Head Heart Hand

“You’ll find our text today in the Old Testament…”

I know this is a rare announcement, but when you heard it last, what did you think?

“Oh no! Not another historical lecture.”

“We’re going to get another whipping with the law today.”

“Why? I came to church to hear about Jesus.”

“What’s Israel and Babylon got to do with my family struggles?”

Or maybe you didn’t just think it. You said it or emailed it to the pastor afterward. And pastors are feeling the pressure. Some surveys put the ratio of Old Testament to New Testament sermons at 1 to 10. Some would like it to get nearer zero to 10.

But might this imbalance in the spiritual diet of most Christians explain many of the spiritual problems in the modern Church and in the modern Christian? Or as Gleason Archer puts it: “How can Christian pastors hope to feed their flock on a well-balanced spiritual diet if they completely neglect the 39 books of Holy Scripture on which Christ and all the New Testament authors received their own spiritual nourishment?”

It wasn’t always like this. The Church used to have a much more balanced diet. So how did we get here? Let me give you eight answers:

1. Liberalism
There has been a prolonged and sustained attack on the Old Testament by liberal scholars. This has shaken the confidence of many preachers and hearers alike in this part of the Holy Scriptures.

2. Ignorance
It is almost impossible to preach from large parts of the Old Testament without knowledge of the historical context and geographical setting. However, while this knowledge was once widespread, many now know little or nothing of biblical history, and preachers find it hard to interest their hearers in it.

3. Irrelevance
Some look at the historical and geographical details and wonder what possible relevance can events and places from thousands of years ago have for me? And anyway, the New Testament makes it clear that many Old Testament practices are now terminated. So, why study them?

4. Dispensationalism
Although unintended, the dispensational division of Scripture into different eras tends to relegate the Old Testament to a minor role in the life of the Church and of the individual Christian. But even some Reformed preachers are practical dispensationalists!

5. Bad Examples
Bad examples of Old Testament preaching are easy to find and even easier to ridicule. However, the malpractice of some should not lead to the non-practice of others.

6. Missing Models
Many pastors want to preach from the Old Testament, and they feel guilty about their failure to do so. However, when they look around for preaching models to follow, they find few men whose practice they can learn from.

7. Laziness
Preaching from the Old Testament is more demanding than preaching from the New Testament. For a busy pastor with two or three sermons to prepare each week, the well-worn paths of the New Testament seem much more inviting than Leviticus, 2 Chronicles, or Nahum!

8. Christ-less
The last and the biggest reason for so little Old Testament preaching is that there has been so much Christ-less Old Testament preaching. At a popular level, Old Testament preaching has often degenerated into mere moralism (e.g. "Ten lessons from the life of Moses"), and that's just wearisome. At an academic level, there seems to be a determination to downplay and even remove any possibility of Christ-centeredness in the Old Testament. That's equally wearisome. Little surprise then that preachers turn away from the Old Testament and towards the New in order to “find Jesus” and “preach Christ crucified.”

Solution?
What then is the solution to this crisis in Old Testament preaching? How can we fight and even reverse these trends? Well, we must combat liberal theology. We must teach our congregations biblical history and geography, while also demonstrating the abiding relevance of the Old Testament. We must resist both patent and latent Dispensationalism. We must identify and avoid bad practice, however inviting it may appear. We must search for, value, and learn from good preaching models. And we must be willing to put in the hours, the sweat, the toil, and the tears, as we break up the long-untilled ground of the Old Testament.

But, above all, we must, in faith, stand against Christ-less moralism and Christ-less academia. We must stand in front of the JCB’s of the scholarly community and refuse to let them scoop Christ out of the Old Testament.

But how?

Well it's a wrong road back. But we must begin with the New Testament. Yes, the New Testament! And I'll show you why tomorrow.