JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. Today, Jason is interviewed by Alan Stanley, a Bible teacher living in New Zealand. This was originally aired on Stanley’s podcast titled “Preach It.” In this conversation, Jason outlines seven ways to preach Christ from the Old Testament. The original podcast is over an hour, but we’ve cut it into two parts. This is the first part. We asked to re-present this podcast because we believe it will serve our listeners. It is our prayer that you may increasingly be able to see and celebrate Christ throughout his Bible, which was the Old Testament. Let’s jump right into the conversation.

AS: So we’ve done a few episodes addressing this specifically. Not every episode addresses this head on, but today we’re going to dive a little deeper and get into the nuts and bolts like we never have before, and look at the various ways in which the Old Testament allows us to preach Christ. And here to help us do that is Jason DeRouchie. I first came across Jason’s work in 2016-17 as I was preparing to teach a class on biblical theology and interpretation. He’d written a book on Old Testament and biblical theology, which I found really helpful for the class. And by the way, he’s a really clear writer. If you want to check out some of his books, very, very easy to read. Anyway, Jason, it’s great to have you. Please take some time just to introduce yourself and let us know who you are.

JD: Well, I am delighted to be a part of this podcast. I am Jason DeRouchie, a father of a table full—six children plus two sons-in-law. I have my first grandchild on the way, excited about that. My wife Teresa and I have been married for 28 years. I’ve been actively involved in academic ministry for—I’m now in my 18th year. I serve as research professor of Old Testament and Biblical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, MO. And I also serve as content developer and global trainer with Hands to the Plow Ministries, a small mission organization designed to help train global leaders in God’s Word and to care for physical needs. So that’s a little taste of me. I’m just delighted to be here today.

AS: Oh fantastic. Yeah, it’s great to have you. So today we’re going to, as I said, we’re going to dive a little deeper into this, preaching Christ from the Scriptures, and specifically the Old Testament because, you know, we could look at the New Testament but I want us to look at the Old Testament and to just offer some, I guess, practical helps to the preachers who, you know, they’re preparing their message. And I think the concept of preaching Christ is increasingly becoming, you know, a thing for people who haven’t perhaps heard of that, but the question always really is how do I do it, you know? And we don’t want to force connections obviously and we don’t want to do it just because it’s a thing to do. We don’t want to make this kind of mechanical move. What would you say? Where do we start with this? It’s a very general question and I’m leaving you all sorts of scope and where to go with it, but where would you suggest that one starts?

JD: I think it’s important first off to recognize that the Bible is a spiritual book given by God that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 will only be understood by spiritual people. That is, if we want to see Jesus as God intended him to be seen in the Old Testament, we need to approach the Scripture as believers who have encountered the risen Christ. As Paul describes him in 2 Corinthians 4, “the veil has been removed. The very God who said let light shine out of darkness has shone into our hearts and given us the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” So we seek to see Jesus because through him we encounter the glory of God, and we approach this task of whole Bible biblical theology—biblical theology I just define as: How is it that the whole Bible progresses and integrates and climaxes in Jesus? That’s our pursuit. But we have to approach the task as Christians with a humble heart, desiring to see and savor the beauty of Christ for the glory of God.

AS: I preached a sermon last year specifically along the idea of exactly what you’ve been talking about and treasuring Christ, as I said in the sermon, and making Christ our treasure. And a lady came up to me afterwards and said, “I’ve never thought about Christ as my treasure before.” And as I thought about that, I thought, yeah, that’s right. I think seeing Christ as someone to treasure is actually new for many people. Would you say the same? Have you come across things like that?

JD: I think so. I celebrate Jesus, but I recognized it was now a little over 17 years ago—I’ve been saved since I was five years old, so that’s 44 years right now of walking with Jesus. And yet I feel in so many ways, it was 17 years ago that I was awakened in a fresh way to the beauties of Christ. And it happened to be sitting as a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church under the preaching of John Piper. I encountered Jesus like I never had before in his beauty, in his greatness. Christ is someone to treasure, because only in him do we find life and in finding life we find joy and help. We find sustaining grace through the deepest trials and deepest darkness of this age, because he is ever present and he is ever faithful and he is ever able. And in such a context, it’s very reasonable to call him treasure. So I like that language to see Jesus, to savor Jesus, throughout all the Scriptures should be the desire of every preacher and should be the quest of every saint.

AS: Hmm. And beautiful. And I’ve said before too on this podcast that we become, I’ve used the word worship, but you can use a lot of different words, but we become like what we treasure. And so there’s a direct path between treasuring and transformation, yeah.

