Teenagers Can (and Should) Study the Old Testament. Here Are Three Bible Teaching Tools to Help

Teenagers Can (and Should) Study the Old Testament. Here Are Three Bible Teaching Tools to Help.

By Chelsea Kingston Erickson

I grew up in a church that emphasized teaching children the stories of the Bible, including those in the Old Testament. But a curious thing happened when I moved from children’s Sunday School to youth group: While our leaders continued to faithfully teach from God’s Word week by week, we mostly hung out in the New Testament.

Years later, I eventually came to recognize this same tendency in my own teaching as a vocational youth minister. I loved reading the Old Testament in my personal Bible study, but I subconsciously shied away from teaching it to students in the early years of my ministry.

The Bible is a single story from Genesis to Revelation, and if we want to grow in understanding who God is and how he rescues a people for himself, we need to study the whole counsel of Scripture. This is just as true for our teenagers. Much of the New Testament’s teaching will sound foreign to students and leaders alike if we fail to consider the way the Hebrew Scriptures informed the New Testament writers, whom God inspired by his Spirit.

Still, it may just seem easier to teach teenagers from the gospels and the epistles than to dive into the Old Testament with them. The Old Testament has so many seemingly obscure stories with uncomfortable details. We wonder whether teenagers will relate, and we might feel inadequate to answer their questions about the text.

In my experience, however, teenagers do relate deeply to the Old Testament. They appreciate the grittiness of its stories and the honesty of its authors. Many teenagers enjoy the fantastical imagery of prophetic literature, even if we as adults feel out of our depth. And when students have questions, they are typically undeterred by a youth leader’s saying, “That’s a great question! I don’t know the answer, but let’s find out together.”

Here are three things I like to focus on as I teach the Bible to students, and these elements have been incorporated into the new Casket Empty study for teenagers, The Bible’s Big Story in the Old Testament: Student Edition.

Teach teenagers inductively.

 It’s not (first) about finding themselves in the story, but about what God is doing in the world.

 When we think about teaching the Bible to teenagers, we might imagine we need to give a very brief message focused on immediate application to teenagers’ lives. Instead, experience tells me that most teenagers coming to our programs are willing to engage the Bible with a supportive community of peers and leaders. Barna’s recent study, The Open Generation, backs up this anecdotal experience with research, saying that 68% of Gen Z students surveyed were open to reading the Bible. Significantly, the students identified as already “Bible engaged” (8% of those surveyed) had an average of four adults who showed them how to read Scripture.[1]

These findings should embolden us as we recognize that teenagers are interested in more than a short Bible talk at our youth group gatherings. Instead, we can intentionally practice reading Scripture with teenagers using a tool like Inductive Bible Study. I like to use three strategies: observe, interpret, and apply, and in the new Student Edition of Casket Empty, icons representing each step have been incorporated into the weekly lessons.

We first encourage students to observe the message of a given text, noting its basic facts, repeated words or themes—and even jotting down questions they may have. In this phase, we will often need to remind students to wait to consider what the text means. We first want them to notice what the text says. 

After observing, we invite teenagers to interpret the facts they have observed. In this stage, we might ask them to summarize the passage or identify its main idea. We can ask about why they think the author chose to include certain details, or why the text as a whole is included in the book. We can also attempt to work out a hypothesis together in response to a question a student raised in the observation step.

Finally, we ask teenagers to apply the text to their own lives. It’s helpful at this stage to first ask them what the passage teaches about God’s character and about his relationship with human beings. We might encourage them to identify a human problem or need that is common to all people, and then discuss how God answers this problem in the gospel (see Brian Chapell’s Fallen Condition Focus approach). And we can invite students to consider whether God has a promise for them to believe or a challenge for them to obey. Then we pray together that God will work in us by his Spirit.

The new Student Edition in the Casket Empty series uses this structure to help students and leaders engage the Bible together. 

Teach teenagers biblical theology.

It’s not only about the stories of the Bible, but about the Bible’s one story.

This framework for reading the Bible has been a hallmark of the Casket Empty Bible Series, and my goal in writing the student edition is to help teenagers learn the Big Story of the Bible. Having our students engage the Bible directly using a tool like Inductive Bible Study dispels the idea that the Bible is too complex for teenagers. But if we want to continue to help them understand Scripture, we also need to zoom out from isolated passages. Teenagers (and adults) need to see how the whole story of the Bible fits together throughout history. This is the discipline of biblical theology.

Helping teenagers see the macro story of Scripture using the Casket Empty acronym allows us to situate individual passages in their biblical context. All of the smaller stories make more sense when we view them through this lens of the one big story, which culminates in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and the promise of his coming again.

In addition to understanding the metanarrative, young Bible readers are also helped by a growing sense of the Bible’s historical timeline. Students can easily feel confused by the order of our biblical canon, which is not organized chronologically. And most teenagers and adults don’t have a firm grasp of Ancient Near Eastern or Greco-Roman history to help them understand the Bible’s historical context.

The Casket Empty acronym helps students learn and remember Scripture’s timeline, orienting them to the “big picture” of the Bible and situating it in history. In The Bible’s Big Story in the Old Testament: Casket Empty Student Edition, we journey through the Old Testament over the course of 18 weeks, surveying its major themes, people, and places—all with an eye to God’s work to rescue his people through Christ’s atoning sacrifice.

Teach teenagers the gospel—every time.

It’s not a list of rules to obey, but about the way Christ has done what we could not.

Our students are growing up in a world in which performance pressure rules the day. Coaches, teachers, parents, and even youth ministers seem to have endless demands on teenagers’ time and attention. Social media drives comparison that is difficult to turn off. And college-bound students are encouraged to build their resumes at all costs.

Everywhere teenagers go, they receive messages that they must measure up in order to find identity, belonging, and purpose. As they read God’s Word, then, our students naturally bring their existential questions about who they are and whether they belong. It is imperative that we offer them a word of grace in the gospel every time we meet.

The message of the Bible is not one of trying to do better or attempting to earn our place with God. Instead, it’s the real, messy acknowledgment that human beings cannot keep the law on our own. This is why God sent his Son—to redeem people who could never do enough to earn their place with him.

As we read the Bible with teenagers, we have the awesome privilege of reminding them that Jesus has satisfied the law on behalf of all who trust him in faith. Through his perfect life, sinless death, and rising again, believers are already justified (declared right with God). Not only that, but we are being sanctified (made like Jesus) by the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work in our hearts. This is such good news for our teenagers because it means they don’t have to prove themselves or find a way to belong! Believing teenagers stand approved by God on the basis of Jesus’ performance, not their own.

Teenagers need to hear the gospel again and again as they read God’s Word. So, we close each week of the Student Edition study with a word of encouragement or hope in the gospel, which groups read aloud together. We pray this closing word will provide the comfort and assurance for which students are longing.

A Call to Teach the Whole Bible

Today’s youth leaders have a powerful opportunity to teach teenagers the whole Bible with a renewed emphasis on reading Scripture together, understanding the Bible’s big story, and proclaiming the gospel of grace. And just as we encourage our teenagers to rest in the finished work of Jesus on their behalf, we too can leave the results of our love and labor to him. As we ask for the Spirit's empowering to “rightly handle the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), we pray God will inspire a new generation to love him and treasure his Word—both the Old and New Testaments.

Chelsea Kingston Erickson

[1] “Webinar Replays: How Teens Around the World View the Bible,” Barna, October 12, 2022, https://www.barna.com/the-open-generation/open-generation-bible-webinar-replays/.