Christ in All of Scripture

My bi-weekly women's Bible Study this year is studying a book called God's Big Picture, which is an "entry-level" biblical theology that traces the storyline of Scripture using the theme of the Kingdom of God. The author, Vaughan Roberts, is a pastor in Oxford, UK (and I attended his church Jan-March of 2001!), and he uses the classic pastoral approach of alliteration by describing the "chapters" in redemptive history with "P's" (the Pattern of the Kingdom, the Perished Kingdom, the Promised Kingdom, the Partial Kingdom, the Prophesied Kingdom, the Proclaimed Kingdom, and the Present Kingdom).

His book was reviewed several months ago by Nine Marks Newsletter, and this month they continue their focus on preaching biblical theology. A few noteworthy quotes:

“It is certainly not without significance that God has embodied the contents of revelation, not in a dogmatic system, but in a book of history, the parallel to which in dramatic interest and simple eloquence is nowhere to be found. It is this that makes the Scriptures speak and appeal to and touch the hearts and lead the minds of men captive to truth everywhere…It is this that brings the divine truth so near to us, makes it as it were bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, that humanizes it in the same sense that the highest revelation in Christ was rendered most human by the incarnation.”

Geerhardus Vos, in his inaugural address as Professor of Biblical Theology in Princeton Theological Seminary delivered on May 8, 1894; “The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (P&R, 1980), 23. *Quoted at the conclusion of the newsletter*

"Charles Spurgeon told his students a story urging them to preach redemptive history’s goal—Christ—from each passage: 'From every town, village, and little hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London… and so from every text in Scripture there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ. Your business is, when you get to a text, to say, ‘Now, what is the road to Christ?’ and then preach a sermon, running along the road towards the great metropolis—Christ.' The glory of God’s sovereign control over history is that he is the one who laid those roads to Christ. The glory of preaching is to find them. " - Andrew Davis