Christ in the Old Testament...

The Gospel Coalition has launched what looks like a helpful new site: Preaching Christ from the Old Testament.

But don't let the title fool you. It seems to me that all believers, not just preachers, will benefit from these resources.

Theology: Systematic / Biblical Balancing Act

Okay, if you're a theology nerd like me then you will want to read the debate between two of my favorite writers - Carl Trueman and Graeme Goldsworthy.

Now, I tease a bit about being a theology nerd. But don't misunderstand. Theology is a deadly serious thing and a precious thing. So I am thankful for the likes of Drs. Trueman and Goldsworthy who understand that theology must not only be thoughtful but devotional and doxological as well.

A Revolutionary Balancing Act by Carl Trueman

A Response to Carl Trueman by Graeme Goldsworthy

Poythress on Biblical Theology

Listen to Dr. Vern Poythress' Westminster chapel message on biblical theology as a distinctive of WTS Here.

"Shaping God's People with the Word"

I found the following helpful post over at Justin Taylor's place:

This weekend I started reading the new book, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought (IVP, 2009), by Doug Sweeney, Professor of Church History and the History of Christian Thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding.

Just in reading the Preface and the Introduction: The Word in Edwards'World (both available free on the IVP site), I found myself resonating with Sam Storms' blurb, who wrote, "I love this book! . . . I highly recommend it!" (Read the full blurbs here.)

The book closes with seven theses for discussion. Sweeney writes, it is naive to think that we should try to replicate his ministry. His world was different from ours. We face new challenges today. The question is not how we might clone him. Rather, the question is how to live in our own, twenty-first-century world, loving the people whom we serve, but using insights and examples gleaned from Edwards' life and ministry to enhance our Christian faith and fortify our gospel witness. (p.197)

Here are the seven theses (the book contains an explanation of each):
1. Edwards shows us the importance of working to help people gain a vivid sense, an urgent impression, of God's activity in our world.
2. Edwards shows us that true religion is primarily a matter of holy affections.
3. Edwards shows us the advantages of keeping an eschatological perspective on our lives.
4. Edwards shows us how God uses those who lose their lives for Christ.

5. Edwards shows us that theology can and should be done primarily in the church, by pastors, for the sake of the people of God.
6. Edwards shows us that even the strongest Christians need support from others.
7. Edwards shows us the necessity of remaining in God's Word.

I want to draw attention to one of Sweeney's theses in particular (see the previous post): #5, namely, that "theology can and should be done primarily in the church, by pastors, for the sake of the people of God" (p. 199). Sweeney writes:

In the early twenty-first century, when many pastors have abdicated their responsibilities as theologians, and many theologians do their work in a way that is lost on the people of God, we need to recover Edwards' model of Christian ministry. Most of the best theologians in the history of the church were parish pastors. Obviously, however, this is not the case today. Is it any wonder, then, that many struggle to think about their daily lives theologically, and often fail to understand the basics of the faith? I want to be realistic here. A certain amount of specialization is inevitable in complex, market-driven economies. And the specialization of roles within God's kingdom can enhance our Christian ministries. But when our pastors spend the bulk of their time on organizational matters, and professors spend the bulk of their time on intramural academics, no one is left to do the crucial work of shaping God's people with the Word. Perhaps our pastors and professors, Christian activists and thinkers, need to collaborate more regularly in ministry. Perhaps the laity need to give their pastors time to think and write--for their local congregations and the larger kingdom of God. [my emphasis]

It looks like I have another book to work into my summer reading.

Gospel-Centered Theology

Check out this excellent article by David Fairchild at Kaleo Church. Fairchild clearly outlines how the Gospel not only shapes biblical theology but also creates the rationale behind mission.

Why I Preach Expositionally (7)

Biblical exposition teaches biblical theology

Biblical theology is that branch of theological study which focuses on God’s progressive revelation through biblical history. As a discipline, Biblical Theology is vital for its focus on the big picture of the Bible. It guards the Christian from treating the Bible as a treasury of inspiring quotes, a collection of moral stories, or a guide for personal success. Biblical Theology reminds us that the Bible is one great story, God’s story of creation, corruption, redemption, and new creation. In this way, the Bible presents us with a unified and coherent view of reality. It is the lens by which we understand God, ourselves, salvation, and the world.

Graeme Goldsworthy writes:
“Biblical theology is the neglected handmaid of the preacher. While it would be facile and misleading to suggest that preaching can ever be an easy task, it is true to say that biblical theology enables the preacher to relate the various parts of the Bible in a way that prevents preaching on a text from becoming a formality or a springboard for a mass of moralizing exhortations.”

