line and the lineage of David
Because God promised to David a throne that would be everlasting.
And so Jesus came as a distant relative, a distant son of David
For God to make good on his promise to David.
And so you know many of the stories of David.
The most famous of all is David as a little boy.
Killing Goliath.
He has that slingshot and he slings it and it hits the giant.
He falls to the ground.
Now that’s the Sunday school version we tell to kids, but if you read carefully in 1 Samuel, it wasn’t the rock that killed Goliath, because then David picks up Goliath’s big sword and lops his head off.
And so I understand for people who are committed to the ways of Jesus, like a lot of the stories in the Old Testament are really gory and they’re bloody.
And Jesus is leading us in the way of peace.
And it is uncanny to me to distinguish and to compare
King David with King Jesus.
Because in first Samuel, as David is is running away from Saul, he’s quick to pick up the sword.
Now, interestingly enough, he will not use the sword against Saul because he understands that Saul is king, he’s the anointed.
And Saul’s trying to kill David.
David won’t pick up the sword against Saul, but when he and his men are hiding out, or if they’re invading other towns and cities, David is quick to pick up the sword.
Jesus, however, doesn’t.
Jesus never picks up the sword.
He is slaying the enemies of God with the words of his mouth, and then ultimately Jesus will give his life.
As a sacrifice to defeat the ultimate enemies of sin and the devil and death.
And so Jesus comes
Preaching the kingdom of God, teaching us about enemy love and forgiveness and mercy giving, but a lot of these stories in the Old Testament don’t seem to line up with that.
And so people struggle sometimes with the Old Testament, and so they ask, why do we even need it?
And I want to answer that question in this episode, but before I get to my answers, let me start with a story
Because when I call myself a Bible nerd and a lover of the Bible, I mean the whole Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament.
I’m 51 years old.
I’ve been reading the Bible with some consistency since I was 15 years old.
And I have had seasons where I am not reading as consistently as I want to, but I’ve been in and out of the scriptures uh since I was a teenager
And these days, I enjoy reading the Bible more than I ever have
In part because I’m more familiar with it, particularly the Old Testament.
It’s not as strange as it once was.
And I look forward to my Bible reading in the morning.
And I have my favorite books of the Bible, and I have some of my favorite stories.
And I still get a smile on my face.
For example, one of my favorite books in the New Testament is the book of Romans
And uh whenever my Bible reading has me circling back to Romans and I’m I’m in Romans chapter one, when I see that’s on the list, I get a smile on my face.
I’m like, I get to read Romans again.
And I haven’t diminished in my love for the Old Testament either.
So before I answer the question why we need it, let me tell you a story.
I was blessed to have Dr.
Roy Hayden as my Old Testament professor in seminary.
Dr.
Hayden taught Old Testament and he also taught Hebrew.
He was a scholar in not only the Hebrew language but other ancient Semitic languages
And Dr.
Hayden was on the NIV committee, the original committee that worked together to produce the NIV, that’s the new international version.
And Dr.
Hayden is also a member of the new Living Translation Committee, the NLT.
Currently, I’m reading for my daily Bible reading, the NLT, the New Living Translation, which I highly recommend.
I had a pastor friend text me that his son just graduated from high school, and before he goes off to college, he wants to give his son a new Bible.
And he asked me about Bible translations, and he mentioned two of them, which were good translations, but I said, I really recommend the New Living Translation.
And he asked why, and I said, because of its readability.
The New Living Translation is a great translation, but I love the fact that when I go to the introductory material in that Bible and I look at all the biblical scholars who are a part of the committee.
uh there I see Dr.
Roy Hayden, Orl Roberts University School of Theology.
And so I was so blessed to have Dr.
Hayden as my Old Testament professor and part of what he would do
in teaching through the Old Testament is he would tell us stories about the process of Bible translation
And it was so insightful for me to see how serious these scholars were, how dedicated they were to the text and to their task.
They were in multiple different committees.
So, Dr.
Hayden, when he was on the NIV committee, he was the initial translator of the Book of Ruth
So when Dr.
Hayden taught Hebrew, by the way, I took six weeks of Hebrew before I dropped it.
It was too much.
But I took six weeks
When Dr.
