bucane, without getting off topic, I would appeal again to what you believe about Jesus. Jesus believed in the Old Testament. Do you accept His teaching fully or simply the part about dying for your sins? If we reject part of his teaching, we cannot call ourselves followers of Jesus. If we accept it we must believe that the Old Testament contains words from God and that it is fully authoritative.
Besides the amount of use Jesus made of the Old Testament he also gave direct teachings about its authority. This teaching makes it quite clear that Jesus regarded the Old Testament as inspired by God and as the final authority on teaching in all areas. The terms that Jesus used to describe the Bible show the extent to which he found it authoritative.
It is written - Jesus uses this phrase 18 times to support his own teaching by reference to his Bible, the Old Testament. In every one of these cases the fact that something was written in the Bible was treated as a guarantee that it was true. Interestingly enough, other people realized that Jesus held the Bible to be fully authoritative and tried to convince him by quoting the scriptures. This occurs eight times in the gospels.
Have you never read? - There are ten references in the Bible where Jesus appeals to the people with these words. When he does this it is because he is teaching that the contents of the scripture he quotes are fully authoritative.
Matthew 21:42 Jesus saith to them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
Search the scripture - John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
This is an appeal to the Pharisees to find an authoritative description of him in the Old Testament. The way he gives it shows that he expects the quotation to complete the argument and thus regards it as authoritative.
Matthew 22:29 Jesus answered and said to them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
Mark 14:49 The Scripture must be fulfilled
The fact that something was predicted in the Bible was, for Jesus, enough to guarantee that it would happen. This is the case because the Bible contains the words of God.
Luke 24:25 O fools, and slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.
This was spoken by Jesus to two of his doubting disciples after his resurrection. The important point he was making is that it is enough to find something written in the Old Testament to know that it is true. The disciples were forced to accept that Jesus was raised from the dead by a quotation of passages from the Old Testament rather than by Jesus revealing himself to them.
The sum of these statements is to show how Jesus taught that the scriptures to which he had access were inspired by God and were fully authoritative. Jesus quotes from all the sections of the Old Testament; no part is omitted, which shows that Jesus accepted all of it as God's word. The way that the quotations are used shows that Jesus did not only accepted them as moral guides. He also accepted the Old Testament descriptions of history and its prediction of events yet to come. He treated the Bible he had as a complete source of true teaching from God.
Jesus believed every part of the Scriptures to be inspired and that no part of the Bible can be ignored. If we are to be true followers of Jesus, true Christians, we must accept the teachings of Jesus.
Finally, Jesus spoke of Genesis as well.
Matthew 19:3—6 "Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?’ ‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator `made them male and female,and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.
Luke 17:26—32: Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
John 5:46—47: If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?
If you can't bring yourself to believe the Old Testament, then you must believe that Jesus was either misquoted or lying.
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