Proclaimer Blog
Grace and the Old Testament
If the Old Testament is part of the unfolding story of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Cor 8.9), then it must follow that every Old Testament book can be couched in those terms. Dane Ortlund (Bible publishing director at Crossway and, I assume, related to the other Ortlunds?) posted an interesting list of titles (or we would call them theme sentences) for each Old Testament book. Seeing as I'm writing about Numbers, I looked up that one first.
Numbers shows God’s grace in patiently sustaining his grumbling people in the wilderness and bringing them to the border of the promised land not because of them but in spite of them.
I like it. Couching everything in terms of one word which reflects one particular (although major) component of the gospel is always going to be limited of course. It will not refect the individual nuances of different books. But the exercise is useful in that it makes the reader (or in our case, preacher) think how the book relates to the gospel of Jesus.
This is an old post, but was tagged by Justin Taylor so it's back on my radar screen. Interesting. You can read the whole list here.