The Message of the Old Testament

Promises Made

The undeniable emphasis that Jesus placed upon the Old Testament Scriptures is that they testify to Him. Of course they testify to all sorts of other things as well: godliness, faithfulness, the progress and regress of God's people, sinfulƯness, judgment, and so on. But Jesus, along with the apostles and the other authors of the New Testament, emphasized that the Old Testament, above all, is about Him. Why then is the first question we often ask about a passage in the Old Testament, "What does this tell us about ourselves?" Surely, the first and main question we should ask is, "How does this passage testify to Christ?" In this book, Mark Dever has undertaken a difficult and important task. He has set out to crystallize the message of each Old Testament book, and he has endeavored to show something of the Christian value of each book. These sermons should not be regarded as models for routine preaching from the Old Testament, for rarely would the preacher try to cover a whole book in one sermon. But they do provide broad perspectives on the way the books point to Christ and are fulfilled by him. The preacher will need to extrapolate the principles of preaching Christ from the Old Testament and apply them to the textual units that are more appropriate for expository sermons. - Introduction.