Christ In The Old Testament | David King

We're back with another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm your host, Sean DeMars, and I'm here with our very special guest,

Dave King. Say hello, Dave. Hey. You're supposed to say, hello, Dave.

Hello, Dave. There you go. Brother, will you open us in prayer and ask for the Lord's help? Yes. Nice. Father in heaven, thank you so much that we have this opportunity to talk about the most important thing in the universe, your son,

Jesus the Lord. Lord, I pray that you would help us as we talk to be clear and that you would stir our hearts in affection and faith and transform us as a result so we live our lives for his glory.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, brother, just like with every other guest, start us off with, yeah, just a three to five minute version of your testimony.

How did you come to know the Lord? Yeah, so I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home. I had Christian parents.

We went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. Wow. The good old days.

A little different than your story. Yeah, a little different. But do you guys do that at your church, Wednesday night, Sunday night? We don't have

Sunday nights anymore except once a month. We have rotating members meeting, prayer meeting.

Is that well attended? Fairly well attended. Yeah. I wish it was more attended.

Of course. Yeah. But I grew up going to church. So I heard the gospel, had a lot of people who loved

Jesus around me. When I was seven years old, I believe the Lord opened my heart to the gospel where I felt a conviction of sin.

I believe that Jesus was the Savior who had died and risen to deal with my sin and to bring me to salvation.

And I remember as a kid praying. How did that happen? In a Sunday school class or? No, I was at home.

I think it was a Friday night. And I called my parents into my bedroom and said, here's what I'm thinking and dealing with.

And I remember praying with them in my bed that Jesus would be my

Savior. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a lot of fruit for a little kid at that point in my life.

I cared about the Bible, even though I didn't fully understand what it was all about. I only had a King James Version at the time.

So I didn't read it a whole lot because I didn't track with it. But I loved the

Bible at that point. I remember telling my friends about Jesus, wanting them to know Christ.

But as I got older, went into middle school years and then high school years, the train just ran off the tracks.

I was a really insecure person, and I was in an environment where there weren't many Christians around in the school that I attended.

And I just circled the drain fast and went down. And so it was a number of really dark years in my life of rebellion and selfishness and sin.

And through a long series of circumstances that I won't go into, God just graciously came after me when

I was about 17 years old. I think it was His fatherly discipline. That's what Scripture calls it.

He came after me and brought me to an end of myself once again and broke my heart.

And I think I was 17 at the time. And did He do it through a girl? How'd you know?

Yeah, there was a girl involved, and she was not a

Christian and had not had any Christian upbringing whatsoever and had started coming to church with me.

I was living a very double life, very hypocritical life. And that was easy to do in my city because nobody went to the same school.

I could be one way at school and totally different way at church. Anyway, she comes to church with me and ends up hearing the gospel and becoming a

Christian. Wow. It was a remarkable transformation in her life. And so I was like, weirdly excited for her.

And at the same time, like, oh, no. I can't live my double life anymore. Yeah.

And man, that jump started an amazing process of God breaking my heart, shattering my heart and really grounding me and rooting me in Jesus Christ.

I think I was probably a Christian when I was seven years old, but had just strayed and the

Father came after me. And I've really never been the same since then. Did you marry her?

No. Dang. Okay, that would have been the coolest version. Although, I mean, don't tell your wife

I said that. She may see this. No, that was all in the providence of God.

But that particular girl went on to marry a strong Christian guy and walking with Jesus Christ.

And God brought me the wife that I definitely needed. There you go. Amen, brother. All right. Well, thanks for sharing your testimony.

Yeah. But you're here today to talk about, I don't know, like, is that in the shot? If not, we'll definitely have a link up.

Your book published by Moody in partnership with Nine Marks called Your Old Testament Sermon Needs to Get Saved.

First of all, good job, whoever the editorial team was. I mean, was that your idea for the title?

That was my idea. That was your idea? And I was hoping the whole way through that they would keep it. Because I kind of wrote the book along that theme.

I kept weaving that back in. I was like, oh, I hope they don't want to change this title. Kudos to you, man. Such a great title.

So provocative and so true. Provocative without being true is not that helpful. Provocative and true, that's a double whammy.

Anyways, I was thinking about our interview this morning as I was sort of looking back through some of our older interviews and seeing, like, which ones had the most downloads, which ones had the most views.

And I was thinking about how, from the perspective, like in eternity, I think our most viewed episodes are not going to necessarily be our most fruitful episodes.

And I just think, I don't know what numbers this is going to do, you know, but I think that this episode is going to bear fruit because I think this book is super important.

I think this book, if a pastor picks it up and reads it, he will be challenged to be more faithful in his preaching.

He will likely be more comfortable preaching the Old Testament and therefore will do more of that. I think this book can be useful for lay people who are just wanting to learn how to read their

Bibles better. But even if lay people don't pick this book up, if a pastor picks this book up, learns from it, applies it, those people in his church are going to learn how to read their

Bibles better and see Christ in all Scripture. So anyways, all that to say, brother, I'm really excited that we get to have this conversation and I pray that the

Lord blesses it. Amen. All right, now I've set this up. Expectations are high.

So let's set the tone of the interview right out of the gate with a quote that you have from Christopher Wright.

He says, the deeper you go into understanding the Old Testament, the closer you come to the heart of Jesus.

And I think you included that quote because you want the aim of this book to not be merely academic.

So can you elaborate on that? I love that quote. I still love that quote all these years later. I don't remember when

I first read it. It was a long time ago. But Christopher Wright is pointing out that when you are reading the

Old Testament, you're reading the scriptures Jesus read. You're reading the scriptures that formed his sense of who he was.

And I don't know how you want to put together the whole hypostatic union thing. You know, truly God, truly man. Be careful.

It's a can of worms. But it formed the way Jesus thought. It formed the way he understood his mission.

It formed his own sense of identity and purpose in the world as the Son of God. It formed his actions, his behaviors, things he did and didn't do.

It formed his teaching. That's what Christopher Wright means. The more you read the

Old Testament, the more you're coming to the heart of Jesus. You're getting to know who Jesus is. So, man, that's an awesome way to think about it.

And it makes it personal. I don't want this book just to be academic. There are academic elements to it.

We have to think about hermeneutics. We have to think about how to apply, interpret and apply the

Bible. But it's about Jesus, the person, the Son of God and what he's doing.

I mean, that's what we care about. That's right. So, if you take the best hermeneutics classes and you have all of your hermeneutical principles employed when you open the text, you can do all of that and be totally dry and distant from Jesus.

But you're saying we need to be worshipful as we find Christ in the Old Testament. I think we're doing it wrong if it doesn't lead to worship.

Yeah. John Piper says amen along with the rest of the Bible. I read something recently about reading the

Bible with your back to Jesus. Something like that. Okay. I can't remember exactly how it was phrased, but I understood what that meant.

And I think a lot of people do. I don't. Can you elaborate? Yeah. There's a way of reading the Bible that's academic or it's impersonal to Christ himself.

You're just getting Bible information. Maybe you're like clicking a box because you're supposed to read your

Bible or you're accumulating Bible facts and knowledge and information. And it's all just head stuff.

But it's meant to bring us to a person. So, we don't want to read the Bible with our backs to God and to Christ.

We want to read the Bible in a way that helps us see God and see his son Jesus. It just makes it personal.

That's how we're supposed to live. That makes me think about Jesus rebuking the religious leaders of the day saying, like, you searched the scriptures, but you haven't found me.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Another thing that I think we need to talk about right at the beginning of this interview is the fact that this book, although you did write it to be a help to pastors, it can really be helpful to anyone in the pew.

I hope so. What would be your word to someone who's listening to or watching this interview who's not a pastor but has decided we're going to probably title it, like,

Christ in the Old Testament or Finding Christ in the Old Testament, something like that. What would you say to them? Like, oh,

I'm not a pastor, and they're thinking about turning this episode off. Don't turn it off. Okay. You can read this book.

All you have to do is make a little transposition to whatever your situation is. If you're not a pastor or teacher and you get to those sentences that deal with pastors and teachers, just transpose that to, oh,

I'm not a pastor or teacher, but I need to understand what's being said here. The same hermeneutic works.

The same principle of interpretation works for me, even though I'm not going to be proclaiming it. I want to read the

Bible in a way that brings me to Christ. And that's what this book is helping us learn how to do.

I was trying to think of some categories that this could be helpful for the average church member. Walk through some of these with me.

The first category I thought might be someone who's in a church where their pastors are doing this faithfully, and they're just going to be encouraged.

They're going to be like, yes, like my church gets it. We're doing it right. Right? Is that one good category?

That's a great category. Yeah. Another one might be someone who's in a church where their pastors aren't doing this.

