The application of biblical theology to expository preaching

Preface

The aim of this book is to provide a handbook for preachers that will help them apply a consistently Christ-centered approach to their sermons. While the main readership is theologically trained pastors, I am aware that there is a considerable body of lay preachers who may have had little or no formal training. I am therefore aiming to keep technical language fairly muted while at the same time providing necessary references and technical comments in footnotes.

While focusing on biblical theology I do not want merely to repeat what I've already published on the subject. Nevertheless, some basic exposition of what I understand the biblical-theological method to be and to yield must be included in order to give coherence to the book. In this regard I provide a number of diagrams to aid in conceptualizing the structure of revela-tion in the Bible. In part 1 my aim is to stand where the evangelical pastor--preacher stands and to ask the sort of questions that the preacher would ask about the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching. In part 2 I seek to apply the biblical theological method to the various genres of biblical literature, all the time with the preaching task in mind.

Among evangelicals there is a strange neglect of biblical theology even though it is, to my way of thinking, one obvious implication of the evangelical view of the Bible. Books on preaching abound, even books on "expository" preaching. Yet, apart from a few scattered references, there seems to be very little that takes up the function of biblical theology in the process of moving from the text to the hearer. ...

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CHAPTER 5

Was Jesus a Biblical Theologian?

Jesus' View of Scripture

Asking if Jesus was a biblical theologian may appear to be somewhat fatuous. I ask it in all seriousness because, if he was, then truly expository preaching must be guided by biblical theology. In chapter 4 I have considered Jesus as the focal point for a biblical theology of preaching. There is much more that could be said about his actual reported words and the techniques that, according to the Gospel authors, he employed as a preacher. In this chapter I want to look specifically at the way Jesus is recorded as engaging the text of the Old Testament and how he related it to himself. I will then look at the way this impacted on the preaching of the apostles. One of the aims of this chapter is to consider how the preaching and teaching of Jesus provide us with principles of a theological method that can inform our preaching. It seems eminently reasonable to suppose that Jesus, above all preachers, should understand the function of biblical theology in preaching.

Much of the current interest in the New Testament's use of the Old Testament is directed to the first-century Judaic influences on Jesus and the early Christians. This may indeed help us to understand some of the exegetical methods employed in the use of Scripture, but, in my opinion, there is a dan-ger in overlooking the distinctiveness of Jesus as the shaper of Christian thought and understanding. According to Luke 24:45 it was, after all, the risen Christ who opened his disciples' minds to understand the Scriptures, not their study of contemporary Judaism. Let us by all means tap into the wealth of background information to the New Testament found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic Judaism, but let us never forget that the testimony of the New Testament is that the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth forced a great gulf in biblical interpretation between Christians and Jews. The gospel interprets Judaism as a historical and religious phenomenon, not the other way round.

The evangelical view of Scripture's authority has rightly appealed to the evidence of Jesus' attitude to Scripture. Leon Morris provides a typical example when he states, "For the Christian the critical thing in this whole subject is the attitude of Jesus Christ. He is the norm for the Christian, and by definition the way he regarded Scripture is the Christian way." Morris goes on to point out that there is something rather inconsistent in claiming to be a disciple of Jesus while at the same time asserting that he was "seriously astray in his view of revelation." James Packer summarizes the position thus:
Jesus Christ, so far from rejecting this principle of biblical authority, accepted and built on it, endorsing it with the greatest emphasis and the full weight of His authority. And the authority to which He laid claim was absolute and unqualified.

Packer points us to the many places where Jesus endorses the Old Testament as the authoritative word of God. If he was mistaken here, can we have confidence in anything else that he claimed? The authority of Christ and the authority of Scripture stand or fall together. This fact of scriptural authority goes hand in hand with the question of Scripture's significance. An authoritative word must be rightly understood if it is to be obeyed and acted upon.

Jesus' View of Himself

1. The Fulfiller of Scripture

The preacher needs to be sensitive to the Christology of the New Testament. Its substructure lies in the Old Testament, while fuller expression is given to it both by Jesus and by the New Testament authors. This is not the place to try to give a comprehensive Christology, but we can at least mention a few of the salient points in the self-understanding of Jesus that demonstrate some of the principles of biblical theology.