Hayden teaches Hebrew, he first teaches the Hebrew alphabet, so you know what the letters are, and then he goes right to the book of Ruth.
He starts Ruth chapter one, verse one, in Hebrew.
But I enjoyed in his Old Testament class, which I did complete, I enjoyed hearing the process of the translation, because he was the primary translator, and then there was a committee.
of scholars that would review his work over the Book of Ruth.
Then there was another editorial committee over the historical Old Testament books.
Then there were editors over the Old Testament as well as editors over the whole Bible.
So there were there were these layers of scholars and conversations that would take place.
So Dr.
Hayden would explain.
he would have to give a rationale for why he translated things a certain way.
So it was very sophisticated and very serious.
but it also was a spiritual endeavor.
Doctor Hayden was a committed follower of Jesus Christ, and so he would tell us that he personally would pray and ask for God’s help in his translation work.
And even their committee meetings, they’re all Bible scholars and PhDs, they would pray together and ask for God’s help in their translation work.
And I was familiar with the Old Testament before taking Dr.
Hayden’s class, but he opened up
the story that the Old Testament is telling in a way that captured my imagination.
And so that was helpful for me
in preaching from the Old Testament and teaching it, but I have to admit that after seminary, when I became a pastor, I did spend years avoiding reading the Old Testament.
Now again, I would uh teach from it, and when I was a lead pastor, I knew I had this bad habit of avoiding the Old Testament, so I would
plan for a series where I’m preaching right out of the Old Testament, particularly the prophets.
I enjoyed preaching from the prophets.
I did that on purpose because I knew I had this impulse to avoid the Old Testament.
And I was convicted by that.
I knew it wasn’t good.
but I just didn’t like reading the Old Testament.
I avoided it because it just seemed so otherworldly and it wasn’t about Jesus and I didn’t know what to make of a lot of it.
And so I just sort of pushed it off, at least in my own Bible reading.
But then something changed.
And it’s been, I don’t know how long, maybe seven, eight, nine years now, but I discovered the Daily Office Lectionary.
I have since edited and revised my own version of the Revised Common Lectionary.
And you can get a copy of that.
We’ll put a link
uh to that in the show notes.
I have to pause this episode for just a moment to tell you that I have written a new book
Incarnation, 8 lessons on how God meets us.
This eight-week Bible study uses the uniqueness of the message translation to explore God’s presence with us.
Link to pre-order is in the show notes.
But the Daily Office lectionary comes out of the Anglican tradition.
And the word lectionary simply means a collection of Bible passages.
When you hear the word lectionary,
Here in it the English word election, right?
A selection.
So the Daily Office lectionary is Bible reading for every day
Daily office means the daily the daily work that we do with scripture.
And so the daily office lectionary gives us an Old Testament reading.
a reading from the epistles and a reading from the gospels every day.
And so years ago when I started using that
As a primary guide for my personal Bible reading, it was giving me Old Testament every day.
And as I began to read the Old Testament over the years, I really grew to appreciate it.
The other thing that helped me was that I became okay with the idea that not everything in the Old Testament is
literally or historically true.
Now this I know is off-putting for some people, but I like to look, for example, at the first 11
chapters of the book of Genesis, right?
This is not an eyewitness testimony, right?
These grew out of
oral stories, the entire creation account.
I mean, let’s be honest, there was no eyewitness.
Moses was not an eyewitness of
creation or the fall or Noah and the Flood or the building of the Tower of Babel
So it’s not necessary as a follower of Jesus to believe that all of those stories are literally or historically true.
What the Old Testament is doing is giving us information about the God of Israel, which is going to lead us to Jesus.
The other thing that helped me was being able to find Jesus in the Old Testament.
And I’ll have more to say about that in just a moment.
But I want to just testify that today I love reading the Old Testament.
It brings such joy and delight to my heart.
There are still parts that I wrestle with.
And I don’t quite understand, uh, but that’s okay.
I let the mystery be the mystery, and I realize I don’t have to understand everything right now.
I just want to live within the world created by the Scriptures.
So let me get to answering the question, why do we need the Old Testament?
I got a couple thoughts.
Number one,
The Old Testament helps us make sense of the New Testament.
The Old Testament, or we can call it
The Hebrew scriptures or the Jewish Bible.
