In order to read and preach the Bible as Peter and Paul and the preacher to the Hebrews did, what we need is not a foolproof step-by-step procedure to follow; rather, it is a way of viewing the Scripture and its witness to what God has done, is doing, and will do to redeem and recreate his people and his kingdom. . . . The God who creates, reigns, redeems, and judges in history, and who speaks in Scripture, abounds in surprising ingenuity, but he is also a wise planner who works by pattern and gives human beings, created in his image and recreated in the image of the Son, glimpses into the patterns of his planning. Long before he sent his Son to bring rescue in “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4), he sovereignly designed events, institutions, and individual leaders to provide foretastes of the feast, whetting Israel’s appetite for the coming Savior and salvation. Israel’s historical experiences of blessing and judgment, weal and woe, also prepared a rich symbolic “vocabulary,” embedded in the dust and blood of real history: concepts and categories pre-designed to articulate the sufficiency and complexity of Jesus’ saving work.
Dennis Johnson | Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures, ed. John J. Hughes (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 198–199.
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