“In many seminaries and training courses for preachers and teachers, this passage has become a proof text for preaching from the Old Testament.
It’s become a major emphasis for pastors to preach Jesus from the Old Testament.
People who speak on preaching to preachers often choose to speak about this, and that is all well and good. There are even books that will tell you how to preach Christ from virtually anywhere in the Old Testament.
But there is a problem, and I think a misunderstanding, that is sometimes evident.
What is often forgotten is that in this passage (Luke 24), it’s the Jesus of the Gospels who’s explaining how the Old Testament bore witness to Him.
I say that because too often, this kind of preaching sounds as though the Old Testament is like a puzzle whose solution is Jesus, and then the sermon stops.
Little or nothing is said about the Jesus who appears in the Gospels.
The result is that in the end, Christ, who is Himself the Incarnate One, is not really preached to us, but the Christ we hear about is simply the solution to the plotline problem.
But it’s the incarnate Christ that we need, not the explanation of the plotline or the solution to a literary riddle.
We need the Christ proclaimed in the Gospels, the flesh-and-blood Christ.
The Christ who was tempted in all points as we are and who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities because He felt them Himself.
We need the Christ who touched lepers, who delivered men and women captured by Satan and in bondage in sin, who loved with a love that drew people to Him.
I sometimes wish that those who teach preaching and teaching in whatever context emphasized the absolute necessity of knowing how to preach Christ from the New Testament.
Because too often, the same preacher who is determined to show how to get to Christ from the Old Testament doesn’t actually seem so determined to get to Christ from the New Testament, particularly from the Gospels.
We should never forget that it was the Christ of the Gospels who helped these two disciples see how the various parts of the Old Testament bore witness to Him.
In fact, in Luke 24, the litmus test that Christ has been preached is not in verse 27, which says, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27)
Rather, the litmus test is found in verse 32, which says, “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?‘” (Luke 24:32)
That is the preaching that we need and the preaching for which we should pray-heart-burning preaching.
So whether we’re preachers or hearers, let’s pray that we’ll hear that kind of preaching.”
–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Things Unseen: One Year of Reflections on the Christian Life (Sanford, FL: Ligonier, 2024), 144-145.
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