They might watch this interview, read the book, and then just be kind of discouraged.

They remember their pastor just preached through the book of Leviticus, and they might have learned a lot about the tabernacle, but not a lot about who the tabernacle was pointing towards.

What would you say to someone like that? Read it for yourself first. Make sure that you're understanding how to handle the

Old Testament as a Christian, and pray for your pastor. Pray that he would come to see that.

And that could lead potentially to a gentle and loving conversation with your pastor.

Do you think there's a way to like even gift this book without it being like a veiled accusation?

Yes. I think you would have to be sensitive about how to do that. Absolutely. Like this book meant a lot to me, and I'm really encouraged by it.

I'd love to hear what you think about it and give it that way. If a person finds himself in a, let's say, moderately healthy church, not perfect, no such thing as a perfect church, but not even as healthy as it could be, and they're convicted by what they learn about Christ in the

Old Testament, either from this interview or from the book, and they think, you know, I think I need to be at a church where people really preach

Christ faithfully. What word would you have to them about that? You mean like leave their church?

Yeah, if they're thinking about leaving their church, like this might even get them to start thinking in that direction.

I would definitely want to move slowly on that, and I would want to get counsel from other trusted

Christian friends. I think it's a big deal to leave your church. I mean, it's not like the most important thing you would ever do in life, but it's not a small thing either.

This question may seem a little dramatic for some, but I think you and I both know people who have really been affected when they come to see the gospel in a new and powerful way in the

Bible, and then they really become frustrated, angry, hurt that they haven't been fed well.

You know, they've been sitting under preaching for X number of years, and then they're like, oh man, there's a whole another, like there's so much more here, and I haven't been getting that.

And one of the first things that they think of doing is like, I got to find a church that actually does this, which we would say is not wrong, but you got to be careful, be prayerful.

Let's move carefully. Let's step carefully there. You know, God's had you in your church, we trust, for a good purpose.

You may or may not be able to influence what would happen after you've had your eyes open to maybe some new ways of looking at Scripture.

If you can't, then at that point, yeah, maybe the Lord's going to lead you to another place in your city where that's a little bit more clear in the preaching.

But maybe you can influence in some way. I thought maybe something analogous would be someone who becomes reformed in a non -reformed church.

Like when you really come to see like the depth of grace, it can be hard to stay in the same church.

Yes, it can. But I know people who have done it. They've said, I love these people. I love these pastors. I'm committed here.

You know, we'll figure out a way. So anyways, Dave King trying to get people to leave their churches. And then the third category

I think would just be for the average church member, just learning how to read your

Bible. Yes. I mean, just imagine, let's say a 45 -year -old man, okay, who's been reading the

Bible his whole life fairly faithfully and he struggles reading the Old Testament.

Somehow he always ends up back in Galatians or the Gospel of Mark, you know. Who doesn't love to just hang out in Romans?

But then he reads this book or, you know, consumes this interview and then he goes and he just learns to read the

Old Testament and to love what he finds there. I mean, that's my hope and prayer for...

That'd be a win. Yeah, for any church member watching. Hey, can I mention the little booklet? Please do. It just came out. Hold it up to the camera if you can.

Yeah. This is the little booklet in the Church Matter series, Church Questions series, sorry.

Does the Old Testament really point to Jesus? So Crossway asked me to write this and I was thrilled to do so because it gets at exactly what you're saying.

I did not write this for preachers and teachers. I wrote this for the person in the pew and I actually had in mind a couple of people as I wrote this.

I won't tell you who they were, but I had teenagers in mind and I had grandmothers in mind.

And I thought if I could write this little book in a way that a teenager or a senior adult could understand, then yes, that's awesome.

So this might be a little more accessible to somebody who doesn't preach and teach. So as soon as I saw that that was out,

I immediately bought 10 copies and I put them over there next to where we hand out our worship guides every Sunday with the hopes that our people would pick them up and read them.

That's good. Yes, and I would recommend that any pastor do the same. Thank you so much for writing that, brother. I know it's going to be a good resource.

What is a synagogue sermon? A synagogue sermon is a sermon that you could preach as a Christian pastor in a synagogue and all the

Jewish people who don't believe that Jesus is Messiah or the Christ say amen at the end. And I think a lot of Christian pastors unintentionally, inadvertently preach that way.

I know I did for a long time, except when I got to the end of my sermons because I would always tack

Jesus onto the end because I'm a Christian preacher, you know? So you handle the text as exegetically responsible as you possibly can.

And then at the end, we're going to preach the gospel. And it may or may not loosely connect to what we just heard, but Jesus is going to be in the sermon.

He's just not connected to the text itself. So preaching the text itself in a way that Jewish people in a synagogue could say amen, because it's right out of their

Bible, their scriptures. You're saying that's a problem. That's a problem as a Christian pastor.

You should preach the Old Testament text that you're working on in such a way that it would be an offense to a

Jewish person sitting there. Not because you've been unkind or uncharitable towards them, but because you've held up Christ as the

Messiah. He's the stumbling block. And you just put that stumbling block right there in the middle of the sermon.

You know, in the American Gospel documentary, I basically said that.

I said, you know, if you're preaching the text in such a way that a Jewish person or a Muslim could sit through it and not be offended by it, then you're not really preaching the gospel.

So the guy who runs like the American Gospel social media stuff posted that as an excerpt on their

Facebook page. And it got eviscerated. I mean, people were very upset by that, by that concept.

But I mean, to me, it seems the most obvious thing in the world. It does seem obvious. Yes. Yeah. And was that, did you hear that from anyone or was that like your own illustration, the synagogue sermon?

No. You know where I first heard that? I think synagogue sermon, maybe that phrase I came up with.

But I first heard the idea, I believe, from Haddon Robinson. He had a book called Biblical Preaching.

And there was one quote, one question that he asked just in passing.

He never unpacks it, never elaborates, doesn't come back to it in his book. But just one question he asked in his book, and I can't remember where it was in the book, sorry.

He says something to the effect that if you're preaching a sermon that a good

Jewish person or Muslim could hear and agree to, have you really preached a

Christian sermon? And that became like a rock in my shoe. And that's what

I use as the intro into my book. That's where it all got started for me. That was like a rock in my shoe.

You get a rock in your shoe, it bothers you. You've got to stop and deal with it. And that's what that question did for me.

It's like, oh, he's absolutely right. And I don't know what to do about that.

I've got to figure this thing out. What's wrong with my preaching as a Christian that I would handle the

Old Testament in a way that isn't leading people explicitly to Jesus Christ right out of the text?

There's something I'm missing here. Just to be clear, this idea of finding

Christ throughout all the Old Testament, this isn't your idea. It's not his idea. It's not some philosophical outlook on the scriptures.

No. It's something that Jesus himself taught. Now, I think the most famous place, the most famous scripture that people like to go to to make that point is the road to Emmaus.

Yes. But you actually, so I mean, yes, road to Emmaus, Jesus teaching. It's very important.

Very important. But you actually highlight a few other scriptures that I think kind of fly under the radar in relation to this subject.

So walk me through two of them. One is 2 Timothy 3, verses 15 and 16. Oh, my goodness. I love that passage.

So this is the famous passage where Paul's talking to Timothy about what we would call the Old Testament.

He calls it the sacred writings and the scriptures. Of course, in his context, the

New Testament is being written. Timothy would have understood, oh, Paul's talking to me about the

Old Testament, as we call it. And what Paul says is that the sacred writings are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's a remarkable statement. The Old Testament is able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's what Paul's telling Timothy. And it's that last little clause, in Christ, through Christ. Faith in Christ.

If so, if we're not reading the Old Testament, interpreting the Old Testament, preaching the

Old Testament in a way that points people to their need to trust in Jesus as the

Savior, we're not reading the Old Testament properly. If it's true that you can read the

Old Testament and see Christ and be saved through what you see there, then how come so many Jewish people who only read the scriptures of the

Old Testament don't see Christ and get saved? That's a big question. Well, we have a lot of time.

I think hardness of heart has to be part of the answer that we give. And you see that, especially in the prophets.

You know, God coming at his people through the prophets, challenging their hardness of heart.

There's a blindness there. I'm thinking 1 Corinthians, the veil. It's a veil. Yeah, anytime

Moses is read, it's like the veil is just down and they're unable to see.

The other thing though about the prophets is God preserves a remnant for himself. There are

Jewish people who have come to see right out of their scriptures that the

Christ would suffer and die and rise and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins comes through him and that the nations are gonna be included in this.

There are some who are of the remnant who have believed this. And that happened to Jesus' day.

