Theocentric Preaching

The Majesty of God in the Old Testament, a recent book by Walter C. Kaiser Jr., is designed to provide preachers and teachers with insight on appreciating and preaching the majesty and greatness of God as presented in the Scriptures. Kaiser writes:

Alas, however, much of our teaching and preaching suffers from a mediocre view of God’s majesty. We are too much like those chided in Psalm 50:21, who “thought [God] was altogether like [one of them].” As presenters of the Word of God, we desire to soar to the heights of the heavenlies and to lift the sights and hopes of our listeners to the very portals of the throne room of God himself; yet, more often than not, we feel frustrated and vacuous in the final results, both in our private study of the Word of God and in our listening habits on Sunday. Therefore, we and the people we serve, starve for the awesomeness, greatness, and sheer majesty of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Kaiser quotes one of Martin Luther’s letters to Erasmus: “Your thoughts of God are too human.”

In Preaching and Teaching from the Old Testament, Walter C. Kaiser Jr. argues that preaching the Old Testament helps us see that “the life, ministry, death, and resurrection were clearly anticipated long before the events occurred.” The Messiah, he writes, “is at the heart of that neglected portion of the Bible.”

We do not need to “resort to settling for a double set of meanings in order to squeeze out of the Old Testament some messianic possibilities.” The Old Testament writers were aware the nexus between their temporal and historic events, and their “climatic fulfillment in the Messiah…The Old Testament cannot have a more obvious meaning along with a hidden Christian meaning.” The texts speak to God’s unchanging plan from all of history.

Jesus himself said of Old Testament texts: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39).

So how can we preach Christ from the Old Testament? Tomorrow we’ll look at seven ways. Early next week, we’ll talk about how one preacher approaches this task.