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

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