One of the primary failures of contemporary preaching within conservative churches is the lack of biblical theology in the pastor’s study and therefore in the pulpit. Preachers fail to make the connections for their flock. They preach biblical texts as if they were stories or bits of wisdom to be understood independently from the rest of biblical revelation. Promises made by God under the Old Covenant specifically to Israel concerning the Land are taken out of context and used to guarantee New Covenant people financial, familial, and emotional well-being. This is common because too many preachers do not understand the progressive nature of God’s revelation through Scripture. They do not understand that the arc of biblical history moves us inexorably toward the cross. As a result of this error, events such as David’s defeat of Goliath and Daniel in the lion’s den become mere spring boards to tell Christians how to defeat the giants they face or shut the mouths of the lions in their lives. I heard a preacher once who used Easter Sunday to tell the congregation how they can roll stones away in their lives. Biblical Theology guards against such nonsense.

Goldsworthy writes:
“The idea that evangelical pastors can be sent to have ministerial oversight of congregations without first having a solid grounding in biblical theology is one of the scandals of our time. Show me a church without a good appreciation of the Old Testament and biblical theology and I’ll show you a church with a weak understanding of the gospel.”

Without a sound grasp of Biblical Theology the preacher, and therefore his hearers, will not properly understand the law, the promises, or the Gospel. This failure is common as Christians frequently confuse law and Gospel and grasp for promises not made to them all the while missing the “yes” God has given them in Christ. Sound biblical exposition will always teach the nature of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. It will pass along to the hearer an understanding of the grand themes of the Bible and how they are connected. Most of all it will teach the hearer about the depth and grandeur of the Gospel.

Three excellent primers on Biblical Theology:
God's Big Picture by Vaughn Roberts
According to Plan by Graeme Goldsworthy
The Unfolding Mystery by Edmund Clowney

Some Thoughts on the Kingdom of God

I have been soaking up Bruce Waltke’s magnum opus A Theology of the Old Testament. Waltke, one of the world’s foremost Hebrew and Old Testament scholars has given the church a great resource in this, his latest book. It is a wonderful addition to the work of biblical theology which is sorely needed by pastors and teachers. The tendency for therapeutic moralism, so prominent in evangelical pulpits is a result of ignorance in biblical theology. The same could be said for the fanciful interpretations of modern millenarian dispensationalism which also could be corrected with a proper understanding of biblical theology.

If you are wondering at the term “biblical theology” I certainly understand. What, after all, is theology if not “biblical”? But biblical theology is a technical term associated with a particular approach to understanding the central themes of the biblical text. James Barr has written, “Biblical theology is concerned with the vital central ‘message’ of biblical texts.” This, he writes, is to make possible “a composite and yet unitary ‘witness’ to ultimate theological truth.” Gerhard Hasel writes that the task of biblical theology “is to provide summary explanations and interpretation to the final form of these blocks of writing[the books of the Bible], with a view to letting their various themes emerge, to indicate their dynamic interrelationship, including their continuities and discontinuities with one another, and to expose the progressive revelation of divine matters.”

Waltke understands the Kingdom of God to be the central unifying theme of the Bible. He seeks to establish that “the center of the Old Testament, the message that accommodates all its themes, is that Israel’s sublime God, whose attributes hold in tension his holiness and mercy, glorifies himself by establishing his universal rule over his volitional creatures on earth through Jesus Christ and his covenant people”
(p. 144).

Certainly, the central theme of Jesus’ preaching was the Kingdom of God. His perfect obedience was a model of the moral perfection and holiness of the King. The miracles, including those over nature, sickness, and demonic forces, showed off the supreme power of the King. The teachings of Jesus communicated, to those who had ears to hear, the nature and values of the King and His Kingdom. Jesus declared that he summed up the Kingdom of God; that he was the very in-breaking of the Kingdom.

In the model prayer Jesus instructs us to petition God: “Your kingdom come.” That petition, Walkte writes, “entails that God establishes his rule over his elect covenant people through the kingship of Jesus Christ, who by the Holy Spirit places God’s imperative rule upon the hearts of those whom Christ has freed from the slavery of Satan, sin, and death. This center entails that the God of the Old Testament is the Father of Jesus Christ in the New Testament; that he world is in rebellion against him; and that to fulfill his purposes he acts in history according to his inscrutable elective purposes, choosing when, where, how, and with whom he breaks in, without necessarily explaining why. He is the ruler of creation and of history, the two themes that dominate the praise psalms in Israel’s psalter”
(p. 145).

The point that God works within history must not be missed. Certainly, God is over and above history. He is not subject to the limits of time or special dimensions. However, God uses means to establish his kingdom and he does so progressively. In other words, it is true that in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom had come. And yet, there is a “not yet” reality to the Kingdom of God. While his rule and authority are unassailable and ultimate the final consummation waits to be established. “The holy and merciful God continually irrupts into history to establish his kingdom for the hallowing of his name…In this he will not fail because of the faithful, unsullied obedience of Jesus Christ, to whom every knee will one day bow.”