Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 

Matthew 23:23

Before the Fall of Adam and Eve, mankind lived in harmony with God. With the Fall, not only did sin enter into the world, but the world felt into a state of chaos and disorder. Where there had once been perfect weather, there were now storms, blizzards, extreme cold and extreme heat, floods and drought. The perfect order of things had devolved.

God did not send Jesus Christ into the world to redeem the world immediately. Why? Because there needed to be some order so that there was something foundational for the people to be ready for His Incarnation. If Jesus was going to inaugurate a new covenant, there needed to be an “old” covenant.

The Old Testament contains three specific things. First, it is a history of God’s chosen people, the Jews. God made a covenant with Abraham, that He would be the God of Abraham’s descendants and that Abraham and his descendants would honor and worship God. One story from the Old Testament that every person knew was the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. At the last moment, God spared Isaac, but the point of the story was that a man was willing to sacrifice his son. This prefigures God allowing His only-begotten Son to be sacrificed for us. Since everyone knew the story of Abraham and Isaac, it wouldn’t have been totally unheard of that a father could sacrifice a son, at least the concept of that. So Jesus dying on the cross after He had been revealed to be the Father’s Son was believable and acceptable in the thinking of the people of the time.

The second thing that the Old Testament contains is a lot of rules. There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament. Most of us are familiar with the 10 Great Commandments, listed in Exodus 20. However, throughout the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Number and Deuteronomy, a total of 613 commandments can be found. The priests from the tribe of Levi were the ones who interpreted, preserved and enforced the Law. In modern law in the United States, we often have judges who help interpret the laws for us, and lawyers who argue the merits and content of specific laws. In the Old Testament, it was the priests who were doing this. There was room for bad interpretation of the Law, arbitrary enforcement, and abuse. When someone had to offer a sacrifice, as an example, the Law was very specific that an animal had to be without blemish, and the priests would judge this. This practice devolved into no animal brought in would be found to be suitable, so the priests set up a business in the temple to sell appropriate animals at their arbitrary prices and people would be at the mercy of whatever the priests were charging in order to offer their sacrifices and thus follow the Law appropriately. This proved almost an impossible task. Jesus exposed all kind of abuse in the temple and with the temple elite, the ruling class of Levitical priests. When He turned over the tables in the temple, He chastised the temple elite that they had made the house of God into a house of commerce.

There was also a fundamental misunderstanding of God, which tied Him to the temple. Meaning, that God was tied to a location. When the city of Jerusalem fell and the children of Israel were exiled into Babylon, not only were the people in mourning because they had lost their homeland and their city, but because they thought that their God was dead because the temple was destroyed. Jesus made correction to this as well, saying that people would worship God “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). God could be worshipped anywhere. The temple, our church, is still an important worship space, because this is the one place where we receive the sacraments. It is also a place where Christ is permanently enthroned in a physical manner. Christ resides on the Holy Altar Table in every Orthodox Church in the Tabernacle, where we have a portion of the Eucharist that is set aside and resides in the church temple.

The third component of the Old Testament, besides history and Law, is the hope that came from the Prophets. The Prophets foretold of the coming of the Christ, offering between 225 and 425 (depending on how people/scholars interpret them) prophecies that were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. This gave the people hope, that a better day was coming. They just didn’t know when.

Once people had history, order, structure and hope, the “fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4) then God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5) Jesus came into a religious scene that was full of abuse. He castigated the priests of the temple, when He said, among other things “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” (Matthew 23:23) Jesus did not abolish the temple, or worship, or the priesthood. He merely brought order into chaotic thinking, reminding people that justice, mercy and faith were above the strict interpretation of the Law, that the law of love would prevail.

The Orthodox Church utilizes a sanctuary, a proper worship space. It makes use of rules, guidelines and Canon Law, to help us but there is also economia (mercy, dispensation) that can be offered with prayerful discernment by the clergy. Sacrament worship is generally restricted to the church proper. However, people are encouraged to pray and worship at home on days when worship is not offered.

We are a New Testament Church which has its foundation in the Old Testament. We do not neglect the Old Testament, nor do we stop at the Old Testament. The Old Testament is foundational to the New Testament, but we continue to build to this day on our foundation. And rather than lead with Law, we lead with love. Because Jesus said that the two great commandments are to love God and to love our neighbors, and that these two commandments summarized the Law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)

Christ our God, You are the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. You have fulfilled the Father’s entire plan of salvation. Fill our hearts with joy and gladness always, now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen. (From the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese official translation 2015, as found on www.goarch.org)

The concepts of priesthood and worship was defined in the Old Testament. They were refined in the New Testament, and then continue to be refined in certain ways through Ecumenical Councils and the working of the Holy Spirit.