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Philip was directed by the Spirit of God to a chariot clambering down a deserted road. He came up next to the chariot and heard the man inside reading from the Old Testament. Beginning with the very place he was reading in the Old Testament, Philip preached the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul, after meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, went into the city and began to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even more than that, Paul proved that Jesus was the Christ of God. Both Philip and Paul used the Old Testament to teach people about Jesus and the wonderful salvation that has been offered to all mankind through him. They did not rely on new testimony to prove the Messiahship of Jesus, they relied on testimony that was hundreds of years old.
When Luke records that Paul “prov[ed] that Jesus was the Christ” (Acts 9.22), he gives us an important insight into Paul’s speech. Paul took the information contained in the Old Testament and put it together so that it became impossible to honestly deny that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. Passage after passage, verse after verse, Paul added argument upon argument to his preaching until there existed such a weight of
evidence that no soul could honestly remove the burden. Paul took scattered fragments of prophecy, pieces of a puzzle interspersed throughout the Old Testament, and masterfully wove them together until God’s plan to save mankind was clearly seen by all. The Old Testament is our tutor to lead us to Jesus Christ. It was put in place to teach mankind the information needed to prove Jesus as the Christ. The Old Testament is God-breathed, inspired by God, and is profitable for teaching us and making us wise unto the salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
Those who believe the prophets are led under God’s careful tutelage to Jesus. We must study and learn the Old Testament Scriptures so that God can teach us about Jesus. We must study through Moses and the prophets with this aim, thinking and praying to God as we are reading, “Show me your Son.” A proper understanding of the Old Testament will lead us to Jesus Christ and the salvation offered in him to all who believe.
There are more than 1,000 references (direct and indirect) in the New Testament to Old Testament passages. The two halves of the Bible are inextricably linked together in such a way that not understanding one makes having faith in the other very difficult. The writers of the New Testament do not call upon their readers to have blind faith in their accounts. They purposefully show, time and again, prophecy and passages that Jesus Christ fulfills. The aim of the Old Testament is not, and never was, a legal justification before God through a system of written ordinances; the end of the Old Testament was Jesus Christ, and in the New Testament the glory of the Son of God is completely revealed to mankind.
If we allow God to take us and teach through his word, the only honest conclusion, after all things are considered, is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; God has proven this fact beyond the shadow of a doubt. The Old Testament begins by talking about God speaking light into the universe (Genesis 1.3), and it ends with the promise of that light, the Sun of Righteousness, that will come with healing in its wings (Malachi 4.2). Jesus is that light. Jesus is the point. Jesus is the purpose. Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the reason. Jesus is the beginning, the end, the all in all. If we will let God guide us through his word, there is no other conclusion than Jesus Christ—it’s a proven fact.
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