Should Jesus be the point of every OT sermon?

Does every passage in the Old Testament point to Jesus? Should every sermon on an OT passage point to Jesus? For the faithful preacher, there is not a bigger question to tackle than “how do I as a pastor get my congregation to the cross while staying faithful to the passage?”

Among expository preachers—so I’m not talking about people who preach You Too Can Defeat Goliath type sermons—answers to this question can be broken down into two extremes. One extreme is the “Jesus is the point of every passage” hermeneutic, and the other is the “Some passages have nothing to do with Jesus” approach.

In the first extreme, the pastor finds a connection to Jesus as the main point of every passage, no matter how contrived. “Jesus is the better king” becomes the gist of every sermon in Kings, for example. If you have seen American Gospel, you saw one of the pastors saying that the right way to preach David vs. Goliath is to see Goliath as your sin, and David as the type of a better warrior who could defeat your sin.

“The Jesus is the point of every passage” approach can smack of Origen allegorical-style hermeneutics. I’ve heard several sermons in this genre where the point of the sermon is so removed from the text that it would be impossible for a reader to get there simply by studying the passage. If the moral of the sermon is so distant to no longer be from the text, the preaching has ceased to be expository.

Another weakness of this approach is that sermons can become monotonous. If a preacher is preaching through 2 Kings, and every single sermon is about how Jesus is a better king than the loser king in Israel, the sermon series doesn’t really go anywhere. This is probably why people who preach with the “Jesus is the point of every OT sermon” approach generally don’t do a long series in the OT. Its just too much to hear week after week.

Obviously, the “Jesus is the point of every passage” works in places in the OT where Jesus is obviously the point of the passage. For example, any sermon on chapters like Genesis 22, Psalm 2, Proverbs 8, or Jeremiah 31 better get to Christ, and the sooner the better. But one of the great weaknesses of the “Jesus is the point of every passage” method of preaching is that it only works well on those kind of passages. A few years ago, there was a major conference on “Preaching Christ from the Old Testament,” which I found exceedingly frustrating because all the speakers chose those 2 Samuel 7 chapters, while texts like 1 Kings 21 were conspicuously absent. I wanted to shout, “I don’t need help with Zechariah 3! I need help with Nabboth!” As in: “Is Jesus the better Nabboth?” Is that the point of a faithful 1 Kings 21 sermon?

So the “Jesus is the point of every passage” approach to preaching can be contrived and redundant. When it works, it works. But it doesn’t always work, and if poorly executed can just make people laugh.

On the other hand, there is the “Some passages have nothing to do with Jesus” approach to the Old Testament. Logos.com recently ran a blog post that listed a few examples of passages that ostensibly are not about Jesus—examples given were purification laws, Judges 18-21, and the Tower of Babel—and I couldn’t help wincing when I read it (I mean, the author could have at least double-checked his examples to make sure they really didn’t have anything to do with Jesus!).

But assuming better examples—like swap out Babel for Proverbs 5, and trade purification laws for laws concerning remarriage—what help is there for preachers? The problem with this extreme is that it clips preacher’s wings in certain passages. It can turn a sermon into moralizing. And by limiting the meaning of a passage to its immediate context, it stunts the development of biblical theology, and over time will produce people who can’t see the connection between the tower of Babel and…well, Jesus.

We really do need a middle point between these two extremes. We need a philosophy of preaching the Old Testament that does not view it as a mandate to contrive types of Christ in every passage, but that also isn’t adverse to the idea that most passages do in a very real way point to the cross.

This issue is important to me because I have spent a lot of time preaching Old Testament. In fact, I’ve probably preached more Old Testament sermons than New Testament ones. I’ve preached Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, Daniel, Ezra & Nehemiah, Esther, and Haggai, chapter by chapter, in order, at three different churches. In other words, I’ve wrestled with this.

Here are three principles that have helped me:

1. Preach the point of the passage in its context first. The goal of expository preaching is to explain the purpose of the passage, so start there. Ask yourself, why is this chapter in this book? What is the main point of this chapter as it relates to the purpose of the book? Looking for repeated words, irony, humor, unexpected twists, and God’s words usually provide sufficient clues to understand the point of each passage in its context. And, contrary to popular opinion, many chapters don’t have as their immediate goal the connection to the Savior.

If this is first task is accomplished, the preacher will avoid sermons that fall into the “Goliath is your sin” trap.

2. P reach a doctrinal theme taught in the passage second. After finding and explaining the main point of the passage, connect that point to a doctrinal theme, and show how that theme connects to biblical or systematic theology. Some obscure passages might give an example of love to an enemy (eg. 2 Kings 6), or of the doctrine of substitution (eg. 2 Samuel 21). Don’t be afraid to teach and develop that point. This is done more powerfully if it is done in light of seeing how the chapter functions on its own, before connecting to the whole. Again, contrary to popular opinion, there are more themes in the Bible than simply Jesus —although all themes eventually intersect with him.

If this second task is accomplished, the preacher will avoid sermons that fall into the “Jesus-is-the-better-king” on repeat trap.

3. Preach a gospel application third. After explaining the point, and after tying that point to broader theology, then connect the dots to Jesus Christ. To stay with my same two examples, if the doctrinal application was on loving your enemies or on substitutionary atonement, then the connections are obvious. It is at this point where sermons become Emmaus Roadish. If the preacher did his homework on steps 1 and 2, then this third one will not sound contrived or stretched.

If this third task is accomplished, the preacher will avoid the “Not every passage is about Jesus trap.”

I don’t present these three steps as rules, but as advice. If you have spent any significant time preaching in the Old Testament, you know that this is not as easy as “get people to the cross.” Some passages lend themselves to moralistic preaching that would make Bryan Chapel throw his book at you; sometimes the point of a text really is laziness is bad or purity is good. I have room in my hermeneutic for the occasional sermon that challenges people to dare to be a like Daniel® or to be bold like his three friends. I don’t mind preaching that Samson is a model of the stupefying power of sin, or that Jephthah serves as a warning against vows. Don’t tell Spurgeon this, but not every sermon in Judges needs to be preached with the theme of “Jesus is the better judge.”

But at the same time, most chapters really do lend themselves naturally to a connection to Christ. A long series through books of the OT will result in showing our congregations the cross from new and fresh angles, as well as illustrating familiar theological concepts from unexpected texts.

To do this well, it’s essential for the pastor to avoid the errors of contrived connections to Christ, while at the same time recognizing that most passages have more connections to the cross than might first meet the eye.

Next week I’ll give some examples of texts that people have said are difficult to connect to the cross well, and walk through different approaches to them. If you have a passage you’d like me to address, leave it in the comments below.