At a conference for pastors, Mark Dever invited his audience to turn for the Scripture reading to Psalm 119. He meant it. His reading of Scripture didn’t end until he’d read verse 176, the closing word of the last section.

Nobody who knew Dever at the time should have been overly surprised by this 176-verse Scripture reading and the exposition that followed. For more than a decade prior, Dever had, through his preaching ministry, practically expressed his commitment to the apostolic teaching of Scripture’s divine origin and power.

The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made contains the record of one of the forms of the ministry of God’s Word. This book and its companion, The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept, provide substantial evidence of the way Dever, longtime pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, is committed to the centrality of Scripture in the life of the church. Each chapter presents an expository sermon devoted to a book of the Old Testament. This volume’s republication testifies to its tested worth and reflects the appreciation accorded to it in the almost two decades since it first saw the light of day.

Reviving the Soul

The Message of the Old Testament is a monumental accomplishment—extending as it does to more than a thousand pages. But if anything, the quantity of these expositions is surpassed by their quality. Each chapter contains an introduction to a book in the Old Testament canon. Far from giving us more background information than we can handle, Dever wisely tells us only what we need to know to understand the book’s message—which he also clearly articulates.

This volume’s republication testifies to its tested worth and reflects the appreciation accorded to it in the almost two decades since it first saw the light of day.

Moreover, in surveying each book, he makes insightful, always relevant applications, so that the expositions vibrate with the searching and convicting power of God’s Word. The result is that as we read, we feel that Scripture is being handled the way God intended it to be—yes, “for teaching” to inform the mind but also for “rebuking” and “correction” as it touches our lives, warming our affections toward the Lord, restoring what has become deformed, and in the process training us up as children of God who are better equipped to serve him (2 Tim. 3:16).

Dever does all this with a deep awareness that the Old Testament Scriptures point us to Christ—without (as sometimes happens) treating the text as though it were little more than an allegory of what was still to come in the incarnation and had no significance for the saints of the old covenant.

Rather, as in the Old Testament itself, in these pages we encounter men and women with real lives who face real challenges, experience sharp and painful conflicts, commit serious sins—and yet like Noah find “favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen. 6:8) even if they didn’t live to taste the full blessing of new covenant life in Christ.

Thus, The Message of the Old Testament introduces us to people with real spiritual understanding and genuine love for God as well as faith in his longest-standing, most-opposed, and hardest-to-keep promise of the seed to come who would bring salvation. All this is offered to us here in an energetic style enhanced by illustrations drawn from history and literature and presented in a way as pleasing as it is relevant.

Making Wise the Simple

One of the strengths of The Message of the Old Testament lies in the variety of ways it can be used. Of course, it can be read in the way we usually read books—page by page, chapter by chapter.

But my feeling is that you may gain more from it if you ration out its chapters over an extended period of time, one chapter at a time, allowing yourself the leisure to glance through the biblical book on which the chapter is based. A measured approach allows this volume to work its way into your memory banks and creates the space for it to have a lasting effect on your life.

This is also a book ideally suited to be used in a reading group, Bible study group, or Sunday school class. I can envision people gathering regularly just to read the book aloud to each other. (Since, like much of the Old Testament, the book’s contents were originally spoken aloud, its full force is best felt that way.) No doubt such a corporate experience of reading and listening will lead naturally to reflection and discussion. And since each chapter includes discussion questions, the book is tailored to this purpose.

The Message of the Old Testament introduces us to people with real spiritual understanding and genuine love for God.

But there’s one more context in which I believe The Message of the Old Testament can be used with great profit—in daily family devotions.

Granted, it’ll take forethought on the part of a parent to divide each chapter into appropriate bite-size pieces to be read, say, after the evening meal, perhaps one chapter per week. But scanning each chapter and making some judicious pencil marks to indicate a five-, six-, or sevenfold division will take only a few minutes, and the benefits to the family may be lifelong.

In an age of staggering biblical ignorance, knowledge is power of a good kind. And the experience of natural, happy, and yet challenging family conversations stimulated by God’s Word will surely never be forgotten by our children.

Enduring Forever

It seems that every decade or so, someone in the evangelical subculture suggests some new method or technique, some new model of church life, that will bring success. Decade after decade, the latest fad fades and gives way to another.

Bucking this trend, Dever has demonstrated by word and example that there’s a God-given way to grow as a Christian and to build God’s church. It’s simply the good old way applied and expressed to new times—just as our spiritual forefathers wrote:

The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners; of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ; of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.

What we have in these pages, then, is an illustration and confirmation of this high evangelical view of Scripture and of the importance of its reading and preaching. Approached in dependence on the Spirit, these pages can have that kind of effect on us. The Message of the Old Testament will help Christians embrace and hold on to the hope of everlasting life in our Savior Jesus Christ.