JD: That’s so true. I think of Greg Beale’s book—I don’t know if that’s what he’s called it—it’s a biblical theology of idolatry. And that’s absolutely right. I think of Psalm 115 that says you have gone after idols having eyes that don’t see, ears that don’t hear, noses that don’t smell, hands that don’t touch. And then it says what you revere, you will resemble. You become what you worship, whether for restoration or for ruin. And that principle is so true and oh, that God would help us treasure Christ, and we will find ourselves becoming increasingly like him, displaying his beauty, reflecting, resembling, representing him in increasing ways. To treasure Christ, to see him is to become more like him. May God help us.

AS: And I think, you know, as we’re going to dive into the practicalities of preaching Christ, but I think it’s good to just at the outset for listeners to know, for preachers to know that what we’re going to do here, this is not some kind of mechanical thing that we’re trying to engineer as in “Oh, we just have to preach Christ and we have to figure out how to preach Christ” and it ends up becoming like so many things, like, you know, some of the examples I started with the Lord’s Supper and so forth. Just this kind of going through the motions. That ultimately Christ is life. We believe that Christ is life-changing. And that’s why we preach him. There’s all sorts of great reasons for preaching, but ultimately it’s because he—like nothing else—will change us and transform us.

JD: I think of Paul in 1 Corinthians, how he addresses the church. Throughout that book, he uses the Old Testament numerous times. He cites his Bible. And yet what he says in 1 Corinthians 2:2 is so significant. “I resolved to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified.” He’s an Old Testament preacher, and yet declaring to the Christian Church, everything that I’m declaring has to do with Christ and him crucified.

AS: And he goes on 2 verses later to describe his preaching as empowered by the Holy Spirit. Which to me, which tells me that Spirit-empowered preaching is Christ-centered preaching. There’s a connection there. So, Jason, we’re gonna have a look at the Book of Genesis and just use that as a kind of model to bring out the various ways in which we can preach Christ in the Old Testament. So can you lead us? Take us back there and take us through the various ways in which we can see Christ, preach Christ from the Book of Genesis, and we’ll have some conversations as we go.

JD: Absolutely. Well, as we enter in, I mean we are going back to the beginning of the story literally—in the beginning. So it’s the start of history and what Jesus declares in Mark 1 is that with respect to history, he is the climax. After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. And this is what he was saying: The time is fulfilled—a time that reaches all the way back to Genesis—the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand.

All of Old Testament history points to Jesus. But not only that, the Old Testament predictions point to Jesus. I think of Acts 3:18—what God foretold by the mouth of all of his prophets, he has fulfilled that Christ would suffer. The predictions of every prophet were predicting the sufferings of the Christ. The law finds its ending in Christ—think Romans 10:4. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Or the promises all point to him. Indeed, 2 Corinthians 1:20—all the promises find their yes in Jesus. That’s the kind of framework that I’m approaching now the book of Genesis as we enter in—a second half that is also informing me is the fact that Jesus makes clear that within the law of Moses, we see Jesus. What Moses declared in the Pentateuch, the initial five books of our Bible, truly anticipate Christ. Think about what Philip said to Nathanael: “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the Prophets wrote about—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” We found the very one that Moses was anticipating. Or John 5:39 and 46 where Jesus says, “You Jewish leaders search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness about me.” And then he says, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me because that brother so long ago was writing about me.”

We get specifically into Genesis and John 8 when Jesus says in verse 46, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” That’s that savoring we’re talking about. That’s that delighting that we’re talking about. Abraham looked ahead through all the course and all the brokenness of this age and saw Jesus’ day and was glad. That’s how Jesus read Genesis and I hope that we can get a glimpse of that kind of reading as we move into this book. It provides a great case study. I anticipate there could be more ways that we could see and celebrate Jesus in the Old Testament, but I do have seven and as I worked through the Book of Genesis, I found examples of all seven. So we’re just going to cover those. I’ll just open up with the first one and you feel free to jump in at any point, alright.

AS: Sure. Yeah. I’ll just sit here and enjoy listening, so.

JD: As we approach Christian Scripture in the initial three-fourths of our Bible, we shouldn’t think that we’re going to see Jesus faithfully in every text the same way, so we need to be looking at every text and considering how is it that Christ is magnified here? Every bit of Scripture is blood-bought. What I mean by that is that when God wrote the Bible, he was writing it to sinners. And rather than wiping out the rebels, he gave them his word. And it’s through the living and abiding word that we encounter the saving work of Christ in our lives. So every story, every passage, just because it’s Scripture is already magnifying the beauties of Christ, but let’s begin. First way: see and celebrate Christ through the Old Testament’s salvation historical trajectories. A trajectory is an angle. It’s heading somewhere, and we’re talking about the angle or direction that the history, the saving history of the Old Testament is taking. The Bible’s entire story of creation and fall, redemption and consummation magnifies and indeed is centered on the greatness of Jesus. He’s the answer to all the world’s problems. He’s the substance of every shadow. He’s the yes of every promise.

