James Williams on preaching Christ from all the Scriptures
I spent a year in the army cadets and I recall one particular training exercise well.
A group of us were dumped in the middle of nowhere with a map and a compass and instructed to find our way to base camp. Eventually we got to where we needed to be, but in the process we’d taken many wrong turns, been through hedgerows, climbed over barbed wire fences and trespassed on farming land!
I’m sure we’ve all heard sermons like that, particularly from the Old Testament. The preacher has eventually got to Christ, but has taken us through lots of hedges and ditches in the process. Hence we can be reluctant to preach Christ from all the Scriptures, particularly from the OT, because we’re afraid of getting it wrong. We’re afraid that our exegesis may end up being strained, misinformed and artificial.
Christ himself did it
But we must preach Christ from all the Scriptures, particularly the OT, because this is what Christ himself did and we need to follow his example. Christ used all Scripture to point to his true identity and purpose.
• In Luke 4 we find Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth, where he preached about himself from Isaiah 58 and 61.
• In John 5.39 Jesus clearly states that the OT Scriptures testified about him.
• In Luke 24 when Jesus meets some disciples on the road to Emmaus we read that he, ‘…began to explain everything that had been written about himself in the Scriptures.’ He went on to say to the disciples: ‘Everything written about me must happen – everything in the law of Moses, the books of the prophets and the Psalms’. He preached from the three major divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The apostolic church did it
I’ve got a friend who is a long-distance lorry driver and he looks like one. He’s big, tough and hairy! But my friend is a trucker with a difference. He’s an avid student of the Bible and a keen personal evangelist. He has told me that when he shares the gospel with someone he often goes back to the OT Messianic prophesies and explains how they were fulfilled in the life of Jesus. What my friend does almost instinctively is exactly what the apostles and first Christians did. They preached Christ directly from the OT.
Edmund Clowney describes the OT as the ‘missionary Bible of the apostolic church’.1
• In Acts 2 we find Peter at Pentecost, interpreting passages from Joel and from Psalms 16 and 110 and clearly showing that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus had been foretold beforehand in these texts.
• Stephen in Acts 7 surveyed the redemptive history of the Old Testament, emphasising that the prophets had foretold that the ‘righteous one’ would come.
• Philip expounded Isaiah 53 in order to preach Christ to the Ethiopian eunuch.
• Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 15.3- 4 that Christ’s death and resurrection were according to the Hebrew Scriptures.
There are numerous other examples which show that the apostles believed the use of the OT in preaching was essential to making the gospel message clear. The apostles fearlessly preached that the events of Jesus’s life unfolded exactly as foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures.
The primary author intended it
The third compelling reason to preach Christ from the OT is that it is the stated intention of the primary author of the Bible, namely the Holy Spirit, for us to use all the Scriptures in our preaching. As the apostle Paul reminded Timothy: ‘All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness’. In the previous verse, 2 Timothy 3.15, Paul explained that the Scriptures are able to make us wise to salvation. The books of the OT were certainly in Paul’s mind here. Therefore he is clearly saying that preaching Christ from the OT is able to lead people to salvation.
Start of the story
We must preach Christ from the Old Testament because that is where his story begins. Throughout the OT Scriptures we see the unfolding ‘promise-plan’ of God.2 The promise of Christ’s coming is repeated throughout, starting with the promise to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3.15, then the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12.1-3, to Israel in Deuteronomy 30.6 and the promise to David in 2 Samuel 7.12-16.
Furthermore, there are over 400 ‘predictive’ OT texts that refer directly to Christ or to the time of his coming.
Christ foreshadowed
But we do not just preach Christ through the prophecies which tell directly of him. God purposed and intended a repeated pattern of real people, places, objects and events that foreshadowed Christ and pointed ahead to him. Like a great artist, God has left pencil sketches throughout redemptive history, which illustrate the pattern of working which he ultimately employs in his final masterpiece. These pencil sketches are ‘types’ which are fulfilled in the work of Christ. These ‘types’ had a particular meaning in their historical time and context, but for us they also serve as models or analogies of the gospel of Christ.
For example the Passover, taken within its context, taught the Israelites essential truths about God’s anger against sin, that God’s anger can be turned away by the sacrificial blood of a perfect substitute and God’s salvation redeems from temporary bondage. For us it has a greater and fuller meaning because it points to Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross and the redemption we have by his blood, from spiritual and eternal bondage.
This is not artificial exegesis. God intends us to use the Scriptures in this way. Jesus himself preached using OT ‘types.’ He made it clear to Nicodemus in John 3.14 that the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up in the dessert pointed to him: ‘Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up’.
Many of us will have taught children the story of David and Goliath, maybe in a Sunday school or children’s club. In the historical context David’s victory over Goliath delivered the Israelites from the Philistines but this encounter also reminds us of Christ’s victory over Satan, delivering us from the bondage of sin. The historical account should be taken seriously for its own sake, while at the same time it can be legitimately preached as a ‘type’ pointing to the all-conquering Christ.
Many of the lives of OT saints foreshadowed the pattern of death and resurrection that we see in the life of Christ, the gospel pattern of dying and rising. The biographical account of Joseph is a classic example of a life that foreshadows Christ and illustrates the pattern of humiliation followed by exaltation that we see in the gospel.
When we explore the meaning of a biblical text, whether that text is from the Old or New Testament, understanding the context is vital, but it is equally vital to appreciate that Christ is an integral part of that context.
Sinclair B. Ferguson has compared Christ to a prism. Looking back through Christ we see the white light of gospel truth, broken down into its component colours in the pages of the Spirit-inspired OT Scriptures. Looking forwards through Christ we see how those multi-coloured strands of OT revelation converge in him.
