Religion 101: The Danger of Old Testament Christianity

I. Introduction
A. I am going to teach some deeper things today. And even if this doesn’t seem relevant to your life today, I can guarantee it’s going to be relevant many, many times. And if you don’t learn it today, you may not be prepared when the times comes when you need it.
B. There are all sorts of ways to distort and even ruin the gospel of Christ. And one of the big ones is by keeping OT patterns which were meant to be disposed of when Christ came.
C. That’s what I mean by the danger of OT Christianity.
II. Jesus changed things from the OT mentality.
A. Christ’s coming made a big difference: a shift in time, a shift in the way God deals with man. There is continuity AND discontinuity between the old and new testaments, to be sure. But Jesus changed the true religion in some significant ways.
1. The OT itself predicts this over and over: a day is coming which will change everything.
a. When Messiah comes
b. When the Spirit is poured out
2. A good example of is found in the story of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:21-23. She was asking Jesus about the proper place to worship and he replied, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.”
3. The coming of Jesus involved significant changes in the way people were to worship God. No longer would worship be tied to a certain location (the temple in Jerusalem), but would be spiritual and truth-based.
4. The changes which came through the coming of Jesus became big issues in the NT, because some didn’t welcome change.
B. What are some of the changes brought about by the coming of Christ?
1. God in a new temple: We already talked about John 4 and the change in locational worship.
2. Fulfillment of the sacrifices and the priesthood in Christ (Hebrews 10:1-22)
3. New way of thinking about the law
4. The trinitarian nature of God revealed
5. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit which began with the Spirit being poured out at Pentecost
6. Ominous intimidation to festive celebration (Hebrews 12:18-24)
7. Fear and slavery to sonship and joyful intimacy (Romans 8:15)
8. A new commandment: love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34-35)
9. Human barriers broken down: Gentiles included, God’s impartiality revealed (Acts 10:28, 34-35)
10. Earthly kingdom (Israel) to a kingdom “not of this world” (John 18:36)
11. Radical shift in weapons of warfare (2Cor.10:3-5)
12. New attitude toward suffering
III. But there was a strong temptation for Christian people to cling to the old things.
A. You can see this in Luke 5:39, after Jesus says, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.” (37-38)
a. (There is an inherent newness to Jesus. He brought something new, and if we’re going to deal with this Jesus, we need to know He’s going to bring some changes.)
2. But Jesus goes on in v.39 to describe an aversion in us to these changes. “And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’” (Luke 5:39)
a. Remarkable! Jesus brings the new, Jesus IS the new, but there’s something in us that still prefers the old. And because of this preference, there is a gravitational pull to go back to old ways of thinking.
B. This brings us to Galatians 4:1–11.
1. One of the images given us in the NT to describe the change brought by Jesus is the image of children treated differently when they are grown up than when they were very young.
2. You see, in Christ God has entered into a new kind of relationship with His people.
a. He is still our Father, but now He is treating us as grown sons, and no longer as little children.
3. Paul uses this image in Gal. 4:1-11 to explain how things are different in the NT from the OT.
4. When children are young, Paul says, they are treated in one sense like slaves. Part of what that means is that they are told
a. what to do and what not to do,
b. what to touch and not touch,
c. what to eat, what not to eat
d. where to eat, how to eat,
e. where to go, where not to go
f. what to say, what to wear.
g. who to talk to and who not to talk to,
h. how to do things, when to go to bed......................Just like a slave.
5. One way young childhood is similar to slavery is that a slave is given very specific instructions about what to do and what not to do — like a little child. But a grown child is given freedom.
6. This is a picture of the change between how God dealt with mankind before Christ and how He deals with us since Christ.
a. He gave the Israelites very clear and specific instructions
(1) what to do and not do
(2) what to eat and not eat
(3) what to touch and not touch
(4) what to wear and not wear
(5) how and where to worship
(6) when their special celebrations were to be and how long they were supposed to last
7. Notice the expression “the elementary principles of the world” in Gal.4:3 & 9:
a. 3 “In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.”
b. 9 “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?”
c. This important expression is used four times in the NT, all by Paul, twice here in Gal.4 & twice in Col.2.
d. What then does Paul mean by “the elementary principles of the world” (or “elemental things” in some translations)?
(1) “elementary principles” is one Greek word, STOIXEIA. The STOIXEIA of the KOSMOS.
(2) The Greek word STOIXEIA has several meanings.
(a) Its primary meaning is related to elementary knowledge, much like we refer to the youngest level of school as elementary school.
(b) This meaning fits in very nicely with Gal.4, where Paul is talking about early childhood in contrast with being grown up.
(3) So, the most natural and obvious interpretation, it seems to me, is that “the STOIXEIA of the COSMOS,” (the elementary things of the world), refers to the primitive religious thinking of the time before Christ came, the very kind of thinking Paul wants them to leave behind now that they’re no longer little children.
