A careful study of both Old and New Testament morality and worship will show that the OT is quite full of mercy and grace; meanwhile the New Testament preserves elements of God’s wrath and judgment. These are not two different testamental plans of religion; the Old points precisely to Christ who fulfills it perfectly—not differently.

On a recent trip, we rented a car. It had some great new features—and one I detested: a push button gear shifter, which is abhorrent to nature, and I don’t even desire to grow comfortable with such. And there are so many safety features that one nearly has to sign up for graduate classes to learn all the features.

Lane Keeping Assist is one of those safety features on most new cars, and I don’t like it, either. If a driver shortens a curve the least or technically veers over the paint as detected by the sensors, some invisible demon takes hold of the steering wheel and prudishly puts the car right back in the lane, arm wrestling with the human driver if need be. However, my wife says I cannot disable this safety feature; and she’s likely correct—although it feels like a legalistic infringement on my free-spirited driving.

There’s also a nagging reminder and dinging if the car in front moves out, and you do not gun the engine fast enough to satisfy the diablos ex machina.

Adaptive cruise control is another feature that takes over your car and slows you down automatically when you are within a prescribed distance of another car. This is another of those “advances” that is moving us all closer to autonomous driving, albeit incrementally.

Next thing you know we’ll have self-driving vehicles and Ubers. Oh wait, already here.

The other key takeaway is to follow the GPS and don’t argue with it. I have used this recently in a class as an illustration of faith, trusting the British lady’s voice to take another route, even when one knows the traffic patterns and intersections well.

The end result is that driving now produces the much desired safe space. All of these call for limited surrender of sovereignty. Begrudgingly, under protest I admit these are good.

A manual, though, is still vital—and some are long and detailed. The print manual for our rental car was over 525 pp long—or about half as long as the Old Testament. It seems boring, tedious, and demanding of time and study. I’m tempted to leave it in the glove compartment and never open it. Until, that is, I need it, which is usually when I’m in trouble.

Maybe spending a little time to learn it would help, even when it speaks of “the coefficient of friction,” a term that is more inscrutable than anything in Scripture.

The Bible is a better kind of manual for us, if we but have a little wisdom or humility to accept it.

In Matthew 5, Jesus continues in verse 18 to show how much respect he has for God’s written revealed Law—the divinely revealed manual. He shows his respect for the eternal and binding authority of the Old Testament when he states that not even in the slightest respect will the Old Testament Law remain unfulfilled. Consider the details of verse 18.

• ‘Amen’ means “I tell you solemnly.” It is a warning of a forthcoming solemn declaration.
• Until heavens and earth—including the whole created order, the cosmos or until God’s creation passes away. That certainly had not happened at Jesus’ time nor in ours today.
• Neither iota (the smallest Greek letter) — Hebrew yodh
• nor one serif or tittle
• shall not — emphatic negation — pass away until all the law is accomplished.

Bengel, the great 18th century scholar, counted up the yodhs in the Hebrew Bible and found that there were 66,420 of them! Not one of those will fall, Jesus is saying.

In this passage as in others (Luke 16:29,31; Luke 24:27, 44) the phrase Law as “Law and prophets” above stands for the whole of Old Testament. In Jesus’ time the Old Testament was divided into three sections: Law, Prophets and Writings. The phrase “Law” or “Law and Prophets” stands for the whole of the Old Testament. This phrase “Law” is a comprehensive term for the total divine revelation of the Old Testament or the entire Old Testament canon. Some today allege that parts of the Old Testament are false or outdated and still want to be considered professing Christians. How can they do this when Jesus uniformly and without exception approves and depends on the truth of the Old Testament? Either he must have been wrong and uneducated; or those who believe the OT contains errors are.

To question the Old Testament—that Jesus says is authoritative and “unbroken” (John 10:35) —is to question the omniscience of Jesus himself. Here Jesus is asserting the absolute character and authority of Scripture. Jesus had no weak view of Scripture. It was clear. Whenever he cites the Old Testament he does so with reverence and belief that it was true. Read the gospels and watch his quotations from the Old Testament. The only fair conclusion one can reach is that Christ believed all of the Old Testament—not just parts! He treats them as if they were totally and factually true. Here he may differ with some modern ministers!

In the wilderness he fought Satan with eternal truths and words of Scripture. Jesus undoubtedly believed that God had authored the Old Testament Scriptures and that they were so infallible that sooner would the cosmos be dissolved than they would be proven false. Christ himself believed that the whole of the Old Testament originated with God and was revealed by him. If we ever question whether a verse is true, we must question Christ himself who clearly placed his imprimatur on the whole Old Testament. This is why we can trust the Scriptures: Because Christ who co-authored them, also states that they are of more certain nature than even the external universe which we take for granted.

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