There a long and proud tradition of taking short passages from the Old Testament, getting your footing right and then wrenching them from their context, to make them mean something they were never intended to mean.

This seems to have undermined the confidence of some who, as a reaction against this, don’t feel as comfortable letting the Old Testament say what it says, without shooting through to the New Testament.

But though cultures change over time and distance, God is constant, and so I think as we read the Old Testament with care, we can draw much direct application from what it teaches us about who God is and how he operates.

The passage below is an example of an Old Testament passage which speaks across time and culture. It’s given through Isaiah into a particular context, granted, but because it’s about God’s character, it is universally applicable as a statement about how God deals with his people, how he cares for them, how he thinks about them.

Try this on:

“Because you are precious in My sight and honored, and I love you,
I will give human beings in your place,
and peoples in place of your life.
Do not fear, for I am with you;
I will bring your descendants from the east,
and gather you from the west.
I will say to the north: Give them up!
and to the south: Do not hold them back!
Bring My sons from far away, and My daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone called by My name and created for My glory.
I have formed him; indeed, I have made him.”
Isaiah 43:4-7 (HCSB)