This Was God's Plan All Along

Anytime I post a scripture from the Old Testament on TikTok, people leave comments like, “Wrong covenant!” or “Nobody is going to get saved by you posting Old Testament scripture.” Just like many of the Jewish synagogues in Jesus’s day, which only allowed readings from the Torah—missing out on the writings of Isaiah or David’s psalms—these people are missing out on the wisdom and experiences of the forefathers.

1 Corinthians 15:46 says, “But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.” The Old Testament, the Old Covenant, the way things were originally done, was done in the natural. The Jews had to bring physical animals to be sacrificed for their sins. Jesus was sacrificed for our sins. Now, spiritually, we are living sacrifices for Him.

In Matthew 16:24–25, Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Thankfully, we haven’t had to walk the terrible path of carrying a cross to the place where we would be nailed to a tree. Instead, our walk is spiritual. We deny ourselves and our desires, and we live to be more like Jesus so others can see Him in us.

Anytime we read the Old Testament, we should look for the parallels to the New Testament. The Old Testament supports the New Testament and was the path that led to the New Covenant. We can also see Jesus throughout the Old Testament—like when He met Hagar at the well after she and Ishmael were sent away, or when He wrestled with Jacob because Jacob insisted on being blessed by Him.

The whole Bible—every bit of it—is about Jesus!

In the following story, we see that God always intended to be God to both the Jews and the Gentiles. It was always His plan to redeem His people after Adam sinned.

In Exodus 13, God had just brought the children of Israel out of Egypt. They had been enslaved for hundreds of years and had grown from twelve sons with families to two to three million people who were now leaving Egypt. Only God could have organized a mass exodus like this.

Once they were out of Egypt, God said, “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine” (Exodus 13:1). This meant the first male of all cattle, the first male of all sheep, the first male of all donkeys, and the first male of each family.

For the firstborn human male and the firstborn male donkey, a lamb was to be sacrificed in his place. This is the most exciting substitution in all of history when you understand the why.

In Genesis 15, God made a covenant with Abram, later known as Abraham. God promised Abraham an heir, stating he would be the “father of many nations.” Abraham believed God, and He counted it to him as righteousness. But because the promise took twenty‑five years to be fulfilled, Sarah took matters into her own hands.

Sarah told Abraham to go into her maidservant, Hagar, so that he could finally have a child. Abraham listened (just like Adam listened to Eve). The child conceived was Ishmael. God told Hagar that Ishmael would be “a wild donkey of a man” and that he would make war, and nations would make war with him. Eventually, because Ishmael was conceived outside of God’s will, he and his mother were sent away.

In Genesis 22, the promised child had been born, but God commanded Abraham to take his son—probably a young teenager—to Moriah and sacrifice him to God. Abraham immediately obeyed, believing God would provide an animal in place of his promised heir.

The next morning, Abraham got up and traveled three days to Moriah. As Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, an angel of the Lord cried out for him to stop. Abraham turned around and saw a ram caught in the thicket. God had indeed provided the sacrifice.

Moriah was the site where Solomon built the first temple for God in Jerusalem. It is later identified as Golgotha, or Calvary, where Jesus was hung on the cross—the ultimate and final sacrifice.

In Exodus 13, Isaac represents the Jews and Ishmael represents the Gentiles. The firstborn human males and the firstborn donkeys were to be redeemed from being sacrificed by a lamb that would take their place. That’s Jesus!

Because of Adam’s sin, we all have sinned. Sin separates us from God. But we have been redeemed—bought back from being sacrificed for our sins. Instead, Jesus, the Lamb, took our place.

Revelation 5:9–10

9 “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,

10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.’”

We are so loved by our Savior. Let us surrender all that we are to Him and allow Him to be seen in us.