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A World Shaking Bible Passage

Peter preached from the book of Joel on the day of Pentecost. What importance do we place on the Old Testament today?

Imagine that you had the opportunity to preach a sermon at an event that had the capacity to shake the whole world; what Bible passage would you choose to expound? I suspect that most of us would chose something from John’s Gospel or perhaps the book of Romans; some might even stretch to one of my favourite passages from Colossians 1.

However, I don’t think that many of us would reach for the book of Joel; but that (of course) is exactly what Peter did on the day of Pentecost. His inaugural sermon of the Christian age was an exposition of Joel 2:28-32; hardly the most well-thumbed passage in the Scriptures.

Of course, Peter could hardly have turned to John, Romans or Colossians because they weren’t written at the time of his sermon. He could hardly ask his hearers to stand around for a decade or three while he waited for a text to expound. But, and this is important, he did preach a dynamic, evangelistic sermon from an Old Testament text.

I’ve harped on about this before, but I fear that Evangelicals often downplay the importance of the Old Testament (try this quote for example). The Top Verses website (which I have referred to before and will return to tomorrow) only lists three OT verses in their top thirty Bible verses (and one of those is generally quoted out of context).

The Bible exists as it is and most of it is Old Testament. Whether we are preachers, Bible translators or Sunday School teachers, we cannot ignore simply turn our backs on a huge slice of the book. After all, it was good enough for Peter, so it should be good enough for us.

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