Lesson 2 | Vocab
Reading Jesus’ Bible
When you open up the Old Testament, what are you reading? You are reading Jesus’ Bible.
Jesus never read Romans or Revelation. He never heard sermons on Matthew’s Gospel or Peter’s epistles. Indeed, the New Testament was not written in Jesus’ day, so his only Bible was what we call the Old Testament. It was books like Genesis and Deuteronomy, Isaiah and Psalms that shaped Jesus’ upbringing and that guided his life and ministry as the Jewish Messiah. … If we want to know Jesus as best as we can, we must saturate ourselves in the same Scripture he read—namely, the Old Testament!
—Jason DeRouchie, What the Old Testament Authors Really Cared About, 28.
How much should we treasure the 39 books that Jesus himself, the perfect man, treasured while on earth—books that reveal much about his ministry, his life and death, his character, and his glory?
The OT is most certainly worth our labor and love. And what better way to dig deeply into Jesus’ Bible than to do so in the language in which God chose to express it: Hebrew. As you memorize vocabulary and learn grammar, find encouragement in the fact that the object of your study is none other than the same Scriptures your Savior held!