The Old Testament Was Never About You

Part One: The Lens That Changes Everything

You have read the Old Testament and quietly measured yourself against it. Be brave like David. Be bold like Elijah. Step out in faith like Abraham. Be a Gideon in your generation. It sounds inspiring. It feels biblical. It preaches well on a Sunday morning. And it leaves you standing next to giants, wondering why your faith looks so small beside theirs.

So before you read another story that way, it’s worth asking one question. Is that actually how the New Testament teaches you to read the Old?

Because the answer quietly shapes how you see yourself every time you open your Bible. It decides whether you come to Scripture with anticipation or with comparison.

Imitation Carries a Weight You Were Never Meant to Lift

There’s nothing wrong with learning from Scripture. The Old Testament isn’t random history. It’s the unfolding story of redemption, and every page is doing something. But when the people in it become mainly templates for your behavior, something subtle shifts under your feet. The Bible quietly moves from revelation to regulation. Instead of asking what God is revealing about His plan, you start asking what you’re supposed to be doing better. And the stories stop preaching grace and start keeping score.

That isn’t freedom. It’s comparison dressed up as inspiration. And comparison only ever hands you two things: pride when you think you measure up, and discouragement when you know you don’t.

Jesus Told Us What the Scriptures Were About

After the resurrection, walking the road to Emmaus, Jesus fell in beside two heartbroken disciples and opened the Scriptures for them. He could have comforted them a hundred ways. Watch where He pointed.

And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. (Luke 24:27)

He didn’t say find yourself in every story. He didn’t pull leadership principles out of Joshua or a five-step plan out of Nehemiah. He said the whole library had been about Him the entire time. He had said it plainly before His death too: You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me (John 5:39).

That one sentence reorders everything. The Old Testament isn’t a gallery of moral examples for you to copy. It’s a witness pointing to Christ. Miss that, and you’ll misread the whole story, no matter how sincerely you read it.

The Pattern Was Always Pointing Past Itself

Read the Old Testament honestly and you start to see the same shape over and over. The Law exposes what no one can keep. The narratives show you their heroes’ limits openly, without airbrushing the failures. The covenant unfolds its promises in stages, always reaching for something it hasn’t yet held. None of it is trying to convince you that you can finally succeed where they struggled. All of it is preparing you for the One who would.

The Cross Changes the Lens

The cross doesn’t erase the Old Testament. It fulfills it. And it changes the question you bring to every story.

No one in those pages was ever accepted by performance, any more than you are. They trusted God and were counted righteous, long before Calvary. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness (Romans 4:3). What the cross changes is not how people are made right with God, but how clearly we see it. Before the cross, righteousness was promised and awaited through shadow and sign. After the cross, righteousness stands finished and received in full. Before the cross, the people of God leaned toward a covenant still reaching forward. After the cross, your identity rests in union with the Christ who has already come. So you stop asking how you can be like David, and you start asking how David points you to Jesus. You stop straining to repeat Abraham’s journey, and you notice what the New Testament actually does with him. Paul never holds Abraham up to fire your effort. He holds him up to prove you’re justified by faith, apart from works.

This Doesn’t Shrink Them. It Honors Them.

None of this minimizes these men and women. It hands them back their real role. They aren’t spiritual self-help case studies or divine personality types to match yourself against.

And yes, the New Testament does hold some of them up to us. Hebrews parades them through its eleventh chapter, and Paul says their stories were written for our instruction. But look closely at what they model. Not flawless performance. Faith. They are commended for trusting God, often while failing at everything else. So even where Scripture points back to them, it points through them to the God they trusted, and to the greater One that trust was reaching for.

They’re living signposts in a story that is moving somewhere. So when you see Gideon’s fear, Moses’ frustration, David’s collapse, or Abraham’s hesitation, you aren’t meant to feel superior, and you aren’t meant to feel ashamed. You’re meant to feel the pull of what’s coming. A better Deliverer. A better King. A better Mediator. A better covenant. And because of the cross, He has already come.

What This Means for You

You were never meant to measure yourself against the heroes of the Old Testament. You were meant to find yourself in Christ.

Your righteousness doesn’t rise and fall like David’s obedience. Your courage isn’t the foundation of your acceptance. Your faith isn’t a heroic achievement that unlocks God’s favor. Your standing with God rests on the One the whole Old Testament was leaning toward, and He doesn’t waver.

Read it that way and something loosens. The pressure lifts. The stories deepen. Christ comes into focus, and your identity stops wobbling. You stop trying to become a better Gideon. And you start resting in the greater Deliverer who never once faltered.

Over the next stories we'll walk through five lives you were handed as examples to copy, Abraham, Moses, David, Gideon, and Joseph, and watch each one quietly turn and point past itself. And we'll end somewhere you might not expect: with the man Jesus called the greatest ever born of woman, and the startling thing He said about you in the very same breath.