I’ve heard people suggest that the God of the Old Testament is somehow different from the God of the New Testament. One is portrayed as judgmental and demanding, the other as loving and merciful. But the more I read the Bible chronologically, the more I’ve come to realize that this distinction doesn’t hold up.
In fact, one of the most remarkable examples of God’s mercy comes from one of the most wicked kings in Israel’s history. And the story begins hundreds of years before that king was even born.
So my wife and I have been going through the Bible App’s plan, “The One Year Chronological Bible“, and today is day 86. Historically, I’ve read through the Bible with the lens of just getting through it, on my way to earning the Gold Medal of Achievement through Royal Rangers, as part of the Assemblies of God church. I learned a lot from this, and this was the basis of most of my “Bible knowledge” for over the last 20 years, tucked away with sermons, devotionals, prayer, and small groups making up my own limited understanding.
It was about 15 years ago that I finished my Masters (what??), where I learned an important lesson about reading that I’d never formally applied to reading the Bible; (which was: you really need to read a text at least twice to fully understand it) and I was looking for a way to open the door to my wife and reading the Bible together, having felt that prompting from the Holy Spirit.
I’ve also not been immune to the draw of endless scrolling on social media, and even then, God has completely redeemed my YouTube feed with biblical scholars, pastors and God stories that have inspired me along my journey to the prompting of actually going deeper into the word through a full Bible reading plan. (A recent one that I watched last night, talked about the unconfirmed ritual of the Passover Lamb, and the parallel of Jesus’ death on the cross).
One of the things that I’ve seen a lot in these videos, was a ton of agnosticism, and people questioning the acts of the Old Testament and the New Testament being in conflict with one another. Many pastors and Bible scholars do a great deal of genuine comparison between them, in explaining that the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Law of Moses, making paraphrasing references to accounts in the Bible that I’ve known, heard or read about. But I realized that in so many years from the last time that I’ve read through the Bible, I didn’t have a really good sense of each of these references within chronological order, or the historical context in which they were said.
All of these experiences led my wife and me to begin reading through the Bible chronologically. And already, it’s changing how I understand the bigger story of Scripture.
In preparing for the amazing and sacred responsibility to lead my team in devotions this week, I asked the Lord to reveal to me what I should share, and I have felt prompted to share one of the more recent, prominent connections that I made in this chronological reading of the Bible, which was paired with a pastoral sermon that I listened to recently.
The revelation began with reading Deuteronomy 18, which actually has a ton of things to reflect on. But this was a setup for the sermon that I would listen to later, without my knowledge. In Deuteronomy 18:9-13, Moses is sharing the responsibilities of the Jews to not commit abominable acts, describing that the nations that Israel will drive out from the Promised Land have done these things, and they are not to be like them.
That same week, I listened to a sermon regarding 2 Chronicles 33:1-20 regarding King Manasseh ruling in Judah. From my understanding on the chronology, King Manasseh should have been familiar with the commands of Deuteronomy 18:9-13; and yet, he did these very things. It says in verse 9, that “Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.”
Uhm. Oops?
Yet, in verse 10, it reads, “The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention”. So, the God of the universe commands you not to do something, which you know about, and instead of immediately punishing you, He tries to speak to you, and you ignore Him? Bad call.
However, this is important, because this message begins to disassemble the notion that the Old Testament God is somehow different from the New Testament God.
This is what stopped me in my tracks. Before judgment came, God spoke. Manasseh had openly violated God’s commands, led an entire nation astray, and still received a warning. God’s patience gave him an opportunity to turn back.
And even after Manasseh refused to listen, the story wasn’t over.
I also learned in a recent devotional, a simplified explanation on the difference between Sin, and Transgression: Sin is generally missing the mark, while transgression is intentional. (There’s actually an interesting passage in Deuteronomy 19:1-5, describing unintentional manslaughter, and fleeing to a defined city for safety). In the case of Manasseh, it seems as though God is giving Manasseh the opportunity to express and be accountable to his sin, but invariably reveals through his behaviors in verses 2-9, it is his transgression, and in verse 11, is bound with chains and brought to Babylon after being captured by the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria at the Lord’s direction.
Manasseh then became distressed and prayed to “the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom”. It would be factually difficult then to claim that the Old Testament account of God is unlike the account of God in the New Testament.
But here’s what made this discovery even more remarkable to me. The same chapter in Deuteronomy that contains the commands Manasseh violated also contains a promise that Christians recognize as pointing forward to Jesus Christ.
I hadn’t noticed that connection before.
In Deuteronomy 18:15-17, it reads: “Moses continued, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. For this is what you yourselves requested of the Lord your God when you were assembled at Mount Sinai. You said, ‘Don’t let us hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore or see this blazing fire, for we will die.’ “Then the Lord said to me, ‘What they have said is right. I will raise up a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell the people everything I command him.” My application study bible states, regarding verse 15, “Who is this prophet? Stephen used this verse to support his claim that Jesus Christ is God’s Son, the Messiah (Acts 7:37). The coming of Jesus Christ to earth was not an afterthought, but part of God’s original plan”. That part where God listens to the Israelites, and does the thing they asked? Amazing.
There’s another reference on verse 18, referring to Acts 3:22, which my Application Study Bible contains another statement reading, “Most Jews thought that Joshua was this Prophet predicted by Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15). Peter was saying that the Prophet was Jesus Christ. Peter wanted to show that their long-awaited Messiah had come! He and all the apostles were calling the Jewish nation to realize that they had done to their Messiah, to repent, and to believe. From this point on in Acts, we see many Jews rejecting the Good News. So the message went also to the Gentiles, many of whom were open to receive Jesus.”
It seems like Deuteronomy 18 is actually pretty contentious. I mean, there’s another part of chapter 18 in verses 20, explaining to the Israelites that any false prophet who falsely speaks in the name of the Lord, or in the name of another god must die. Those are high stakes for the Jewish people, whom the Lord reprimanded the people who tested the Lord ten times before entering the Promised Land, as described in Numbers 14:22, “not one of the men who have seen My glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness-yet have tested Me and disobeyed Me these ten times-“
Reading these passages together has made me think about how seriously the Israelites were instructed to understand prophecy. Deuteronomy 18 warned them about false prophets, while also promising that God would raise up a prophet that they must listen to.
Seeing the apostles identify Jesus with that promise in Deuteronomy 18 is remarkable. But I also wonder how I would have responded if I had been among those hearing this for the first time.
It’s easy to look backward with the benefit of knowing how the story unfolds. It’s much harder to recognize what God is doing when you’re living through it. There is some foreshadowing within the remaining verses of the chapter though, in verses 21-22, which states, “But you may wonder, ‘How will we know whether or not a prophecy is from the Lord?’ If the prophet speaks in the Lord’s name but his prediction does not happen or come true, you will know that the Lord did not give that message. That prophet has spoken without my authority and need not be feared.”
I think we all want to be the person that reads verses 21 and 22, and say that we wouldn’t make the mistake that the Jewish people did. However, hindsight is 20/20.
What strikes me most about Manasseh isn’t simply that God forgave him. It’s that God spoke to him before judgment came, heard him when he finally humbled himself, and restored him when he deserved none of it.
And that’s the same God I see in the New Testament.
The God who listened to Moses. The God who spared Nineveh. The God who heard Manasseh. The God who sent His Son.
I’ve spent years reading these accounts as individual stories, but reading them together has helped me recognize something much greater.
They’re not competing portraits of God. They’re different moments in the same unfolding story of His justice, faithfulness, love, and mercy.
And perhaps what amazes me most is that the God who extended mercy to Manasseh is the very same God who extends it to us.
One God. One story.