Preaching Without a New Testament
The immense mental and spiritual labor of the early Church before the Gospels were written.
I was just thinking about this and trying to map out the reality of it.
The Synoptic Gospels were not available when the early Church started. Instead, the believers relied on the oral accounts of eyewitnesses who walked with Jesus, which were then taught by the Apostles. But if the Gospels hadn't been written down yet, how was the message of salvation actually taught to these people?
Peter’s sermon gives us a powerful glimpse into how the Gospel must have been preached back then—connecting the dots directly from the Torah to make Christ understood. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter didn't have a New Testament to turn to; he had to decode the Hebrew prophets in real-time, declaring:
"But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh...’" (Acts 2:16-17)
He went on to dig into the Psalms to prove the resurrection was always the plan:
"For David says concerning Him: ‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face... Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in Hades, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.’" (Acts 2:25-27)
Stephen’s final sermon before he was stoned also gives us a clear window into the structural message of that era. He gave a massive historical masterclass, tracking God's dealings from Abraham to Moses, pointing out how their ancestors constantly resisted the moves of God. He brought the entire weight of Israel's history down to a sharp edge, saying:
"You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers..." (Acts 7:51-52)
This makes me realize just how fortunate our generation is to have the Apostle Paul. He did the heavy lifting, demystifying the hard code of the Old Testament and translating its deeper interpretation into the clear vocabulary of the Gospel of salvation.
It must have taken an immense amount of spiritual and mental labor to preach the Gospel in those early days.