reading the old testament

I picked up the book The Message of the Old Testament by Mark Dever at the Desiring God conference this past weekend.

Today I opened it up and read the foreword and since I have been talking about this very thing for months and months at the church, I thought I'd share a little of what Graeme Goldsworthy had to say:

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?"

We must always begin with the latter question because Jesus Christ, the fulfiller of the Old Testament, is the one who alone defines the life of the Christian. If the Old Testament does not point to Christ, it does not point to the Christian either. For a sermon to be authentically and Christianly people-centered it must first be Christ-centered. We can learn much from the lives and experiences of the men and women, both good and bad, who come before us in the pages of the Old Testament. But, in the final analysis, only Christ can define how those individuals are good or bad. Furthermore, our Christian growth comes from becoming more like Christ, not more like Abraham or David or Daniel. These heroes of the Old Testament are examples for us only insofar as they foreshadow and point to Christ.

-joe