Episode Transcript  

One

The Story Begins: God the Loving Father

Many people mistakenly think the Old Testament is just a record of a harsh, angry God who punishes people, a sharp contrast, they believe, to the merciful and loving God of the New Testament. Others see it as little more than a long list of outdated rules, strange rituals, and ancient wars, filled with violence. 

To many, it appears as a disconnected series of stories with no clear relevance to modern life, focused only on the Jewish people and not on the whole human race. But this view misses the heart of the Old Testament. In truth, it is the story, written by the Holy Spirit of God the Father, lovingly forming a covenant family through which He would redeem the world. Far from being obsolete or irrelevant, the Old Testament is the foundation of salvation history. It reveals the depths of God's patience, His mercy in the face of human sin, and His providential care as He prepares the way for Christ. It is not a different story from the New Testament, but the first half of the one great story of God’s love for humanity.

God made the world, angels, and humanity for one reason: so that we could share in His life, His joy, His relationships, even His divinity. From the beginning, His desire was to bring us into His family.

Two

God’s Initiative

The story of the Old Testament is, above all, the story of God taking the initiative to save us by drawing us into His family. Throughout Scripture, the key word for this relationship is covenant, a sacred bond that forms family ties, like adoption or marriage. Every time God enters into a covenant, He comes with gifts, blessings of life, protection, and abundance. But He also gives commandments, not as burdens, but as loving instructions on how to live in happiness and joy and avoid destroying ourselves.

Yet with every covenant, humanity eventually turns away. God offers a relationship, and we respond with rebellion. Still, He never gives up. Scripture reveals how God used successive covenants to gradually draw humanity into His family: Adam and Eve – One Couple. Noah – One Family. Abraham – One Tribe. Moses – One Nation. David – One Kingdom. Jesus – One Holy Catholic (Universal) Church.

These covenants prepare for the coming of Jesus, who establishes the new and eternal covenant. The word Catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning “universal.” God’s goal is to bring the whole human race into His family through His Son Jesus Christ. 

This is your story, your identity. This book was written about you.

Three

Humanity Sins

The Old Testament is about God taking the initiative and trying to work with an individual or a group of people for their own happiness. But the Old Testament is also fundamentally a story of people breaking their relationship with God by breaking the Commandments. The Old Testament is a record of human ingratitude and sinfulness.

Why do the people in the Old Testament keep sinning? Well, for basically the same reasons that we sin. We sin because we don’t trust that the way God designed us, and made clear through His commandments, will lead to true happiness. So we chase happiness in ways that end up destroying us.

That’s why Saul sinned. That’s why Abraham sinned. That’s why the men who built the Tower of Babel sinned. That’s why the nation of Judah sinned by not keeping the Sabbath. Or sometimes people sin because they feel like God is far away, and that He’s not on their side. That’s why Adam and Eve sinned. That’s why Cain sinned. That’s why the Israelites who built the Golden Calf sinned.

And finally, sometimes people sin because they just want something they know they’re not supposed to have. That’s why David sinned to get Bathsheba. That’s why Ahab sinned to get another man’s vineyard. That’s why Solomon sinned by getting completely out of control with lust and power, and money.

The people of the Old Testament sinned for the same reasons we do: they didn’t trust that God’s way would lead to true happiness. So they chose their own path. And when things fell apart, they tried to justify their choices and then blamed God for the consequences.

Four

The Consequences of Sin

The Old Testament is also a story about the tragic consequences of sin. And the main consequences of sin are division, exile, and death.

These consequences of sin are seen as soon as Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit: They experience a division, a break in their relationship. They need clothes, because they can’t be trusted to look at one another rightly. Adam blames Eve for the whole thing, and Eve is warned that from now on, Adam will lord it over her. They experience exile because now they have to leave Eden and can never go back. And, eventually, they experience death. 

These consequences continue throughout the Old Testament’s record of human sin.

Sin causes division in families: Abraham’s, Jacob’s, and David’s. It causes the division of the nations at the Tower of Babel. Eventually, it even causes division in the nation of Israel, and ten tribes are irretrievably cut off from the other two. Sin causes exile: Cain is cast out of his homeland. The ten tribes of Israel are exiled to Assyria; the kingdom of Judah is exiled to Babylon. Sin causes death: The floods at the time of Noah, the fire and brimstone that consumes Sodom and Gomorrah, the ground that opens under Korah, the seraph serpents that poison the Israelites in the desert – not to mention the countless wars and deaths by violence.

If there is one theme that emerges clearly from the Old Testament, it’s that sin is the ultimate and primary cause of human misery. Thankfully, God does not leave us to take care of the consequences of our own sins.

Five

The Promise

Beginning with Adam and Eve, God promises not to leave the human race in the wretchedness of its sin. Immediately after the Fall of Adam and Eve, God gives the first promises of the coming of a Savior and a Woman who will crush the head of the serpent. And from there, the promise continues to grow and expand.

The prophets promise a Messiah, who will establish God’s universal Kingdom. They promise a Suffering Servant, who will suffer to take away the sins of the people. They promise a day of salvation, when God will transform the sinful hearts of his people into rightly ordered hearts. They promise that God will send His Spirit into the souls of His faithful ones. They promise that all nations will enter into the Covenant of God’s people. In other words, the Old Testament promises the coming of the Christ and the Establishment of the Catholic Church.

That’s why it’s so important to know the story of the Old Testament: because it’s our story. It’s about us. Our lives are just the most recently written page of the same book, and you can’t understand the last page of a book unless you know what came before. The Old Testament is the story of God preparing the world for Christ and the Church.

Now that Christ and the Church are here, how are we going to let them transform us? Are we going to let them take away our sins? Or will we continue to not trust God, take what doesn’t belong to us, and wallow in division, exile, and death? Or will we let God transform us by the sacraments, prayer, and love?

Suggested Resolutions:

Choose one resolution for today to help you grow closer to God, or create your own. Here are some ideas to inspire you. 

• At the end of each day, reflect on the ways that you’ve broken your promises to God as an examination of conscience, then think about the consequences of those actions, and the ways in which God is reaching out to you, trying to repair that covenant.

• Spend time reading the Old Testament this week, getting to know your story from the very beginning.

If you enjoyed this meditation, subscribe below.