This was the Bible of Jesus and the apostles.
So if you want to understand what Jesus is talking about when he’s teaching, or what the apostles meant in their letters and writings,
you need the Old Testament, because the New Testament writers are working with the language and the imagery of the Old Testament.
I have found that we don’t really
understand concepts like temple or covenant or blood sacrifice
that the New Testament writers talk about without first reading the Old Testament.
And
Many Christians have misunderstood concepts like justification or atonement.
Because they are reading things in the New Testament without the background of the Old Testament.
I spent a lot of work talking about atonement and writing about atonement.
That is how the death of Jesus saves us and rescues us from our sin.
And people have all sorts of different ideas, and the church historically has presented all sorts of ideas about what the atonement means, how the blood of Jesus saves us from our sins.
But what I encourage people to do is to go into the Old Testament and see how the Old Testament writers are talking about things like blood sacrifice and atonement.
So, if you want to understand how Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that’s John 1.
29, you have to go back into Exodus and read about the Passover.
how Jewish families would would take a little lamb into their home and ultimately sacrifice that animal and apply the blood to the doorposts
and the framing of their homes, so that when the death angel was coming over Egypt, it would pass over houses where they saw the blood.
Or if you want to understand what other New Testament writers mean when they talk about atonement, go back to Leviticus 16 and read about the Jewish Day of Atonement
I just don’t think we’ll fully understand the imagery and language and complexity of the New Testament without a firm understanding of the Old Testament.
Secondly, the Old Testament reminds me that I belong to an ancient story.
As I mentioned, there were times that I avoided reading the Old Testament.
And I’m really embarrassed to admit that today because here I am a pastor, and I’m supposed to be devoted to this book.
But part of my hesitancy to invest time in the Old Testament is simply because it felt weird.
It had nothing to do with my
Everyday, ordinary life.
I had a concept early on in my Christian life that we read the Bible to apply it to our lives.
I I no longer read the Bible like that.
I don’t read it as a collection of God facts or a collection of things to do.
I rather read the Bible, Old Testament, and New Testament as the story of God’s redemption from creation to new creation with Jesus as the main character.
I read it much more in story form.
And in doing so, encountering the Old Testament reminds me that I belong to an old story
But I have a heritage.
The people of God have a heritage going all the way back to Abraham.
And so reading the Old Testament is not so much for application, rather, it’s for imagination.
Imagining how my ancient ancestors, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and
David and Elijah and on and on and on they go.
That these people were following after the same God that I’m following, and they’re trying
to understand who this one singular God of creation is.
Now, as I’m reading in the Old Testament, I recognize how otherworldly it is.
It talks about places that I don’t understand.
and the culture is different.
And I kind of like that.
Because I don’t read the Bible to try to squeeze it into my life.
I’m trying to put my life into the story of redemption
into the story that the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament is telling.
The Bible wasn’t written to me
The Bible was written to this community, which starts with the Jewish people, the ancient people of God
So there’s things in the Old Testament that I read that are pretty off-putting, things that I would be morally opposed to.
So, of course, I’m not going to try to apply these to my life.
Things like Deuteronomy 21, and I think it’s verses 18 through 21.
And here in the Old Testament law, it says that if you have a son who is thick-headed and stubborn and rebellious and he won’t obey his mom and dad.
That you should take the rebellious son to the edge of the city and let the elders stone him to death
Now, I’m not going to apply that to my life, although I will admit as a parent there have been times that I thought maybe this is an option
But of course it isn’t, right?
I’m not going to apply that to my life, right?
That’s not how you raise kids.
You’re rebellious.
Let’s take you out and stone you to death.
We don’t do that.
So again, I don’t read the Old Testament filled with these moral imperatives.
I am reading the Old Testament as this ancient story of my people.
Because in and through Jesus Christ, we have been grafted into the ancient people of God.
Because of Jesus, the people of God are both Jewish and Gentiles.
who believe that Jesus is Lord and Messiah.
So when I’m reading this weird story and I come across these things that are sometimes morally objectable
I just remember that these are my people, that this is our story.
The third thing for me is that we need the Old Testament,
Because it is the backstory that gets us to Jesus.
