Pastor's Circle - Dr. John Oswalt, Asbury Seminary

Read Dr. Oswalt's bio here. He is an old colleague of mine at Wesley Biblical Seminary.
He is one of the world's leading authorities on the Old Testament.

Is the Old Testament relevant?

I frequently say it is like a two-storied house. The New Testament is the top floor. If you have a top floor, you are exceedingly interested in the bottom floor. Put another way, the Old Testament provides the questions for which the New Testament provides the answers. It's like Jeopardy that way.

What's an example of this?

Well, the answer in the New Testament in the cross, but what is the question?

Many people think the question is, "How can my sins be forgiven and how can I go to heaven?"

The Old Testament is not primarily concerned with forgiveness of sins and it's not very much concerned with heaven. The question is how a human being like me can share holiness with God.

I'm not saying that forgiveness and heaven are unimportant. But forgiveness is the means and the end is Christlikeness.

The whole Old Testament breathes with this issue of "can I have a life-changing relationship with God. Can I be like God?"

The New Testament comes ringing through and says, here's the answer. You can have a life-changing relationship with God.

What happens when you have an evangelical culture that is enamored with the New Testament and not the Old Testament?

It becomes a very individualistic one. It becomes about me. I'm going to heaven. The rest of life...that's your problem.

The OT tell us, we're saved and lost together. If you and I have the character of God, we can share that with others.

Occasionally I see a bumper sticker on cars that says, "Not perfect, just forgiven." Well, if you mean perfect in the sense of unable to commit a sin..of course not. On the other hand, does that mean I have to break God's heart every day? Absolutely not.

Thank God that, as John said, we have forgiveness. But we don't have to sin.

One of the things that encourages me a lot is I see young people today. I see the 20-somethings with a real concern for where is the reality in Christian life?

That encourages me a lot, to see people who have received the Holy Spirit in his fullness and are living out his life.

Can 20-somethings get enamored with OT?

Yeah, they can.

It's fascinating as the serious ones are saying, where is the reality here? In many ways, many of us when we were little, our parents read us Bible stories. The fascinating thing is that 9/10ths of the stories are Old Testament.

What is a good principle of interpretation when reading the Old Testament?

The short answer would be, what is the plain intent of the text? When you've done that, the next step is to say, okay, what did it say then. And look for the principle that's involved there.

For instance, you've got a law that says, if you've got an ox that's mean and it kills your neighbor, you're a murderer....

Well, I like that law because I don't have any oxen.. But there's a principle there. Knowledge means responsibility.

You look at Leviticus all this stuff about not eating pigs...what's the principle? God is trying ot teach a lesson to these ex-Egyptian slaves here.

Does it matter what my life is like? Absolutely.

This isn't about pig meat or leprosy. This is about how clean I'm willing to be in God's eyes.

Let me challenge you with a song - Psalm 137 - help me out with this: "...happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."

First of all, you've got to put yourself in their setting. I'll never forget the first time I was in Israel...I began to think, I couldn't walk anywhere in the land without blood seeping out of the ground.

We in America...have been remarkably free of the violence in the world.

They had seen wives killed and unborn babies ripped from the womb.

They were crying out in reality, God how long is this going to go on? Are they never going to get what's coming to them?

There's nothing sugar-coated here...it's real life. You can't read one Psalm alone. You've gotta read others together. Ultimately you've got to read the whole Bible.

With Jesus we don't have to live in an endless sinking spiral of hatred.

How does someone use the Old Testament well in a devotional life?

Well, this is all a very personal and individual. A couple times in my life, I've tried to read the Bible in a year. But for me, my practice through the years is to read a chapter a day. What new truth do I find in this chapter, and what truth is God trying to life out of it today?

For someone who doesn't have a lot of background, get a study Bible. The ESV and NLT Study Bibles are good. When you've got questions, a good study Bible will help you.

What's a good book to learn about the Old Testament?

I'm thinking of the book, "Encountering the Old Testament" by Beyer and Arnold for lay people. There's another book out by Ellsworth Kalas. "Old Testament Stories from the Backside" is the title.