I mean, look at the apostles. By the remnant, you're talking about ethnic Israel. Ethnic Israel. That's who the apostles were.

They were ethnically Jewish people who came to see that this man in front of them named

Jesus is the fulfillment of all that the Old Testament was pointing toward.

And they believed. And they called other Jews to believe as well as Gentiles. And some did.

And some did. Going back to the road to Emmaus, I find it interesting that these two men have their eyes opened from Jesus.

So whatever was keeping them from seeing Jesus in the Old Testament, Jesus had to help them.

He had to remove the veil, remove the blindness, soften their hearts, do whatever. Wouldn't you say that that's still true today?

In order for people to see Christ as the Savior, especially in the Old Testament, that Christ has to come to them through His Spirit and remove that veil?

I want to answer that in two ways. Please. Like, hermeneutically, who's our audience here?

I keep saying that big word like we've got pastors and teachers. We're hoping more people than this listen.

That's true. So feel free to elaborate on any terms you use. Okay. As we interpret the

Old Testament, I don't think that we have to have some special work of the

Holy Spirit to illuminate us. What we're talking about now has been illuminated. Jesus has made it clear.

So you're talking about just plain exegesis? Plain exegesis. Okay. Yeah, we see in Scripture how this works.

So I don't have some special revelation from God like I went up on the mountain and now I know how to preach

Christ. It's all right there for us now. It's plainly revealed for us now.

The New Testament clearly shows all of Christ in the Old Testament. Look at how Jesus handled the

Old Testament. Look at how the apostles handled the Old Testament. That's how we are meant to handle the Old Testament.

Check. Gotcha. Now, the second way I would answer that is, yes, personally, we have to have a regenerative work of the

Holy Spirit in our life. We have to have our eyes opened. To receive that by faith. To receive it all by faith, yeah.

God has to do that. New birth in a person. Great answer, brother. Very nuanced answer.

Okay, another text that you use pretty well. Go ahead.

There's one more part of that 2 Timothy text. Okay. And that's the more famous part. Okay. And that's where he goes on to say, all

Scripture is God -breathed, and it's profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

You will be ill -equipped in your Christian discipleship if you don't understand the

Old Testament in light of Jesus Christ. That's what Paul's talking about. You know, the Old Testament Scriptures are the foundation for Christian discipleship.

It's a remarkable passage of Scripture. I just didn't want to let that go. No, please. It's awesome. Which means that if pastors are not giving their people

Christ from the Old Testament, they're robbing them of a lot of... It stunts our maturity in Christ.

You need all of the resources in Scripture. Yes. All of Christ and all of Scripture. Yes, that's good, brother. 2

Corinthians 3, 12 -16. Oh, that's a big passage. Yes. But you deal with it pretty significantly.

You're welcome to read it or draw anything from it. Yes, can I? Please do, yes. I don't have that one memorized.

Unreal. Crazy, I know. Luke, you said he was a fraud, and you were proven correct.

Yes, so 2 Corinthians 3. Oh, man,

I'm skipping over good stuff here. A lot of good stuff. Oh, my goodness, yes. One of my favorite ministry passages is right in here.

We're not sufficient in ourselves for these things, but God makes us sufficient by His Holy Spirit.

The whole contrast that's being set up here at the end of this chapter is between Moses and the new covenant in Christ.

So when Moses was read, when the Old Testament was read, it was a veil, but it's when we come to Christ, which the

Old Testament is pointing forward toward, that the veil is lifted, and now we can see what's there, and we can see what it meant, and it brings us to faith in Jesus Christ, and it's a dramatic contrast that's being set up here at the end of 2

Corinthians 3. There's a lot more that could be said about that, but let's dig into some of the particularities of the book.

So you organize the book text, Christ, anything you wanna say on that, on the organization of the book?

There may be nothing, I just wanted to give you a chance to. Just trying to be simple. We start with the text, which is gonna deal with some exegetical stuff.

We're moving to Christ, which is also exegetical, but involves theological reflection, and then we come from Christ to us.

It's a real problem. Yeah, application. It's a real problem when we go from text to us, and we bypass

Christ. Yes. That's where all kinds of problems happen. Yes. I want you to know that as I was reading your book for the second time to get ready for this interview,

I was helped, and I'm preaching through Exodus right now, and you dinged me a couple times, and I was like, yes, this is so good, so helpful.

You think like, oh, I get it, Christ in the Old Testament. I've been there, done that. No, we always need to be refined.

We always need to be sharpened. We always need to be helped. And so, brother, your book was even a help to me. Thank you.

Let's get out ahead of a potential objection to your book, which is -

Who could possibly object? I agree. It blows my mind, and yet there are people out there on the Internet who say things like,

I think Piper has even said this. I don't remember exactly what he said, but something to the effect of like, people find too much of Christ in the

Old Testament. What do you think about that? Or they're not wise in their application of finding

Christ in the Old Testament, or they find Him in places where He isn't. Okay, yeah, finding Jesus where He isn't.

I mean, I think that's a concern that a lot of people have when we start talking about preaching Christ from the Old Testament, as if we're fabricating

His presence in certain places in the text. And we've all seen, I think, bad ways of trying to understand

Jesus in the Old Testament. I don't know if that's true. Can you give us an example of that? Like a bad way to do it?

I'm thinking of like allegorical methods. Yeah. But yeah, tell us some bad ways to find

Christ. Or imaginative interpretations, like Rorschach tests. Like, this reminds me of Jesus because blah, blah, blah.

It has nothing to do with the text. It's just some kind of connection that happened in your head. It's not textually driven and based.

I'll tell you one of the craziest I just recently heard in the last couple of weeks. I'm preaching through 1

Samuel right now, which is an amazing book of the Bible. Got to the big chapter, David and Goliath.

And there's that passing comment, David picked up five stones. And it's because people have to speculate, why did he pick up the five stones?

And why not just one? He just needed one. Anyway, I have my thoughts on that. But I heard somebody say, well, he picked up five because of Jesus.

It's like, really? J -E -S -U -S. J -E -S -U -S. Five letters in Jesus' name.

Five stones in David's bags. It's typology. This is Jesus in the Old Testament. So that kind of interpretation, that's crazy.

That's weird. Like, don't do that. Amen. That's the kind of thing, though,

I think that makes people say, oh, yeah, y 'all are reading Jesus in there where he's not there, and this is not the right way to look at the

Old Testament. Well, I mean, if that's your example, yes, I totally agree. We're not doing this right, if that's the example.

I'm thinking less of that kind of craziness, but people, maybe with a more dispensational hermeneutic, who -

Oh, you're going to go there. Yeah. You said let's get controversial, so here we go. You know, who basically all but reject the kind of typology that you're advocating for in this book.

Careful, biblically guided typology. They still say, no, no, no. I guess what you would say to them is everything that you said in the book.

Yeah, I mean, I think we haven't really gotten into all the different ways that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament. And we're about to, yeah.

Yeah, I do want to say, in answer to this question, I think typology is only one way in which

Jesus fulfills the Old Testament. Okay. And not everything that we read in the Old Testament is a type.

Right. Yeah, so I think we need some careful guardrails there set by scripture itself to understand when an

Old Testament passage is meant to be a shadow of Jesus. Yeah. Amen, brother.

Let's get into the different kinds, the different ways.

You have six categories of Old Testament fulfillment. Christ in the

Old Testament is fulfilled in these six different ways. Let's just run through them one by one. Prophetic promise.

Yeah. These are the easy ones. I think the most obvious ones, even our dispensational friends would agree on these.

They would doubly agree. Yeah, so there are these passages that we come across in the Old Testament and there's a lot of them that in the text itself lift up our eyes to a future horizon of redemption.

Like God is making a messianic promise or a messianic prophecy is being given about the

Christ to come. And we see these, they're pretty obvious. And even people who would disagree with some of the things that I'm advocating for in this book are probably gonna agree on this point.

Yeah, we should preach Christ from the Old Testament when there's a prophetic promise in the text. What gets a little tricky is sometimes what is a fulfilled prophecy is like just black and white.

It's so clear, so obvious. Born of a virgin, right? That kind of a thing. But sometimes you get into some trickier kinds of prophetic fulfillments.

For example, like double fulfillment. You know, a prophetic promise that was initially fulfilled in one epoch, but then shown to be doubly fulfilled or most fully fulfilled in Christ when he comes.

Yes. I think that's where some of those guys might have more of an issue. Anything you wanna say about that? Probably not without looking at a specific text.

I was thinking like Matthew 2. Yeah. You know, Jesus going down into Egypt and coming back out.

Well, that's typology. I would put that in the typology category. Yeah, how is Jesus the son?

How is he a individual representative of corporate Israel? But that's what's going on there.