If you look at the scriptures, Old Testament and New Testament, as one big story
A very true story, a love story, a redemption story.
The main character is Jesus
But the problem with the way the story is laid out is the main character doesn’t appear until we’re three-fourths of the way through the book.
This is why I encourage new Christians to start in the New Testament.
Start in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Get to know Jesus before you go anywhere else.
Jesus is what the scriptures are trying to point us towards.
And so the Old Testament is the
prequel.
It’s the backstory that gets us to Jesus, the necessary backstory.
Let me use an example from the world of Star Wars
Now, not only am I a Bible nerd, but I’m a Star Wars nerd.
I was leading a Bible study last night, and I was
uh trying to make a Star Wars analogy and half the people weren’t getting it.
And I asked for a show of hands who had never watched Star Wars and I was shocked at about half the room.
didn’t watch Star Wars.
I judged them in my heart.
That’s really true.
So if you’re not a Star Wars fan, I will not judge you, but go watch the Star Wars films, at least the original trilogy
Please, this is an important story.
So if you’re not a Star Wars fan, you won’t get the analogy, but maybe you know enough about the Star Wars universe that this will make sense.
So, the main character in Star Wars is Luke Skywalker.
He is the hero.
The original 1977 Star Wars film.
Follows Joseph Campbell’s very famous A Hero’s Journey.
Joseph Campbell worked with archetypes in mythology and in modern stories.
And so Luke Skywalker is on the hero’s journey.
He’s the main character
So we encounter him in the very first film, which is episode four.
I know that’s confusing if you don’t follow Star Wars.
But the original 1977 Star Wars was episode four, and it tells the story of Luke Skywalker becoming a hero.
He blows up the Death Star.
But that’s not the end.
The next film, The Empire Strikes Back, is then the retaliation of the evil Empire
There, our hero, our main character, Luke Skywalker, is growing in the knowledge of the force.
He is growing in his abilities to be a Jedi Knight, to be our hero.
He also finds out, spoiler, Darth Vader is his father.
Then the third film of the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi, there is a beautiful redemption story
As Luke, our hero, is being seduced by the bad side, the dark side of the force
Luke Skywalker is the hero and I grew up, being born in nineteen seventy, uh as a kid of the eighties, with the Star Wars movies and toys and and that universe is a part of my imagination.
Then in the new millennium in the early 2000s, George Lucas produced and directed three
prequel films, the backstory that got us to Luke Skywalker.
The prequel films are primarily telling the story of Darth Vader.
This is Luke’s father and his fall to the dark side.
Now, there are many people that did not like the prequel films for a lot of reasons.
There’s annoying characters like Jar Jar Binks
There’s just a lot in there that people don’t like.
There’s a lot of CGI.
The acting’s not the best.
And I agree with all that.
I love the prequel films, and here’s why.
They give us the backstory of our hero, Luke Skywalker.
And I think the Old Testament is a little bit like that.
There are some characters in the Old Testament I don’t really like.
There are some scenes in the Old Testament I don’t really care for, but it’s the backstory that gets us to Jesus
Jesus is our hero.
He’s our savior.
He’s our Lord.
I love him so much.
I want to get the backstory.
How did we end up with Jesus?
That’s the story of the Old Testament.
So that’s some of the primary reasons why I believe we need the Old Testament.
The other thing I would throw in there is that the Old Testament gives us a prayer book, and that’s the book of Psalms.
I love the Psalms so much.
And I think the Gideons do too.
That’s why their New Testament has Psalms and Proverbs.
I love the Psalms because they give us a language of prayer.
I love the Psalms because they teach us how to pray.
And without the Old Testament, we wouldn’t have the Psalms.
So hopefully this is giving you some encouragement to spend some time reading these Old Testament stories.
This helps us to understand Jesus and the whole New Testament.
It reminds us that we have an ancient faith going all the way back to Abraham.
It’s the backstory that gets us to Jesus.
Well, I hope this was an encouragement for you today.
Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, keep following Jesus
And stay close to the story of Scripture.
Find ways to include Bible reading into your everyday life
Because I believe that the written words of God can begin to form the living word of God who is Jesus within you.
Well, that’s all we have for today.
Thank you for joining me for this episode.
Go in peace and be kind
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.