If you could preach a series on any book in the Bible, which book would you choose?
I put this question to my class of 16 Kenyan pastors as part of a ‘get to know you’ exercise at the beginning of a two-week course in Nairobi last year. My guess is that if I asked the same question of a group of Australian preachers, the majority of us would answer with a book from the New Testament. Not that we don’t value the Old Testament or treat it as scripture, but for one reason or another, we are more comfortable preaching from the pages of the gospels or epistles.
Not so in Kenya. Of the 16 pastors, 14 said they would choose a book from the Old Testament, including six who said they would preach on Haggai! The obvious follow up questions was, “Why did you choose this book?” I started with the Haggai fans. They all said they loved Haggai because, like Haggai, they too were trying to build church buildings in the areas where they were working, and Haggai was such an inspiration to them. The other eight Old Testament fans went on to describe how their book of choice provided the strong moral examples and inspiring stories which the church in Kenya needed so badly as it struggled with issues of widespread corruption, poverty and mass HIV infection.
The course I was teaching was on the basics of biblical theology, aiming to help the participants think about the way in which the whole Bible fits together and is about God’s gracious actions to reverse the effects of human sin and establish a new creation. Of critical importance is how these divine actions climax in the ministry of Jesus Christ.
One of the major implications of biblical theology is that we need to read the Bible as a progressing, connected whole, rather than a series of disjointed or unrelated stories and characters. Ultimately, it means that we need to read the Bible through the ‘lens’ of Jesus, seeing how the fulfilment he brings affects the text we are reading.
The pastors in my Kenyan class had never heard of biblical theology, in name or in concept. When we talked about the idea of the Bible being a connected progression, the initial response was blank. This was quickly followed by excitement as they began to understand that God was not just active in individual moments and places throughout history, but that he was working constantly towards a goal: a new creation established by his son. They were also excited because this understanding brings about an enormous change in the way you read and think about the Bible. No longer is the Bible, especially the Old Testament, full of isolated good moral examples or inspirational stories for us to encourage our building projects with. It is full of Jesus.
During the two weeks in which I ran the biblical theology course, there were daily examples of ‘light bulb moments’ for students. For the first time, as they read a Bible passage, they saw it not as a brief encouragement or interlude, but as God working towards the salvation of mankind through his Son.
On the last day of the course I again asked my class to name their favourite book. The number of Old Testament fans and the number of Haggai fans remained unchanged. But this time their reason was completely different. They now love the Old Testament (including Haggai) because of how these books point to Jesus and the new creation. They explained that, as they preached from the Old Testament, their application would no longer head down the track of building works or instant social reformation. Instead it would promote hope and trust in Jesus, and praise for what God has done through the ages to save his people, climaxing in the death and resurrection of his son.