That's what Matthew's doing. But what Matthew's doing is he's quoting, I think Hosea, right? Which was a prophecy.

About Israel. Yeah, that's right. It's corporate. Yeah, that's right. And Israel corporately is the son and now it's being applied to Jesus individually as the son.

Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah. Okay, the second kind of fulfillment is ethical instruction.

Is this the easy one? You said prophetic is the easy one. Prophetic's obvious. This one's easy once you see it.

And I missed this for many years. Okay. What I mean by ethical instruction is God giving commands, decrees, instructions to his covenant people.

We see ethical instruction in the law and in wisdom primarily in the Old Testament.

So Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, much of Deuteronomy, and then wisdom, you've got

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and so forth. Psalms have a lot of this kind of instruction.

Not a lot, they've got some. But here's what I missed. All of those instructions

Jesus lived by. And had he not lived by those instructions, then he would not have fulfilled the law.

He would not have fulfilled all righteousness. So I think what our tendency is to do is to read ethical instruction in the

Old Testament towards Israel, and we bring it right into our lives. And hopefully we're letting the gospel massage that a little bit as it comes into our sermons.

That's a good picture. Yeah. But man, don't bypass Jesus. Jesus read all of this and did it.

Like he followed it. He was the law keeper. He was the wise man.

You know, I think about like one example would be the 10 commandments. You shall not commit adultery.

Jesus read that. Jesus internalized that by faith. And that led to his own life of purity, his sexual integrity.

It informed the way he taught. We hear him teaching about this in the Sermon on the Mount. And he lays down his life as a sacrifice for sexual sinners.

And that's just one example. I mean, Jesus did this with all of the law. I think

I put this in the book, you know, that kind of obscure law about not wearing mixed cloth, you know, like you don't have cotton and something else, or wool.

Jesus never would have worn clothing that had mixed cloth. Why? Well, he was the law keeper.

He cared about following his father. Yeah. No cotton and polyester blend for the incarnate

Christ. I'm imagining that there's... That's a preaching value, by the way. It's just a fact.

Yeah. I don't know how you'd make a sermon out of that. Oh, I'll find a way. But Jesus followed all of it because he loved his father and he had to fulfill righteousness.

Yeah. There's probably a ham -fisted way you can apply this principle in your preaching.

I imagine it going something like this. These are ethical commands. You can't keep them.

Jesus did. Trust in Jesus, which is not wrong. That's a good... That's good. There's a lot worse kinds of preaching than that.

Okay. But that can't be the only way. Okay. So if that's not enough, then help us fill that out.

Because we're meant to apply the text. Okay. Yeah, and the application is more than, let's all rest in the grace that has been...

It's not less than that. It's not less than that. But it can't be only that. Let's all rest in the grace that's been purchased for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Yeah. Yay, Jesus. That's kind of getting over towards antinomianism. It can. Yeah. And I think it's opened up Christ -centered preaching to the accusation of these kinds of preachers just flatten out the text.

It all just ends up sounding the same. And if you preach that way, yeah, that is what happens.

But that's not what we mean. That's not what I mean by Christ -centered preaching. We go to Christ where we see his fulfillment of whatever that main point in the text is.

But then we're circling back around to the text in Christ to apply what's there to our lives as Christians.

And that's where every sermon in the Old Testament is going to sound unique and different because we're letting the text speak.

Only now it's coming to us through Jesus. That's right. So if there's an ethical imperative there, it needs to be taken seriously as a real imperative.

Okay, so I used the adultery example. Numbers 25 is the incident at Peor where there's sexual immorality with,

I think it's the Moabites. And, oh man, my mind just went blank on Phineas, the priest.

He draws a severe line. He takes a spear and kills this couple who is being sexually immoral.

Yeah, and I'll do that. I'll do it. If you're telling me to do it, Dave King, I'll do it. That's right. Well, we're not in the

Old Covenant, so we wouldn't handle it quite that way. We've gone from execution to excommunication now.

Amen. Okay. But Phineas deals with that decisively. Like, how are we supposed to preach that passage ethically?

Well, look at what Paul does. Paul refers to that very passage, 1 Corinthians chapter 10, and applies it to the church saying, yeah, we should learn from them in Jesus Christ how we should not be sexually immoral, but we should be upright.

It's like, okay. Well, there's a great example of how Paul himself is using an

Old Testament passage interpreted in the line of Christ to apply it to our lives within the church today.

Paul says, here's how it expressed itself, but there's an underlying universal principle that transcends covenants.

It applies to us. I'm even thinking about that mixed fabric thing. You know, so a big part of the way

God designed the lives of people under the Old Covenant was he wanted every aspect of their lives, every last little detail, down to the composition of the fabric of the clothes that they wore, to communicate to them you are not to be a mixed people.

You are to be a holy people. So when you come to that text, the way to give that ethical imperative is not,

I don't want to see anybody with a cotton polyester blend in this church. Yeah, that would be a Jewish application.

That's right, but you might say the clothes that you wear do communicate something about your holiness, right?

And it can't just be like, and you're not going to be able to keep this law and Jesus did keep it, you know, so just trust in Jesus.

Which is also true. Which is also true, yeah. That's good. Let's make a sermon out of this.

Let's do it. That's a good challenge. Maybe when we come back for episode two with you, we can just do a live sermon prep.

Okay. Real quick, on that idea of like Paul showing us the way to rightly apply this text,

I think you would say that one of the guardrails for good and careful application of ethical stuff from the

Old Testament to the New is to, and for seeing Christ in the

Old Testament, is to let the New Testament show us the way. Yes. Right? That doesn't mean that there has to be an explicit

New Testament connection to every place you find Jesus in the Old Testament, but the

New Testament shows us the tools and shows us how to use them, and then we have to be wise in the application of those tools.

Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah. You want to add to that? I don't think I can. This is your interview. That's well said.

Okay, all right. So, but, okay, let's actually, before we move on, let me dig into that a little bit more with you.

You're preaching a text and you're not sure, but you think you see Christ in something, but you've scanned the

New Testament, you've pulled up the word search, you haven't found anything in the commentaries. Like, what do you do?

Let me give you an example. I just, last week, this last Sunday, preached on Moses holding up the staff while the

Israelites did battle with the Amalekites. When he raised the staff, the people did well.

When he lowered the staff, the people were losing the battle. What I said was, the staff was supposed to be this symbolic representation of the power and promises of God to be with his people.

And so only when his people could set their eyes on this symbolic promise of God's power and presence, could they have victory.

And then I said, well, that's the gospel. Christ, his work accomplished and applied, death, burial, and resurrection.

Christ and his gospel is the symbol of the power and promises of God to us. And only if we keep our eyes fixed on Christ can we have victory over our enemies in the gospel.

But like, especially after reading your book, I was like, ooh, am I reaching with this one? I don't think so.

I don't think so. I like that, actually. You didn't pull that idea of power out of thin air.

Where'd you get it from? From the text. Yeah, from earlier in Exodus. That's right, yeah. What does the staff represent?

This is the power of God on display tangibly before Pharaoh in his court.

So you didn't pull that out of thin air. Nope. You're working right out of the text. And then what you're doing is you're moving to Christ, I think it's the sixth way that I talk about in my book, theological theme.

Okay. Yep, that's right. You've got a theme of the power of God that inspires people, encourages their faith.

This is a foreshadowing, in a sense, of the gospel. You're not saying that the staff is a type of Christ.

I don't hear you saying that. No, not saying that. I wouldn't say that either. No. But there's a theme at work here that resonates with the gospel that I think is right.

I think that's a good way to preach that. Interesting. Well, thank you. I feel vindicated. All right.

Prophetic promise, ethical instruction, theological theme, fallen humanity. Yeah. Yeah.

Tell us about that. Yeah. Fallen humanity just talks about the reality of the curse on the world, on our lives because of sin.

And everywhere you see sin and suffering in the Old Testament, you see the need for a savior. This one is also pretty simple.

Brian Chappell's old book, Christ -Centered Preaching, the whole book functions on this one idea.

He called it the fallen condition focus. Find what's fallen in the preaching text, and you can move from that fallenness to our need for a savior.

Here's Christ. Praise the Lord. That's a great way to preach. What's amazing is you can preach that way on every page of the

Old Testament except for the first two chapters because Genesis 1 and 2, we don't yet see a need for a savior.

Sin hasn't entered the world. But once you hit Genesis 3, from there on, you've got examples all throughout the

Old Testament of sin and suffering because of the curse. And here's what's really just crazy cool to think about.

Imagine Jesus in the synagogue. He's reading these scrolls, or he's hearing the

Old Testament preached. In every instance of sin and suffering that he's hearing or reading, he's feeling the cross looming over him.