A key point in this is that Jesus did not see himself as coming to eradi-cate the old and to establish something totally new. The gospel event is not de novo but is seen as the completion and fulfillment of all God's saving acts and promises in the Old Testament. Jesus again and again speaks of his role as fulfilling Scripture. We should note that while some of these passages are specific, there are real grounds for concluding that Jesus saw his role as fulfilling all of Scripture, not just the odd text here and there. The same conviction is clearly held by the Gospel writers and the apostles. Thus, having said that the Scriptures testify to him and that Moses wrote of him, Jesus refers to his previous teaching, "that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled."

2. The Son of Man

The most frequently used title of Jesus’ self-understanding is Son of Man, and he alone referred to himself by this title. It occurs some seventy times in the Synoptic Gospels. Is Jesus solely or even mainly dependent on Daniel 7 for his teaching about the Son of Man, or does he take this central figure in Daniel and fill it out with his own content? It should be noted that the NRSV translates the phrase in Daniel 7:14 as “one like a human being,” and thus by this interpretation of the Aramaic phrase it obscures the link with Jesus’ technical use of it. The vision of Daniel focuses on the way in which the godless power structures of human empires are destined to come to nought when all power and authority is restored to the saints of the Most High. This dynamic of the kingdom of God is the theme of the book of Daniel. George Eldon Ladd indicates three main areas or categories of Son of Man teaching in the Synoptic Gospels:

a. The Earthly Son of Man

Ladd suggests that in using the title Jesus was claiming, in his earthly minis-try, to be the heavenly, preexistent, manlike being of Daniel:
It was at the same time an unheard-of thing that the Son of Man should appear on earth as a man among men. How Jesus could be the earthly Son of Man in humility and lowliness and at the same time the heavenly, pre-existent Man was the essence of the messianic secret.

b. The Suffering Son of Man

The Son of Man in Daniel cannot be said to achieve his mission through suffering. Yet Jesus made it a point in his use of the term that "the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again" (Mark 8:31). Since the Son of Man in Daniel is the agent of the coming of the kingdom of God, the question of the relationship of this figure with the others involved in the kingdom in the Old Testament arises. Thus the king and the suffering servant come to mind. While this may have contradicted the contemporary Jewish expectations, it is quite consistent with the Old Testament. The note of suffering has already been injected into the history of David's rise and is developed in the Psalms, including Psalm 22 (a psalm of David). Ladd sees Jesus as having "consciously united in his person the two central concepts of the Jewish faith, barnasha (Son of Man) and ebed yahweh (the servant of the Lord)." This represents a radical reinterpretation of the Daniel figure by uniting distinct strands that would not easily be related in Jewish thinking.

c. The Apocalyptic Son of Man

This takes in most of the passages that quote the Daniel passage, and those that speak of the coming of the Son of Man and of his rule in power. A common interpretation is to apply these sayings to the second coming or parousia. However, the reference to those contemporaries of Jesus who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom suggests that we must also include the first coming. The ascension of Christ, which reflects the Daniel vision, perhaps gives us the clue (if we need one!) that both comings fulfill the expectation in ways that are the same and different. The ascent of Jesus into the clouds is followed by the angelic message that Jesus will return in like manner to his departure (Acts 1: 11).

We conclude from this that Jesus laid down firm biblical-theological principles in dealing with the Old Testament. He understood his relationship to the Old Testament as one of continuity and fulfillment. In taking a wholly unexpected path, from the point of view of Judaism, he laid claim to be the ultimate revelation that establishes for all time the correct way to interpret the Old Testament. He not only showed that contemporary Judaism was essentially on the wrong course but also demonstrated the radical point that the Old Testament simply cannot be understood apart from himself. We need to underline this principle as it will be important for the way we deal with the texts of the Old Testament in preaching. While it is true to a point that the Old Testament is needed to enable us to interpret the New, the overruling principle is that the gospel expounded in the New Testament is the definitive interpretation of all that the Old Testament was about.