It is possible to turn a text into a springboard, as an opportunity to say what the preacher really wants to say. This is a genuine danger in all forms of topical preaching when the text of Scripture does not govern and drive the sermon. Preachers have been known to pass over the original intent of the human author of Scripture, to pass over the message of the text in its original social and churchly context, and to pass over the sense of the text in the flow of the immediate biblical context. I have seen this done under the guise of “preaching Christ from all of Scripture” but I have also seen this done in the interests of applying the text to the congregation’s Christian experience or to their ethical life.

In recent days there has been considerable discussion about what it means to speak of “preaching Christ from all of Scripture.” Some object to this way of speaking and this approach to Bible interpretation on the grounds that it does violence to the true meaning of Scripture. For those within Dispensationalism, there are two peoples of God, an earthly people (Israel) and a heavenly people. As they read Scripture, there is a genuine sense in which God’s promises to national Israel are the center of Scripture. In this view it is held that God intends to restore national Israel, including the temple and the sacrificial system. Thus, according to most forms of Dispensationalism, those promises of an earthly kingdom are thought to be the norm by which all the rest of Scripture must be understood. Another objection is that the project of preaching Christ from all of Scripture does not do justice to the particular text at hand, that it neglects the specific contribution of this text before us to the unfolding story of Scripture. Still another objection complains that “preaching Christ from all of Scripture” tends to give short shrift to the ethical demands of Scripture. Sometimes, they argue, the text is really about us and our growth in godliness.

Let us define our terms. What does it mean or what should it mean to speak of “preaching Christ from all of Scripture”? There are versions of this approach that, because of the desire to lead the congregation to Christ, probably do not do justice to particular texts of Scripture. It is possible to turn a text into a springboard, as an opportunity to say what the preacher really wants to say. This is a genuine danger in all forms of topical preaching when the text of Scripture does not govern and drive the sermon. Preachers have been known to pass over the original intent of the human author of Scripture, to pass over the message of the text in its original social and churchly context, and to pass over the sense of the text in the flow of the immediate biblical context. I have seen this done under the guise of “preaching Christ from all of Scripture” but I have also seen this done in the interests of applying the text to the congregation’s Christian experience or to their ethical life.

Properly understood, to preaching Christ from all of Scripture is a godly, biblical, and true goal of preaching and properly understood it requires the preacher to pay close attention to the original language and contexts of the passage at hand as well as the broader context. Preaching Christ from all of Scripture means that the preacher must discipline himself and the sermon to let the text before him govern not whether it leads us to Christ but how.

This brings us to the problem of Dispensationalism and what we might call an Israeleo-centric way of reading Scripture (hermeneutics). This is a nineteenth-century theological system that has been popular since the early part of the 19th century. Nevertheless, it is not the historic Christian approach to reading Scripture. For most of the church prior to the rise of Dispensationalism, such an approach would have been described as “Judaizing.” Indeed, those approaches that did seek to restore the types and shadows (Col 2:17; Heb 8:5; 10:1) of the Old Testament were regarded as Judaizing in the sense that they did not properly recognize the progress of redemptive history and revelation.

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