This is, he's thinking, this is why I have come into the world. Isn't that, that's incredible to think about.

Incredible, yeah. That one's so good and so obvious, my fear would be that that would be the application every single time.

It can be a fallback position. I mean, you really can go to that one if you're confused about how to preach Christ from your text.

However, this is where I keep focusing on the main point of the text. Like what's the main point?

What's the general thrust and focus of your text? Sometimes it's not people's failure and sin.

That's just incidental to whatever other big points happening. But when you come to a text and like the main focus is like failure, sin, well, that's a great way to preach

Christ. I'm so glad you said that because that was one of the questions I wanted to make sure I didn't forget to ask.

Would you say, and this is a bit of a leading question, would you say that of the six ways to preach

Christ from the Old Testament that you should choose one of the six or maybe two of the six,

I don't know. You can do more than one, but you should choose that based off of the main point of the text.

I think so. That's the governing principle. We want scripture guiding us.

We don't want to just impose a hermeneutical structure onto the text. We want to go with the current of that particular passage.

So if you're in a prophetic passage, obviously, number one, prophetic promise is going to be the way to do it. If you're in a heavy, heavily ethically imperative,

I didn't say that right. No, that's right. Yeah, if you're in like an ethical passage, you'll probably do that. Okay, that's good.

Typological revelation. This one's tricky because there's like a thousand different ways to look at typology.

Yeah. Yeah, so give us the master class, the five minute master class. This is probably one of the most controversial.

Back to the earlier part of our conversation. Yeah, which makes it kind of fun to talk about. Yeah, there you go.

Clip it. No, I can't give you the master class. I'm still learning so much myself. What are you doing here?

Okay. The standard Greek dictionary, lexicon, defines a type as an impression.

Like if you've seen a rock in the ground and you pull the rock up, it's left an impression in the dirt. Or think of a wax seal.

A stamp goes into that wax seal and it makes an impression in the wax. That's what a type is.

That's the literal definition. So figuratively - Thinking about typesetting. Yeah, yeah.

Make an impression. Okay. Yeah, so figuratively speaking, God has stamped certain people, events, institutions, even objects, with the impression of the

Christ, what his son is going to be like. And we begin to see impressions of what

Jesus would be like. And then when Jesus comes into the world, we're like, oh, we understand now what that was all about.

You know, God was preparing us to understand the fulfillment of the impression, the one who fills up the impression.

I love what the Apostle Paul says the best. I mean, you can't go wrong with Scripture, right? It's in Colossians chapter two.

Paul says that all of these things, referring to Old Testament institutions and certain things like that, all of these things are shadows, but Christ is the substance.

That word substance there is literally body. So, you know, a body casts a shadow, right?

So in the Old Testament, you've got certain people, events, institutions, objects that are shadows.

They're, in general, they're showing us the form and the shape of what the Christ will be like.

And then when Jesus comes, he's the substance. He's the body, which is why, you know,

Paul can make his argument like, don't go back to the shadows. You know, the substance is here. The body's here.

Which is essentially what the author of Hebrews is saying as he's talking to these persecuted Christians who are thinking about going back to the temple.

And he's like, there's nothing to go back to. Yeah. Right? The substance has come. The shadow has passed away. That's exactly right.

We have the new and better covenant. Yeah. What does progressive revelation have to do with typology?

Oh, that's a good question. We understand that God is revealing truth progressively throughout redemptive history.

Not that what he reveals earlier is untrue and what's later is now true. He's just filling it up to where we have a more complete picture of the truth over time.

We have to believe that God works that way and that he is providentially controlling everything that happens in redemptive history in order for typology to be real.

Because if God isn't designing it that way from the beginning, then it's not inherent in the text itself.

Does that make sense? Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So would you say that, and this is a genuine question, not a leading question,

I haven't really thought about this much, that the shadow of Christ, that the impression of Christ grows stronger and deeper throughout the

Old Testament, like kind of vague hints towards the beginning and then it grows stronger or is it pretty constant throughout?

No, I think it grows and I think it depends on what the type actually is. Okay. So let's take one and I won't be able to do this well off the top of my head, but the very first redemptive promise in the

Bible that we have, I bet you know where it is. Genesis 3. Yeah. Genesis 3, 15. The offspring of woman is going to come into the world.

He's going to suffer. His heel is going to be bruised, but he's going to triumph through his suffering.

He's going to bruise the head of the serpent, right? Well, from that promise on, now we're reading our

Bibles looking for this offspring of woman. Looking for the serpent crusher. Yeah. Where is the snake crusher?

You know, we want to see this and we begin to see that idea of offspring of woman and triumph through suffering begin to be developed through Scripture.

I just mentioned 1 Samuel. I think that's what's going on with David and Goliath. You know,

Goliath is described as wearing - Scaly armor. Scaly armor. The word in Hebrew is the word for scales and he is the representative of the enemies of God.

He is the evil one standing there before God's anointed. And David doesn't just kill him.

What does he do? Cuts his head off. Crush the head of the serpent. Yeah. I mean,

I think we're meant to see an echo of an earlier promise in what happens in the David and Goliath story.

Right. I'm thinking about that and I'm preaching through Exodus and Brian Morales - Yes. Or excuse me,

L. Michael Morales. Yes. You know, he makes the argument that the Pharaoh with a symbol of the serpent on his head is, you know, he's the serpentine representative.

And then throughout the rest of the Old Testament, it talks about him being the dragon that's cast down to the bottom of the sea when he's drowned in the -

Yeah. You know, so you're right. You see that all throughout, yeah, the Old Testament. No, you don't see that same kind of development and progression with all of the typology of the

Old Testament, but some you do. Some of it's more static. Some of it sort of grows all throughout.

It gets stronger and stronger and stronger until like the tension is at a - Yeah. It's at a peak. You're like, oh man, the

Savior has to come. Yeah, I mean, you get to the end of the Old Testament. It's a cliffhanger. You're just like, where's the offspring of woman? I mean, we've seen little hints of this along the way, but where is the decisive person sent from God?

I think the illustration that I once heard that has helped me most when thinking about Christ in the

Old Testament is thinking about like a dimly lit room. Yeah. If you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, for example, and you have to walk through, and maybe there's a little bit of moonlight coming through the window and you can barely make out the contours.

Yeah, the shadows. That's right. And then when Christ comes, you might bump into something here or there, but you basically know your way through, but then the light turns on and you can see everything with vivid clarity.

Yes. But it seems like to fill that out even more, you would say that in many ways as you walk through the

Old Testament, it's almost like as you move through the room, there's a dimmer switch that's slowly turning up.

Yes. Slowly turning up. I think that's right. Yeah, and then Christ comes and boom. Yeah, it's all on. And I want to follow up with that by saying that furniture is there just because you couldn't see it in clear detail.

I want to work against this idea that we're reading Christ back into the text and placing him there where he isn't there.

No, all the furniture God put there is there. We're intended to read the Bible this way.

I just think that's important. That's good, brother. Narrative progression. Yes. The final way to apply

Christ in the Old Testament or to interpret Christ. Talk to us about that. These are the stories. There's a lot of great stories in the

Old Testament, but the way that I read the stories growing up is the way I think a lot of people think about the stories of the

Old Testament. They're loosely connected or not even connected except they're in the

Bible, and they're just individual exciting stories about people being faithful to God or being unfaithful to God and seeing what

God did and his power, and they stir you. Jonah and the fish or Daniel in the lion's den,

David and Goliath. These are awesome stories. What we fail to realize and we need to realize if we're gonna understand

Christ in the Old Testament is that these stories are all part of a big story. They're not loosely connected just by virtue of being in the same book.

They are all the backstory to Jesus himself. Like all of these narrative stories are running along the lines of redemptive promises that come to fulfillment in Christ.

Like any good story has a problem. So I've told my kids growing up as they think about stories, like you've gotta have a problem if there's gonna be a good story because you wanna feel that tension and you're hoping to see resolution.

That's how the Old Testament stories work. The problem is that the redemptive promises of God are usually being threatened in some way.

Like how is God gonna bring the ruler into the world through a barren woman?

How is God gonna bring a ruler to the world through Jacob who's a deceiver? In the book of Exodus, Pharaoh was trying to eradicate the seed, throwing babies in the river.

What's gonna happen? How's God gonna fulfill his redemptive promises with Pharaoh and his murderous rage or Haman who wants to wipe out the entire race of the

Jews? All the stories have that big kind of threat to them. And if God doesn't resolve them, then his promises fail and Jesus doesn't come into the world.

It was a number of years ago, probably 10 years ago, do you remember how popular superhero movies were?