So I was thinking in Genesis, we could plant anywhere because Genesis is a narrative book that finds its culmination in Jesus. We could talk about how Jesus is indeed the solution to the sin problem that’s caused in Genesis 3. We could consider him as the original creation, anticipating the new creation. He is the offspring of the woman who would strike the head of the serpent, but where I want to go is Genesis, chapter 12. It’s a foundational passage for all of Paul’s thinking about what’s happening in the church in light of Christ’s coming.

Genesis 12:1-3, it’s the commission given to Abraham when God calls him to leave Mesopotamia. This is what we read, and there’s two commandments—two commands given to Abraham, and we don’t always see them in our English texts, but it’s explicit in the Hebrew. The Lord said to Abram, “Go”—there’s the first commandment. “Go from your country, your kindred, your father’s house, to the land that I will show you in order that I may make you a great nation and may bless you and may make your name great.” Key command: go. And as he goes, he’s going to enjoy three blessings: nationhood, a name, and blessing.

Then we get the second command: “And there be a blessing. That I may bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, with the ultimate result being that in you all the families of the ground will regard themselves as blessed.” So we see these two commands and it’s indeed two stages. You have Abraham being called to go to a land where he will become a nation. But then there’s a second stage and it includes not just the one nation that we know of as old covenant Israel, but all the nations who will enjoy God’s blessing. But it will only happen when Abraham or his representative is a blessing. The command is, “Be a blessing.” Go to the land, become a nation, be a blessing with the ultimate result being that all the families of the earth will enjoy the blessing of God, that is, that the curse will be overcome on a global scale.

Well, we’re reading this text and we recognize that this is a picture of the flow of history. You have Abraham being the father of one nation—that’s old covenant Israel that makes up almost all of the Old Testament. And then we know that in Christ the blessing of God comes to the nations. That’s what Paul talks about in Galatians 3. The gospel was proclaimed beforehand to Abraham when it was proclaimed “through you shall all the nations of the Earth be blessed.” And so the story—that is his story, God’s story, history—is being laid out before us and we know Jesus is right at the center of it.

And so, as a preacher, I would see this text and I would see the trajectory that’s being set forth in salvation history, and I’d want to draw my people’s attention to that trajectory. That’s the first step. Jesus is at the center of that transformation. And we could go to a number of texts—and Galatians 3 is a key one where the promises were made to Abraham’s offspring, who is Christ, and if you are in Christ, you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. And so there we see that movement of Christ is the agent through which the blessing comes, and if you’re in him, Jew and Gentile alike, by faith enjoying the blessing that was promised right here and called the gospel by Paul right here in Genesis 12.

AS: So Paul goes back to Genesis 12 and as he reflects on that passage, it’s like, you know, if you’ve got a plane taking off in Genesis 12, he jumps on that plane and he travels to where he travels to the destination, which is not Abraham ultimately—that’s the beginning of the journey—not Israel ultimately, but Christ. And the blessing to the nations, the Gentiles, or anyone who is in Christ.

JD: That’s right. That’s right, yeah.

AS: So that’s the first step. That’s the idea of the trajectory. Seeing the story. What’s another one?

JD: This would be the one that most people would go to first: See and celebrate Christ through Old Testament direct messianic prophecies. So this is where you see an individual, often royal, male figure elevated as the one who will overcome the curse and be the channel through which the blessing will come. And what’s amazing is that we don’t have to go to Paul in order to see Jesus in Genesis. But Moses himself, in the way that he crafted Genesis, indicated that he himself was seeing this individual male descendant who would come and transform all the world.

So let’s just look at a couple texts. First, Genesis 3:15. This is the foundational direct promise of the Messiah, foundational in all the Old Testament. God, before he ever declares punishment on the man and the woman for their sin in the garden, confronts the serpent who is the embodiment of all that is evil, and is, as the rest of Scripture tells us, Satan himself in the garden, seeking to kill the very son of God, Adam, and thwart God’s Kingdom purposes throughout the world. God says, “Because you’ve done this, cursed are you. You’re going to be in the dust.” And then God says this: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. He, that is her offspring, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.”

Now, what’s important to recognize is that although this term offspring never is made plural in the Old Testament—you don’t hear the language of “offsprings”—you can have a single offspring or you can have many offspring. The grammar of the term doesn’t change at all, but the context can clarify through two key features. The type of adjectives that are used, and the type of pronouns that are used can clarify whether the pronoun is singular or plural.

