Who Is the Focus of the Old Testament?

So often when Sunday school curriculums teach through the Old Testament or when children’s Bibles or books feature accounts from the Old Testament, they frame it as merely a moral lesson—be brave like David, stand for truth like Daniel, obey God, don’t disobey like Jonah did. But are moral lessons really the focus of these accounts—more significantly, are we the focus of the Old Testament?

The Old Testament is one giant arrow pointing to Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross.

No! We aren’t, and morality isn’t the primary focus either. The Old Testament is one giant arrow pointing to Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross. That begins right in Genesis when we’re told God created a perfect world and Adam and Eve’s sin ruined it, so God promised a Savior would come (Genesis 3:15). Throughout the Old Testament we see our failing, our inability to obey God and keep his Law, and the continuing promise of the Savior who would come to save us from our sin. He’s the ultimate fulfillment of the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He’s the great King, the ultimate High Priest, the perfect Prophet, the fulfillment of the Passover and other feasts, and the ultimate, perfect sacrifice (and that’s just a small glimpse of the “scarlet thread” in the Old Testament). This is how we must teach the Old Testament—with the focus on Christ.

That’s what we do in Answers Bible Curriculum. We spend a great deal of time in the Old Testament (after all, it makes up the bulk of our Bibles!)—and that’s not time away from Christ. That’s time spent gaining a deeper knowledge of who Christ is, what he came to do, and how helpless we are to save ourselves.

So many Christians don’t know what the Old Testament teaches, and they don’t understand how to interpret it. Answers Bible Curriculum goes through the Old Testament chronologically and teaches apologetics, hermeneutics (proper biblical interpretation), and keeps the spotlight where it belongs—on Jesus, the eternal God and the fulfillment of all the Old Testament.