Every superhero had to have a backstory movie. Like we need to know where they came from. The Old Testament is the backstory to Jesus.

Like all of those stories are moving us toward the person of Christ coming into the world.

And here is the fulfillment. His name is Jesus. Wow, that's so good, brother. Okay, let's shift gears a little bit.

You give us three R's in relation to interpreting the Old Testament.

Retain, retool, and retire. Let's go through those one by one. Retain. Yeah.

Retain is to keep something. And I think a lot of the things that we would read in the

Old Testament are retained as they come into the New Testament through fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Go to the first commandment in the

Old Testament. You shall have no other gods before me. Well, does the gospel change that in some way?

No. No. I mean, that's fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He dies for people who have other gods before God.

And he fills out who this one God is that we're supposed to give our solitary worship to.

Jesus fulfills that command. Well, here's something we shouldn't retain. You ready? The Sabbath.

Can we hold off on that one? All right, okay. I'm trying to stir the pot, dude.

I'm happy to talk about that. But as that command now comes into our life, and we still hear the apostles picking it up, saying, keep yourselves from idols.

There's only one God. Worship him only. Yeah. The gospel doesn't change anything about how that is applied even in the

New Covenant. So it's retained. Let's do Sabbath. Yeah, let's do

Sabbath. That's an example of something that gets retooled. And however you want to explain how it gets retooled,

I think most evangelical Christians would say, yeah, it's been retooled. The very fact that Christians would no longer observe the

Sabbath on the Sabbath, that they would call it a Christian Sabbath now, like the

Lord's Day, Sunday. They've seen a retooling of those Old Testament truths, right, in Christ.

Yeah, so I think the Sabbath has been retooled. I think all of that was a type and a shadow,

Paul says in Colossians 2, pointing us to our rest, who is now in personal form, his son,

Jesus Christ. Book of Hebrews, same thing. Yeah, he is our rest. So that Paul can say in Romans 13, some people honor one day as special, others consider every day alike.

Let each person be convinced in his own mind. This has become an indifferent matter. Whether you keep the

Sabbath on the Sabbath or a Sunday or you don't keep it at all, as long as you're finding the fulfillment of it in your life, you're resting everything in Jesus Christ.

He's the fulfillment. Well, I'm trying to think, should we dig into Sabbath more?

No, that will get us off track. Thank you, I think you handled that diplomatically. I think our Presbyterian brothers and our

Sabbatarian brothers and our Baptist brothers would say, wow, he really handled that well. I don't know,

I kind of doubt that. Well, I mean, you navigate it. It's so controversial. People get, yeah, pretty up in arms about it.

Actually, let's get into a little bit. My view is that of the 10 commandments, people would say, well, you can't just take one of the commandments and say that it no longer applies to us today.

And I would say, I agree with you. I don't say that it no longer applies to us today. I think the principle, the need to have a day of rest and dedication to the

Lord continues, but it's been fulfilled in Christ. And all those who trust in Christ are in their

Sabbath rest. With a future final rest to come. That's right, yeah.

There's that double, maybe even triple fulfillment. Well, I mean, to add to the controversy here, since we're wading in,

I think the problem with that view comes from dividing up the law into moral, civil and ceremonial categories, which

I totally understand those categories. They can be helpful. They can be helpful. I'm not completely opposed to those categories, but we need to acknowledge the law is not written that way.

I mean, not even the 10 commandments function that way. You can't just put them all in a moral category.

There's civil ramifications to keeping some of these laws. Or you take the ceremonial laws.

All the ceremonial laws have moral implications. Yes, absolutely they do. So we need to acknowledge that the law is given to us as a whole and Jesus has fulfilled it as a whole.

Yes. Amen, brother. But when you say that matter indifferent, what you don't mean as a matter of Christian conscience,

Christians can disagree on it, what you don't mean is that there's no theologically correct view. Right.

So we would say that, I think, we would agree that the theologically correct view is that all of the holy days of the

Old Testament were pointing forward to Christ and they've been fulfilled in Christ and therefore there is no longer a liturgical calendar.

I would agree with that. Nevertheless, Christians who still want to celebrate one day as special or holy are free in the

Lord to do so. That doesn't mean it's the correct view, but they're free to do that. That's right. Yeah, okay. And then let's go to the third

R, retire. Yeah. Can you say that? We should retire some things from the Old Testament?

Are we Muslims? Do we abrogate? He said it. Prove it right now. Yeah. Well, take the food laws.

You know, Jesus is teaching about the food laws and essentially upends them and I think it's in Mark's gospel.

Mark includes that little parentheses. It's like, thus Jesus declared all foods clean.

Okay. Peter picks up on later in the book of Acts. Yeah, Acts chapter 10. The sheep coming down with all the unclean animals.

Peter's like, I've never eaten anything, which is an amazing statement to me. It's like nothing's entered Peter's mouth that was unclean, but that's what he says.

And that's indicative of the fact that God has now declared people's clean. You know, those food laws, which separated

Jews from Gentile fellowship, that's been taken down because the gospel is going out to all nations now.

You know, that barrier is removed. Yeah, this is a retired Old Testament truth. Like if you were a

Christian pastor and you get to a place in the Old Testament that has dietary restrictions, dietary code, and you preach it as if it is in effect today for Christians, you are not preaching the

Bible the right way. We don't live under the Old Covenant. That has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ and set aside.

It's retired. That doesn't mean there's no preaching value for it. Yeah, we can still derive gospel principles from that to preach and encourage our people.

Just like we did with the mixed fabric thing earlier. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk a little bit about why it was retired. Yeah. God's holy people under the

Old Covenant received God's holy law to be an administration to them in His holy place, the

Holy Land, right? But when Christ came and fulfilled that, and, you know, we can talk a little bit more,

I guess, about what all of that looks like, what do you do with the Holy Land and all that stuff, but when all of that was fulfilled, all of that, there's no need for that anymore.

Do you want to fill that out? Yeah, I mean, can we go to Acts 10? Please do, yeah. Yeah. I think the food laws and the

Gentiles are tied together. And what I mean by that, as I'm looking for Acts 10,

I know it's in here somewhere. It's got to be there. Yeah. Are you reading from the

Passion Translation? I don't even know what that is. Oh, okay. So the vision that Peter has occurs in Acts chapter 10, and his explanation of it to Cornelius's household happens in chapter 11.

No, this is chapter 11 is when he's reporting back to Jerusalem what had happened. Okay.

I think it's interesting in verses 10 and 11 of Acts 11. 11, okay. He says, this happened three times and all was drawn up again into heaven.

So the three times was the vision of these unclean animals coming down on a sheet. Happens three times.

Because he's thick. Yes. He really needs to hear it again and again. Oh, don't you love Peter? I love

Peter. Yeah. So this happens three times. And then verse 11, Peter says, and behold, at that very moment, three men arrived at the house in which we were sent to me from Caesarea.

I don't think that's a coincidence. No. Yeah. In Peter's mind,

God has now forged this connection between the fulfillment of those dietary restrictions and the need for the gospel to go to the

Gentiles. I mean, under the old covenant, your food law observance kept you from table fellowship with Gentiles.

Just think about that in your everyday life. Like if you're on a diet, it can affect your fellowship.

So I'm on keto, I can't have bread. But if you're talking like, there's a whole world of food that you can't eat.

It's keeping you from a whole world of people. Yeah. But now in the gospel, which is going not just to the

Jew, but to the Gentile, God has fulfilled the food laws in Christ and is pushing his

Jewish believing people out towards the nations. And I think that's the connection and it's an awesome one.

Yeah. So good. Okay. You say that there are some problems we should avoid in preaching

Christ from the Old Testament. Yes. We'll walk through them one by one. Okay. Preaching Christ too narrowly.

Yeah. This is the whole idea that you can get so focused on Jesus Christ, which is a good focus to have.

We love our savior, but you can get so focused on him in preaching that you forget the

Trinity. Jesus is the son of God. There is a father and we've seen the father all through scripture.

And now we understand his fatherhood more completely because we see the son. Don't forget the father when you preach the son.

And the same goes with the Holy Spirit. If the father and the son pour out the spirit and it's the spirit of Christ who is bringing us to Jesus and to the father.

This is an urgency that I feel not to get so focused on Jesus that you forget the

Trinity. We have a triune God and yes, we're preaching

Christ, but we're preaching him because he is the one as the great high priest who brings us to the father and gives us the spirit for our daily communion with the

Lord. One of the things that I've heard before and I think it's right, and I'm wondering how it applies to what you're saying, because I agree with you, preach all of God from all of the scriptures, is that the father points to the son and the

Holy Spirit points to the son. I think Edwards talks about that at length, which if that's true, then that means that although we shouldn't forget the father and the

Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, that there should be more of an emphasis on the son. What do you think about that?

