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. That would have been

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. 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, and 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, you know, what does this mean?

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. That particular girl went on to marry a strong Christian guy and was 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, 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, 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. It's like, oh, I hope they don't want to change this title. Well, kudos to you, man. Such a great title. So provocative and so true. That's 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 gonna do, you know, but I think that this episode is gonna 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 gonna 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. Amen. All right, now I've set this up. Expectations are high.

Christ in the Old Testament Is Personal, Not Merely Academic

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, right? 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 informed his teaching. Like, 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. Yeah. 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.

Who This Book Is For: Pastors and People in the Pew

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 gonna 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. 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, like my church gets it. We're doing it right. Right. Is that 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. Like 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 just, 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 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, like there's a whole nother, like there's some, there's so much more here, and I haven't been getting that, and one of the first things that they think of doing, it's 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.

Yeah, yeah. 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 opened to maybe some new ways of looking at Scripture.

If you can't, then at that point, yeah, maybe the Lord's gonna 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.

Right. Like when you really come to see like the depth of grace, yeah, it can be hard to stay in the same church. Yes, you can. You know, but I know, I know people who have done it. They've said, I love these people.

I love these pastors. I'm committed here. Yeah. You know, we'll figure out a way. Yeah. So anyways, Dave King trying to get people to leave their churches. And then, and then the third category, I think would just be for the, 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, 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, for any church member. Hey, can I mention the little booklet? Please. Did I read it? It just came out. Hold it up to the camera if you, if you can. Yeah. This is the little booklet in the church matter series, church question 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 it exactly what you're saying. I did not write this for preachers and teachers.

Okay. 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.

Yeah. 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.

So 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 to, except when I got to the end of my sermons because I would always tack Jesus on to the end because I'm a Christian preacher, you know.

Amen. 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, 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, that you're working on in such a way that it would, 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. Yeah. 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 may be 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 and he never unpacks it, never elaborates, doesn't come back to it in his book. Yeah. 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 know, 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. You know, what, 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?

You know, 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.

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.

Very important. Very important. But you actually highlight a few other scriptures that I think kind of fly under the radar. Yes. In relation to this subject. So walk me through two of them. One is 2nd Timothy chapter three, 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, you know, 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 is telling Timothy. And it's that last little clause. In Christ.

In 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 going to be included in this.

There are some who are of the remnant who have believed this. And that happened to Jesus today. 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. Yes. 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. And 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. Like, 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 like special revelation from God like I went up on the mountain and now I know how to preach Christ.

Yeah. 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 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 Second Timothy text. Okay. And that's the more famous part. Okay. And that's where he goes on to say, all scriptures God breathed. And it's profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training, and 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. Yeah. That's good, brother. Second Corinthians 3, 12 through 16. Oh, that's a big passage.

Yeah. But you deal with it pretty significantly. You're welcome to read it or draw anything from it in particular. Please do. Yeah. I don't have that one memorized. Unreal. Crazy. I know. Luke, you said he was a fraud and you were proven correct.

Yeah. So, Second Corinthians chapter 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, there 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 Second 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 want to 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 going to 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.

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 of 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 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, you know, David and Goliath. And, you know, there's that passing comment, David picked up five stones and because people have to speculate, why did he pick up the five stones? And, you know, why not just one?

He just needed one, you know. Anyway, I have my thoughts on that. But I had heard somebody say, well, he picked up five because of Jesus. It's like, really? J-E-S-U-S. Five letters in Jesus' name.

Five stones in David's bag. It's typology. You know, 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 gonna 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 and answer 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 going to 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 want to 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 is doing is he's quoting 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. Yeah. That's a big one. Yeah. Okay. The second kind of fulfillment is ethical instruction. Yeah. Is this the easy one? You said prophetic is the easy one. Prophetic is obvious. Okay. 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. Hopefully. But man, don't bypass Jesus. Jesus read all of this and did it. He followed it.