8. Let’s look at the other two uses of “elementary principles of the world” are in Colossians 2:8 & 20, where Paul also refers to the primitive religious thinking of the time before Christ.
a. Col.2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”
b. Col.2:20–24 If with Christ you died to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.”
9. You see, the elementary rules are connected to elementary ways of thinking.
a. When you’re a kid, you’re led to believe some pretty wacky things (without even mentioning Santa Claus and the tooth fairy).
b. You think that it’s a sin not to eat your vegetables.
c. You think the bottles under the sink will kill you if you play with them.
d. You think strangers are evil.
e. You think saying please is one of the very most important things in life.
f. You have an overly simplistic view of the world, a very materialistic view of the world.
10. You see, in the OT God allowed people to think in a very child-like manner.
a. He allowed them to think that there was a special moral character to physical things. E.g. that some foods were good and some evil, that certain things if you touch them would make you unclean and disqualified from coming into God’s presence, that certain people were clean and others were unclean, that certain places were holy and others not, that God lived in a tent and then in a building in Jerusalem, that certain days were intrinsically holy.
b. And the Gentiles were allowed to think that the sun was a god — and the moon, and a statue of wood or stone. Their thinking was enslaved to their fears, superstitions and misperception.
11. But now Paul is calling the Galatians (and us) to leave behind the old childish, slavish ways of thinking and realize that “Christ has set us free” and we should therefore “not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
C. There are numerous references to this tendency to prefer the old ways in the rest of the NT.
1. “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15)
2. Acts 1:6 where we find the disciples still yearning for the old ideas, for the earthly kingdom, for heaven on earth — even after spending 40 days with the resurrected Lord.
3. Peter’s struggle to accept the new economy at Cornelius’ house in Acts 10-11.
4. The Book of Hebrews is all about the temptation to go back to a pre-Christian state-of-mind.
IV. The danger of OT Christianity actually has a large number of potential manifestations.
A. You can cling to OT laws which aren’t meant to be practiced anymore: like circumcision and the food laws.
B. You can have a Christianity which is law-based and not gospel-based.
C. You can have a Christianity which is ritualistic instead of emphasizing worship in spirit and truth.
D. You can have a Christianity which is superstitious, still believing there is power in material things: objects, words, places, people, relics, statues, buildings.
E. You can have a politically-oriented Christianity, striving to build an earthly kingdom governed by OT laws.
F. You can have a Christianity which is focused on outward appearances instead of inward realities.
G. You can have a Christianity which looks down at people different than us.
H. You can have a Christianity which focuses on obeying not out of gospel joy but out of the flesh or out of pure duty
I. You can have a Christianity which is moralistic: focused on what we’re supposed to do or be as opposed to focusing on the great things God has done in the gospel.
J. You can have a self-righteous, us/them form of Christianity, which thinks that our group is the right one and which looks down on everybody else.
K. There are all sorts of characteristics of the OT which appeal to people and yet which don’t belong in the Christian faith.
V. Why is it so tempting to cling to the old things? What’s desirable about the old? The new is SOOO much better! (Heb.8:6) Why in the world would someone ever prefer the old to the new?
A. First of all, it’s human nature: before the Israelites had gone far into the wilderness they were already longing to go back to Egypt, back to the land of slavery, back where they were well-fed.
B. We prefer the familiar. We get attached to the comfortable. We’re scared of change. We’re conservative by nature. It’s like hanging out with an old friend as opposed to meeting a new person.
C. In one sense the old is also easier to understand.
1. Like comparing Newtonian physics to Einstein’s physics (Einstein’s ideas are very hard to grasp but are very true), or (for those who haven’t had physics) from arithmetic to calculus.
D. It’s so Biblical! We read things in the Bible and feel like we should be doing them, failing to see that Bible revelation is not flat (where everything is on the same level) but narrative and therefore progressive.
E. The old ways of thinking are, in some ways, more natural (again, like Newtonian physics seems more natural than Einsteinian physics).
1. The elementary thinking of OT days was more adapted to man’s nature: more according to what man was familiar with and could handle, and more gratifying to the flesh.
2. A child’s book is full of pictures. An adult book has few if any pictures. It’s full of words. In the same way, the old elementary thinking is full of pictures. The way of Christ is more word-oriented. The OT temple was indwelt by the glory-cloud of God’s presence. The NT temple (1Pet.2:5) is to have the word of Christ dwell in it richly (Col.3:16).
3. The NT ways are more dependant on what we can’t see. And that makes us nervous.
4. We’re called to walk by faith and not by sight, but it’s much easier to walk by sight.
5. Remember what Jesus said about miracles: “Blessed are those who have NOT seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)
6. 2Corinthians 4:18 “We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
7. Colossians 3:2 “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”