Well, I mean, I don't know what that means. Like, do you give them all equal screen time in the sermon? I don't think it means that really.

I think I would let apostolic preaching guide us here. Paul said things like,

I determined to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified and him we proclaim, speaking of Jesus.

Yeah, I think the preaching focus is Jesus and the gospel, but it's not for Jesus.

To the neglect of. Yeah, full stop. It's because Jesus is the one who brings us to God the father and Jesus is the one who gives us the spirit, which is called his spirit, so that we can commune with God and have power for living a resurrection life.

Yeah, that's good, brother. So your follow up book is going to be preaching the Holy Spirit from the

Old Testament? No, I don't think so. That'd be awesome. Okay, and then getting to Christ too quickly.

Yeah, this is what we talked about earlier, flattening the text. It's like we're so eager to preach

Jesus that we run right over the contours of what's happening in that preaching passage and we don't let it stand up in its 3D glory.

Let me ask you a question about preference. Because I noticed earlier your order of operations, you were talking about go to Christ and then circle back to some of the ethical imperatives.

I'm imagining that you think it's also possible to preach the ethical imperatives and then get to Christ.

Is there any kind of order of operations that you prefer when you preach Christ from the Old Testament?

No. No, just kind of whatever you're feeling in that text. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, either way is fine.

Okay, this one I thought - I think, you know, from a preaching point of view, it's like, what are you wanting to leave your people with?

Okay. Like, is it such a heavy text that you would rather end with its fulfillment in Christ and the gospel because that's what you want them to go out?

They need some comfort here because they're all struggling with this. Or is it something that your church, you don't feel like is doing a good job with as far as obedience?

Like, let's root that in the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then go after it.

Yeah. Leave them with that challenge. Yeah. Resting too lazily in Christ.

Yeah, this is similar. This is the idea that we would say, here's what the text is saying.

Good grief, Israel couldn't do that. We certainly can't do it. This is why we need a savior. Jesus has come.

He died for our sins. He died for this sin and rose again. And praise God for his grace. Yeah. Amen.

Amen. No. Which is good, but it's not enough. That's really good. And that's preferable to some other kinds of errors in preaching.

Yeah. But the text is there to call us to Christian obedience. The Old Testament text is there to call us to Christian obedience.

It's profitable to make us fully equipped as people of God. So yeah, we need to root our calls to obedience in the grace of the gospel, but then call people to obey.

Obey has gotten a bad, it's become a bad word, I think. It's like, obedience is not legalism.

And that's the way a lot of people think about it now. And it's just not the case. I mean, the Great Commission, we're responding to the gospel, being baptized in the triune name of God, and then we're learning what?

To observe all that Christ has commanded. We're really meant to obey our

Lord, but we do it in the grace that he has supplied. Amen, brother. What would be, and you may not have one, what would be your favorite place to preach

Christ from the Old Testament? And if that question is too big, maybe think about it like this.

If somebody said like, hey, I want you to come teach on this at RTS or something like that.

But then I want you to role model what this looks like. You've got one sermon to preach

Christ from the Old Testament and to show these seminary students what it really looks like. What would be the text that you would go to?

I would probably, I don't know what this says about my wiring, but I would probably pick one that was -

With the dwarves and the crushed testicles from Leviticus? That was my second choice. I would probably pick one that required typology, just because I don't think we hear a lot of that preaching.

We don't hear a lot of that preaching. And when we do, maybe it's been kind of kooky. I would probably pick one that had to do with typology.

And I would try to do that faithfully from the text where people can no longer not see what's actually there.

No text comes to mind? Well, David and Goliath could be one. Psalm 45 is about the king and his bride.

And honestly, I don't know how you could read that psalm and not come away seeing

Jesus in the church, especially because Hebrews chapter, it's one or two,

I can't remember. Hebrews quotes Psalm 45 as being fulfilled in Jesus.

He is the king that the sons of Korah were looking toward and his radiant bride beside him, who's bowing before him in homage, is his bride, his people, the church.

I think that's a beautiful typological psalm. Take you all the way to Revelation, the wedding feast.

On the spot challenge. Are you ready for this, Dave King? No. Oh, Sean, this is, okay.

Our viewers need to know, I did not send you any of these questions in advance. So you've had no prep time on this.

And if it's bad enough, we'll just cut it. Okay, well, that makes me feel better. How would you preach

Christ from the Proverbs 31 woman? How do you preach Christ? That is not at all what

I thought you were about to ask. It's not that bad. I need to go back and review my notes because I have preached through Proverbs.

I did a sermon on Proverbs 31. Oh, man, let's think about the six ways to Christ.

I mean, is there a prophetic promise in Proverbs 31? No, I don't think so. Is there a narrative storyline in Proverbs 31?

Not really. No? Is there ethical command? Yeah.

Yeah, that's what this is. It's describing what this kind of godly woman who fears the

Lord should be like. So, okay, well, here's a path to Christ along with fallen humanity, like what woman can fully live up to what's being revealed here?

We need the gospel, right? That's a way to preach Jesus. But circling back around through Christ, like how do

I apply this to the ladies in our church? Well, has the gospel retained, retooled, or retired this?

I would say it's largely retained what we see there. There's some retooling going on. Definitely not retired.

Definitely not. Yeah. I'd say it's probably a retooled passage in the gospel where we understand in light of Christ what a godly woman looks like, and we're using

Proverbs 31 to draw that out. I think that's how I'd preach it. Maybe even, ladies, if you read this and you feel guilty that you're not living up to this, you know, there's another path there.

There's gospel comfort there. Yeah. Yeah, you're almost always going to include that one as a preacher.

Yeah, that's right. I think you need to. Yeah, that's right. Just don't stop there. It wasn't until I became a pastor that I realized how much people suffer under the weight of guilt.

Guilt and shame. And shame when they hear ethical commands in the

Bible because they know. They know they don't live up to it. Women in particular, when they read the

Proverbs 31 woman, whereas I think men, if there was a Proverbs 32 thing for men, we would just spend the rest of our lives being like,

I'm chasing that. But I found so many women sort of wilt under this idealized woman.

It's like the mother that they could never be kind of a thing. And so you've got to come in and you've got to say, like, gospel comfort.

Yeah, you would probably, with that in mind, and I think you're exactly right, you might even structure your sermon where you're doing gospel comfort as you head into those commands, and then you're coming back at the end with gospel comfort.

Make some gospel application really clear. Call them to obedience, but bookend it with the grace of Jesus.

That could be helpful. Can you say Jesus is the true and better Proverbs 31 woman?

No. No, I don't think so. That was a test.

You pass. Okay. Ten benefits of preaching Christ from the

Old Testament. Give me one or two or even three sentences. We're going to go through these rapid fire. Ten benefits of preaching

Christ from the Old Testament. Bigger Bible. Yeah, now

I can pick up all 66 books of the Bible and preach Jesus Christ.

It's all for the benefit of our Christian discipleship. Smaller Bible. It's one book now.

You know, before I got my head around this 20, 25 years ago, man, it was just disjointed.

I didn't understand how it all fit together. And then once you see Christ, it's like, oh my goodness, the

Bible just got smaller. It's all about him. You know, there's one big story here. One story instead of trying to understand 66 different stories.

Deeper love. Oh, man. I mean, Jesus is the one we love, even though we have not yet seen him and we have joy in him, inexpressible, filled with glory.

If I can see more of him through the first two thirds of my Bible, then show me

Jesus, please. The more you can behold him, the more you'll love him. A pure message.

Yeah. I mean, if you are not preaching Christ from the Old Testament, you're preaching something from the

Old Testament. You know, morality apart from Christ. Is that what you really want to do?

I'm not going to cut it. A manual for civic religion. That's a whole other topic. But just taking the

Old Testament principles, divorced from Christ and fulfillment in the gospel and trying to drop them onto a society today.

Health, wealth, prosperity stuff. I mean, if you don't preach Christ from the Old Testament, man, if you want me to preach health, wealth, gospel, give me the

Old Testament without Jesus. And I can find a lot of passages to support that. Yeah. A lot of prosperity preachers use the reciprocity principle, the curses and the blessings for Old Covenant Israel as their main go -to text.

Yeah. So a pure message with Christ. Now we're getting the pure gospel message.

Like, oh, okay. Yeah. A stouter evangelism. Yeah. I don't have to be preaching from the crucifixion narrative or the resurrection narrative or a sermon from Acts or a key verse from Romans in order to preach the gospel.

I can preach the gospel from any passage in the Bible if I understand how that passage is fulfilled in Christ.