In Genesis 17:8, God is going to promise the patriarch, “I will give to you and to your offspring”—there’s that keyword—“I’ll give to you and to your offspring after you, the land of your sojournings and I will be their God.” It uses a plural pronoun indicating that the offspring of Abraham in that text is plural. But in this text, the offspring, the pronoun is singular—explicitly singular. “He—the offspring of the woman—will bruise your head serpent. And you will bruise his heel.”

We’re envisioning a battle between two individuals and because this individual will bruise the head of the serpent, the implication is that he will get a death blow. And if that serpent is the very instrument through which the curse was brought on the world, the implication is that the curse will go in reverse—blessing will overcome it. And if he was the one who brought death and destruction to creation, then when this individual shows up, he will be bringing new creation.

Indeed, what Adam was originally called to do—rule, subdue, have dominion—and then he failed to do so and gave his rule over to the serpent such that the devil can be called by Jesus “the god of this world.” he’s the one who’s reigning in this age, but the day is coming, says Moses, when one will come and do what the first Adam was supposed to do. That is, he will image God and overcome this one who brought curse and, by implication, initiate new creation, and with that, all that God intended for humanity from the beginning. This is a direct prophecy about the Messiah. And that’s why throughout church history, Genesis 3:15 has often been called the first gospel.

AS: Hmm. So what we’re looking at there is right from the outset, we have this individual figure who’s going to come and crush the head of the serpent. Do you think that—and perhaps think of just imagine ourselves as a first-time reader—do you think that the intention is perhaps, well, the idea is that as we go through the Old Testament we’re almost asking ourselves, is this the one? Is this the individual? Do you think that? I mean, wouldn’t that be almost an expectation of that, as we turn the pages?

I remember going through—I took a Chinese lady, actually many, many years ago, she wasn’t a believer, and she was in Australia where I was living at the time and she wanted to understand the West, the western mindset, and she thought that understanding Christianity would help her understand that. Anyway, so she eventually got put on to me through friends and so I took her through the Bible. And so she’d never had any experience with the Bible before. And we got to Genesis 3:15 and it’s fascinating because after that it was—is Abel the one? Is Noah? She literally didn’t know. Do you think that there’s almost that sense in which we’re to read the Bible along those kind of lines?

JD: I think there’s totally that sense. It’s balanced by this reality. By the time we get to Deuteronomy, Moses actually says to his audience, “You’re stubborn. You’ve been rebellious since the day I knew you. How much more after my death?” And he lays out in that book a grand vision of salvation history that is more specific than what we see here in Genesis because it includes the exile. And it says that it’s only after Israel’s exile that God will change the hearts of the people so that they can hear or listen.

But what’s intriguing is that it’s in Deuteronomy 18 that God says, “I’ll raise up a prophet like Moses, and to him you will listen.” So Deuteronomy 30, which promises that after the exile, God will return Israel and sometime thereafter circumcise—that is, transform—their hearts to love him with all so that they will hear his voice and obey, that prediction in Deuteronomy 30 is then linked to the promise of a prophet like Moses in Deuteronomy 18 because both of them include the testimony Israel will listen. But Moses’s audience, he said, “God hasn’t given you ears to hear,” and they were not listening.

So my point is that there is that sense—is Noah the one? Is Moses the one? Moses goes head-to-head with the Serpent King. I could argue that if we were talking about Genesis, that Pharaoh is portrayed as an offspring of the serpent, and that Moses is the agent through which the Serpent King and his kingdom are overcome. And therefore the prophets, when they look back at Pharaoh being drowned in the sea, says the dragon was destroyed in the heart of the sea. But Moses wasn’t the one. He was merely a foreshadow of the one.

I also think of David. Before I get to David, Saul—Saul’s only major significant victory was against the king whose very name means serpent. It’s identical to the term from Genesis 3. He defeats the Serpent King, and immediately after that is the fall narrative. Nahash is the term—he defeats Nahash the king, but his name by its essence means serpent. But immediately, Saul’s fall narrative comes to signal to the reader he’s not the one.

Then David. The final battle it mentions in his section of Samuel that is positive and good is he defeats the son of Nahash—that is, the offspring of the Serpent King. He defeats him and immediately after that we get David’s fall narrative. It’s like setting up the reader, just like you’re saying. Is David the one? And the author of Samuel is telling us—like he’s crafting the story to remind us of Genesis 3:15 and yet also crafting the story to let us know David’s not the one. Keep looking ahead.

JY: Thanks for joining us for GearTalk. If you have any questions about biblical theology you’d like us to address on future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Also check out handstotheplow.org for resources designed to help you understand the Bible and its teachings.