Shepherd the Flock

Quotes taken from Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture:

“In my experience the preaching of a series of sermons, say, from an epistle, easily leads the preacher to fragmentation because, while the epistle was written as a single letter to be read at one time, it is often divided up so that it is dealt with in Sunday sermons over a period of several weeks. This is nothing wrong with that as such, provided we recognize the changed dynamics. Thus, Paul may expound the gospel in the first part of the letter, and then go on to spell out some ethical and pastoral implications. When the preacher finally gets to deal with the latter, it is possibly a couple of weeks or more since the gospel exposition has happened, and the connection between the gospel and behavior, very closely related in the epistle, can be lost. The result is that the exhortations and commands are no longer seen to arise out of the good news of God’s grace in the gospel, but as simple imperatives of Christian behavior; as naked law.”

“We [often] recognize the existence of elements of discontinuity between us and the Old Testament, but we do not so readily recognize those that exist between us and the New Testament.”

“There is often a failure to think through how the link between the people and events of the Old Testament are to be made with us as, presumably, New Testament people. This failure leads to some major defects in preaching, not the least of which is the tendency to moralize on Old Testament events, or simply to find pious examples to imitate.”

“It is clear from the New Testament that the ethical example of Christ is secondary to and dependent upon the primary and unique work of Christ for us. Yet this does not seem to be clear to many when it comes to the Old Testament. The message of the Old Testament is too easily reduced to the imitation of godly example and the avoidance of the ungodly example.”

“The God who acts in the Old Testament is the God who becomes flesh in the New Testament in order to achieve the definitive saving work in the world. At the heart of this saving work is not the ethical teaching of Jesus, but His obedient life and death, His glorious resurrection and His ascension to the right hand of God on high. In a remarkable way the resurrection is portrayed as the event that encapsulates and fulfills all the theological themes of the Old Testament. This is not in any sense to denigrate the ethical dimension. The Bible shows us that God is lawful and that the freedom we have in Christ is not lawlessness. It is a matter of perspective…The ethics of the Bible are put out of perspective when they are given exclusive or prior claim over the grace of God. To put it another way, the gift of God is always prior to and the basis of the task we are given, to live godly lives.”