How did you do on Sunday? Did your teaching opportunity go well? The crucial question you should be asking yourself is this one: did your lesson point to Christ?
A recent letter suggested to me that, while there were probably some good moral truths to be gleaned from lessons about the Tabernacle or the twelve spies in Canaan, we could better spend our time in Sunday School teaching the Creation account more frequently. I responded with two basic goals for Old Testament Sunday School lessons.
One is to teach as much as is practical about the narrative thread of the Bible, the history of God's plan of salvation for humankind. This will provide a Gospel skeleton, a framework, on which to hang each of the lessons we teach. The creation of the world, and of human beings, and the fall into sin set in motion events that took place over many generations and centuries according to God's specific plan.
The more important reason to teach these Old Testament accounts, though, is that each of them points us to Jesus. A lesson about the Tabernacle will remind us that just as God chose to live among His people during their years in the wilderness and as they claimed the land He has promised them, so He chose also to live among His people in human form as Jesus of Nazareth, and He promises to be among us today through the Means of Grace, His Word and Sacraments. The Tabernacle points to Jesus. Each Old Testament lesson should do the same.
Where was Christ is the lesson you taught on Sunday? A promise from God? A type? A fulfillment of a prophecy?
God's blessings as you teach God's children about Jesus even in your Old Testament lessons.
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