The lecture names a prevailing negative attitude among many Christians toward “the Law of Moses” and the Old Testament, and sets out to test it. It first establishes that the Law of Moses, the Law and the Prophets, and the Old Testament are all names for the same Scriptures, the Word of God, organized into the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings of the Hebrew Bible – and appeals to texts like Acts 26 and 2 Timothy 3 that all Scripture is God-breathed and that what Moses and the prophets said has been fulfilled, not discarded, in Christ.
It then addresses the claim that “the Law of Moses is obsolete” directly, using Hebrews 9’s description of the tabernacle: the ceremonial law and its furnishings were kept outside the ark, while the tablets of the covenant – the moral law – were kept inside it. On that basis the lecture distinguishes a ceremonial law that is fulfilled and set aside in Christ from a moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, that continues to bind God’s people as His Word.