Old Testament preaching

interesting questions and answers over at the Gospel Coalition with Collin Hansen talking to Mike Bullmore about the challenges and opportunity involved in preaching from the Old Testament. here is one, but go check out the rest.

What are the primary challenges for preaching expository messages from the Old Testament?

The challenges are many. The size of the cultural gap between us can make the Old Testament feel remote and foreign. The pure amount of material in the Old Testament can be daunting, i.e. how should you best cover the long narratives and long prophetic writings in a week-by-week Sunday morning preaching setting. The variety of literary genres can present a challenge, i.e. what does one do with the numbering of generations? How should the sections of civil and ceremonial law be preached?

But the greatest challenge (and the greatest privilege) in preaching the Old Testament is finding the way that it points to Christ and bringing that to the congregation in a way that clearly honors the Old Testament passage and makes much of Christ. This is not a call for importing some artificial connection to Jesus whenever we preach. Just the opposite. This calls for understanding and expositing the specific ways in which Old Testament passages point to Christ. But it does presuppose, based on Jesus’ own words in John 5 and Luke 24, that every passage of the Old Testament does indeed point to him.

HT to the z man

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