Justin talks about the thing that has most impacted his preaching. Jon and Justin then discuss how important it is to see that every promise of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Jesus.

Resources:
Episode: Is Christ-Centered Preaching Dangerous?
“The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant & His Kingdom” by Samuel Renihan
“Preaching Christ in All of Scripture” by Edmond Clowney
“The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament” by Edmond Clowney

https://youtu.be/QIwtBtf9-EA

Semper Reformanda Transcripts

Justin Perdue: Welcome to Semper Reformanda. Here we are talking with our people, and we want to continue the conversation about whether or not the whole Bible is really about Jesus—and obviously our conviction and our position is that yes, it absolutely is all about Jesus.

We talked about typology, we talked about Biblicism and some other things in the regular episode. We’re just gonna keep this going. I know Jon gave us a couple of things that he wants to discuss in terms of the fallout of not reading the Bible the way that we are advocating.

But before we even go there, I said something in the 32nd intermission between the end of the regular podcast and the start of us recording this one that Jon wanted me to say to everybody. For me, from my perspective, there is nothing more important for preaching than this understanding of the Scriptures. I think that this understanding of the Bible is more transformative for a pastor’s preaching than almost anything else. I know there are some other big theological categories that could be put alongside this in the conversation, but this legitimately Christ-centered, redemptive-historical hermeneutic is so critical to gospel preaching from the entire Bible.

I’m a part of various groups of pastors in various ways, and I see a lot of email correspondence flying around—and these are seminary graduates, some of them have PhDs—and I’m not trying to throw anybody under the bus but these are educated guys that are aiming to do faithful gospel ministry in their local contexts. They are asking questions of other pastors like, “Hey, guys. I’m wanting to do a series through this book of the Bible, kind of do a fly over it. It’s an Old Testament book. Can somebody just help me figure out how to preach the gospel from this book? I want to do a gospel-centered fly over of this. Can anybody help me think about resources that I can look at?” Of course it’s always good to reach out for help, but it’s sad to me that so many guys come out of seminary and are in pulpits, they are highly educated and very bright people, but they’re legitimately asking questions like, “How do I preach Jesus from Genesis?” Or, “How do I preach Jesus from 1 Kings?”

Jon Moffitt: I think the reason they ask that too is because what they think we mean is, “So here’s the exodus and here’s the data of what happened. Now I need to preach an altar call Jesus of repent and believe.”

Justin Perdue: Or the plan of salvation or something.

Jon Moffitt: Right. And there are even weird connections. I’ve seen people try to preach Jesus from the Old Testament—I’ve never heard this, I made this up—but, “As the children trusted the Lord and walked across the water, we need to trust the Lord and walk across the aisle and give our lives and dedication to the Father.” That’s a bad illustration, but people will do that. They make connections.

Justin Perdue: Or they’ll say, “Even if you’re afraid, you need to trust God and His promises,” which is true but there are a lot of better ways to preach it, like if we’re talking about the exodus.

Jon Moffitt: Again, this has to do with when you go to preach a redemptive-historical understanding of Scripture. This is why I think 2 Corinthians 1:20 is so important, because as I mentioned in the podcast, all the

Is the whole Bible really about Jesus? Here at Theocast, we believe that it is. Jon and Justin consider the pattern of Jesus and the apostles with regard to how they understood the Bible. The guys consider typology and how it is useful in understanding the Scriptures–and biblicism and how it is not helpful.

Semper Reformanda: Justin talks about the thing that has most impacted his preaching. Jon and Justin then discuss how important it is to see that every promise of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Jesus.

Resources:
Episode: Is Christ-Centered Preaching Dangerous?
“The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant & His Kingdom” by Samuel Renihan
“Preaching Christ in All of Scripture” by Edmond Clowney
“The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament” by Edmond Clowney

FREE Ebook: theocast.org/primer

SUPPORT Theocast: https://theocast.org/give/

https://youtu.be/KvOnPDF1P3M

Podcast Transcript

Justin Perdue: Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we are going to answer the question, “Is the whole Bible really about Jesus?” We don’t like to bury the lead here at Theocast, and so our position is that yes, in fact, the whole Bible is about Christ and what he has accomplished on behalf of sinners in order to save us. We’re going to have this conversation from a couple of different perspectives. We’re going to talk about typology and how that works in the Bible. If you don’t even know what typology is, don’t worry, we’re going to define it and try to explain it for you.

We’re also going to talk about Biblicism and how it is unhelpful to understanding the Scriptures accurately. Again, if you don’t know what Biblicism is, stay tuned. We’re going to try to explain it to you and help you see how it relates to this conversation.

We really hope this is an encouraging and life-giving conversation for you, and that is a conversation that will open up the Scriptures and show you how from Genesis to Revelation, Jesus really is the point of it.

The title of the episode is Is the Whole Bible Really About Jesus? What we want to do today is answer that question. But we’re really just pulling the curtain back here and having a conversation about a couple of different things—and I’m going to try to explain briefly what we mean by these terms and then we’ll just kind of take-off and run with this.

We’re having a conversation today about typology and somewhat also about Biblicism. And so just briefly to define those terms for the listener: when we talk about typology, we are talking about the way that God reveals Himself, the way He reveals redemption—in particular, the way He reveals redemption through Christ in Scripture—where there are things that occur earlier on in biblical revelation, referred to as types, that are significant in and of themselves but they point to something that is greater, different, and ultimate. So those greater, different, ultimate fulfillments of the types are often referred to as antitypes. We’re going to talk about examples of some of that today. But if the Bible is read appropriately in a typological way, we are going to see types and shadows and pointers to Jesus all throughout the Old Testament before Christ even shows up on the scene in the New Testament.

If you think about, for example, the writer to the Hebrews and how he explains the fact that the sacrificial system, and so many of the other things that were revealed to Israel in the law, were ultimately about Christ. They were ultimately shadows and pointers to Jesus and the redemption that would be accomplished through him. That is a biblical example of typology. We’re going to talk about some other biblical examples of typology in this episode. So we’re having that conversation abou