And yeah, more evangelism now. You know, my favorite passage as of late to preach the gospel when

I go into the county jail is actually Genesis 1 and 2. This idea that, like, you weren't created to be in a cage like an animal, but you were created to be the vice regents of God, you know, his representatives on the earth.

But look what sin has done to you. But, like, God loves you, and he's made a way for you to be the kings that he created you to be.

And then you get to Jesus from there. I mean, you're so right. You don't have to be at the resurrection narrative to talk to people about the resurrection hope.

Yeah. It's so good. Greater maturity. Yes, the idea that if you're withholding nutrients from somebody, they're not going to thrive and flourish and grow.

And why would we withhold the Old Testament scriptures if they're able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?

Why would we withhold what our people need? They need to see Christ as he's presented in all of scripture.

That's what God has revealed, not just the New Testament. Freer holiness.

Yeah, this is the idea that the holiness to which we're called is rooted in the grace of Jesus who died and rose again for us.

You know, we're not working for our salvation. We're working out a salvation that has been graciously and freely given to us in Jesus.

So not the kind of holiness that Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for telling people to have, which is a burden.

Yeah, it'll crush you. A holier freedom. Free holiness, holy freedom.

Yeah, I like that. I see what you're doing there. I see what I'm doing. Yeah. This is the idea that in the grace that Jesus has secured for us, we are secure in the love of God because of what

Jesus has done. We are still called to obey. And we are meant to strive towards obedience, to discipline ourselves, to work towards it.

That's Bible language. We just do that in grace now. It's a freer holiness. Healthier church.

You can't have a healthy church that's not focused on Jesus Christ as the head. You just can't.

So, man, let's put Jesus front and center. He needs to be center stage in the life of the church and especially in the pulpit.

Amen, brother. And then number one, a nobler mission. Yeah, the mission is about Christ and His message going to the whole world.

It's not about thinking of missions just exporting a brand or our certain way of doing things in our cultural context.

No, we want Jesus to go to the nations. That's a nobler mission. Yeah, that's good, brother.

This book is so helpful and the little purple book as well. You're about to speak to, by God's grace, a bunch of local pastors in our area.

I've asked you to give a 30 -minute talk on this. I know that it's going to be useful for them. We got free copies for everyone in attendance,

I think, depends on how many people showed up. But, brother, thank you for doing this interview.

Let's end on the high note, the most important question that we're going to ask you today, and then we'll get into some fun questions.

But this is probably the most important one. Does a straw have one hole or two? I think the

Proverbs 31 question was harder. Right? I agree. So the answer is? I've never thought about this,

Sean. But common sense, just right off the rip. It's really one hole.

It's one hole. I've never thought about it, though. Is that the right answer? Of course.

But you wouldn't believe how many people say a straw has two holes. It's like your ring on your finger.

How many holes does that have? Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, thanks. I know. Tea or coffee? Definitely coffee.

Favorite sitcom? I don't watch sitcoms. Favorite TV show?

I don't watch TV. I used to, back in the day, like Seinfeld. And then it kept getting,

I think it ran off the rails for me as a Christian. Okay. You're trapped on an island.

My arm is getting tired from holding up this microphone. It's like arm day with this little microphone. Think about Moses holding up the staff.

That's why he needed Aaron and her. You're trapped on an island. You can only have the access to the preaching of one of these men.

Sproul, Piper, Keller, MacArthur, Dever.

Who do you choose? I would pick Piper. Although I like the preaching of everybody you just mentioned.

I've benefited from all of them. But you're on an island alone. I'd pick Piper just because that's where, he was very formative in my

Christianity back in the 90s when I got a copy of Desiring God and just kind of all went from there.

I'm just blessed through his preaching. What about books? You can only have books from one of those men.

I'll remind you who they are. Dever, Piper, Keller, Sproul, MacArthur. One of those men?

Yeah. You can only have access to one of their corpus. Like all of Keller's books, all of Piper's books.

It's tricky because some people say all of Piper's books are really just the same book. He would say that.

He would say that, right. All of my sermons are the same. I just package them differently. Would Dever, you have like his overview of the whole

Bible? That is so helpful. So good. Yeah, Message of the Old Testament, New Testament, plus all the ecclesiology stuff.

But you're by yourself on an island. By yourself on an island. I don't need the ecclesiology stuff, right? With Keller, you have a lot of the classics,

Prodigal God. You do. I think I'd take Sproul though. He wrote on so many theological subjects with such clarity and a devotional aspect as well.

I think I'd pick Sproul. Favorite fiction author.

Do you read fiction? I've read a lot of fiction in the past, not recently. Like Goosebumps?

No, I'll tell you my favorite, Arthur Conan Doyle. I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Arthur Conan Doyle? Yes, sir. Give that man his respect. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I loved the

Sherlock Holmes stories. They were so fun. I got to say, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island was just a joy to read as a kid.

Yeah, so fun. Mountains or beach? Mountains. Champagne or wine?

I don't drink alcohol. Yeah, me neither. But you'd be surprised how many sinners I have on this show.

I'll tell you, if I did, it would be wine for sure because all that Budweiser stuff,

I can handle that. So you don't drink soda? I like Coke, but I don't drink it. I can't stand the flavored water stuff.

What is that stuff called? Carbonated water? Yeah, but there's a bunch of different kinds. I want to like it.

They package it so well. It's like, oh, it's so good. And it's just like, oh, I can't stand it. It tastes terrible. Least favorite candy?

Licorice. Red or black? Black. This guy gets it. It's nasty. It's disgusting.

Favorite candy? Can I say two? Yeah. Candy candy, like sugar candy,

I would say Nerd Clusters. Have you ever had those? Oh, man, I love those. But peanut

M &M's too. Like if I could only have one. Is that a candy? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Peanut M &M's.

I mean, there's a legume inside of that candy, but we'll count it. OK. That's one of those candies for you,

I'm guessing. If you're left in a room alone with a bowl of those things, you're going to be in trouble. Oh, yeah. I'm going to hurt myself.

That's like me and Reese's Pieces. Like, don't leave me because I'll eat them one at a time and pretend they don't count.

Yeah. You know, if you just take the small enough bites. Android or iPhone? iPhone. Still, nobody has ever said

Android. This is incredible. Macaroni salad or potato salad? Potato.

Foie gras or escargot? I've never had either. If you had to have only one?

The first. Yeah. You're going for the fatty liver. Night out or night in?

In. Concert or football game? Football. Morning person or night owl?

I've definitely been a night owl, but that's maybe kind of changing later in life here. I'm finding that is a pretty common answer.

Yeah. Yeah. You don't look a day over 50, though. How old are you? Thank you, 53. There you go. Burger King or McDonald's?

Burger King. Nice. Quick. Is it the Whopper that doesn't? It's flame broiled. Come on.

And you can get onion rings? Come on. But their fries are so bad. I think they've changed them.

Don't try to defend Burger King fries on any grounds. Mexican or Italian?

Mexican. They are your least favorite race? Oh, you were thinking about food.

I was thinking about food, yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. Burgers or barbecue? Burgers. Nice. I like how quick.

Dude, you're a decisive man. He knows what he's about. Chinese takeout, not the good stuff.

I'm talking like bad 2 a .m. Chinese takeout or sushi. I'd do Chinese takeout.

I'd be a hibachi chicken or something. Yeah. Cold or hot? Hot. Rock or rap?

I do like both, but rock, yes. Classical or jazz? Classical. Trapped on an island with only one systematic theology for the rest of your life?

Oh, shoot. I've loved. I mean, do you agree with everything in every systematic theology?

No, of course not. That's the caveat. I've loved Wayne Grudem's. It's so accessible, so clear, very thorough.

Yeah. John Frames is fun to read, though. I'd still probably take

Grudem. It's funny. You listed the two guys who are kind of coming under fire as of late, but I agree.

I mean, yeah. What hymn do you want to be sung at your funeral?

Oh, there's so many that I would be happy with. I'm not going to care at that point, right?

Before the throne of God above? I think that would be a great one. Yeah. That's what you're going to be. And I think we'll call it there.

Dave King, thank you so much, brother. I think this episode has been really edifying, and I hope it'll be helpful for the church.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for giving us yourself, and thank you for giving us yourself in your word, and thank you for making your word clear to us.

Thank you for giving us the help of your Holy Spirit to give us the ability to not just exegete passages in the

Bible, to not just make sense of the grammatical historical elements that we find there, but to actually see you, to perceive you, and to receive you by faith.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for helping us to do that. Father, we pray that your name will be glorified as more and more people come to see

Christ in all of Scripture. We pray for the pastors who will be helped by this resource, and we pray for the church members as well.