St. Patrick Life Teen Blog

The Bible can be a bit intimidating. Most people I’ve talked to don’t read it, complaining that its too boring or too complicated. Although I knew the entire Word of God was important, I agreed with them on some level.  Naturally, I knew the gospels pretty well, and when I did read the Bible I went straight to those, paying little attention to the Old Testament. For some reason I considered the New Testament to be more important. Probably because the Old Testament is everything that happened before Jesus and now that Jesus has come I assumed it contained some interesting history, but in the bigger picture it had become somewhat irrelevant. These were my thoughts until I spent five hours listening to Mark Hart tell the story of Salvation, starting with Adam and Eve, and ending with the conversion of St. Paul.

Wow! By the time the session came to a close I didn’t want Mark to stop talking about all the connections between the Old and the New Testaments. I experienced a newfound joy in the all the bits of the Old Testament as it became clear how they foreshadowed the coming of Jesus.  Understanding the order of events leading up to the coming of Jesus, including the prophecies and connections in the Old Testament, both enlightened and empowered me. It even strengthened my knowledge and illuminated the New Testament in a whole new way for me. Events I knew before, now had additional meaning; a new depth to comprehending the Word.

For example, the first plague God sent on Egypt was not an isolated incident. It foreshadowed Jesus’ first miracle during the wedding at Cana, when Jesus turned the water into wine. It was not by coincidence that in Exodus it is written, “Throughout the land of Egypt there shall be blood, even in the wooden pails and stone jars.” In addition, John writing about this first miracle of Jesus, says, “Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus told them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’” He then turned this water to wine. He fulfilled the Old Testament, showing us God’s true intentions for how we are to live. Instead of the water being turned to blood to hinder the people in Egypt, now the water is turned to wine for the celebration of people becoming one under God. And now, we receive His blood in the Eucharist, which is consecrated from the wine.

Jesus is the Lamb of God, but I didn’t know that this was foreshadowed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament as well. In Genesis 22 after traveling three days and Isaac carrying the wood for the sacrifice on his back, the angel stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, and it is written, “As Abraham looked about, he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So he went and took the ram and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son.” So as Abraham was going to offer up his son for God (but in place he sacrificed a ram caught in thorns), God offered up his son Jesus for us, who wore a crown of thorns. Additionally, Jesus is the lamb that every Jewish family offered up on Passover during the last plague on Egypt. The Old Testament documents, “The lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish.” And later it is written, “Then take a bunch of Hyssop, and dipping it in the blood that is in the basin, sprinkle the lintel and the two doorposts with this blood.” Both of these actions are fulfilled with Jesus on the cross. John writes in chapter 19, “After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I thirst.’ There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ And bowing his head, he handed over his spirit.” As the lamb’s blood on Passover was put on the door with a hyssop branch, Jesus, the Lamb of God, takes his final drink of wine from the hyssop branch, and as the lamb for Passover was required to be unblemished with no broken bones, John also writes, “But when they came to Jesus and saw that he had already died, they did not break his legs.” By doing this, it is made clear that Jesus is the one true Lamb of God.

These connections make the Old Testament so much more interesting. There is so much more in the Word to aid us in understanding Jesus and his mission. The Old Testament is literally packed with these correlations and I find myself looking for them now as I read. If I hadn’t obtained this knowledge, I would still be reading the New Testament on a flat surface and missing the depth involved, which would only limit my relationship with Christ. It is my experience that the research is well worth the time to come to a fuller understanding. God is so wonderful and this shows how huge his plan really is! He fulfilled promises through Jesus that he made approximately seventeen hundred years before. Now it is our job to draw near to Him and to trust in God’s plan, even if we don’t always understand, and to continue to pray and find love in Him who knows all. The Word is his gift to us – a precious gift where He shares with us His great love story. How we use this gift is up to us.

–By Olivia Swinford