The Whole Counsel of God (eBook)

Introduction

One of the most disturbing stories in the Old Testament tells of Jephthah, one of the judges of Israel (Judg. 11:1–12:7). Jephthah is not known for his marvelous victory over the Ammonites. Nor is he known for his rise from obscurity and destitution to be the head of the tribe of Gilead or a judge of Israel. No, he is known for a terrible vow he made. It ended in him presenting his only daughter as a burnt offering (11:29–40). If you read Jephthah’s story in the context of the Old Testament narrative, you find what lay at the roots of his deed. Although he appears to have been zealous for the Lord, Jephthah simply did not know the Scriptures. He was theologically deficient and lacked knowledge of what God had revealed in his word. This can be seen in his negotiations with the king of Ammon in Judges 11, as well as in his vow and failure to back out of it as it appears that God allowed him to do.

The point is that the people of God need to know God and his ways, but they cannot know God and his ways without knowing his word. This raises a critical question: How can God’s people know the fullness of God’s word unless it is constantly held up before them and systematically explained to them? In many places throughout the Bible, we see that this kind of commitment to the Scriptures—the entirety of the Scriptures—is indeed meant to characterize the people of God and to shape their activities. For example, Deuteronomy 17:18–19 gives a key requirement for every future king of Israel:

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them.

Similarly, as part of Joshua’s commissioning to succeed Moses, Deuteronomy 31:9–13 speaks of the place of the word of God in the annual pattern of Israel’s life:

Then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, “At the end of every seven years, at the set time in the year of release, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”

Chapter 8 of the book of Joshua records the people of Israel coming together for a covenant renewal ceremony. Verses 34–35 say,

Afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.

Generations later, the kingdom of Israel became divided and suffered many years of decline into sin and faithlessness, which was due to their abandonment of the word of God. But in the reign of the young King Josiah, the Book of the Law was rediscovered in the temple, and there followed a time of some renewal. Second Kings 23:1–3 tells how Josiah began his reforms:

Then the king sent, and all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem were gathered to him. And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the prophets, all the people, both small and great. And he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.

Moving forward many more years in the history of Israel, to the time of the restoration after the exile, we find Ezra again bringing the entirety of the word of God to the people of God as the nation is being reestablished. The event is found in Nehemiah 8:1–8 and is worth quoting at length:

And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand, and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the Law, while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

The core conviction of this book is that the need for God’s people to hear the whole Scriptures read and explained continues today. A light, thin, hotchpotch diet of Scripture—even well-taught Scripture—is not what God wants for his people, and yet this is all that too many churches offer. This book is written to help pastors and teachers of God’s word make the fullness of that word known to their people over a lifetime of preaching. Our hope is that through such comprehensive preaching, God’s saints might be better equipped for their roles than Jephthah was—that is, that they might know the mind and purposes of God, and so be equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:17).

We have set ourselves two specific tasks in writing. First, we wish to encourage preachers to make it their goal to preach the entire Bible because we are convinced that all of it is the word of God for us. This is a much bigger aim than simply saying that we want to encourage preaching from across the Bible. We are not just saying that we want to encourage the feeding of Christian congregations with a good sampling of many parts of the Scriptures. Rather, we want to promote the preaching of the whole Bible! We are conscious that whole-Bible preaching is such a monumental ambition that some might feel immediately that it is impossible even to contemplate it, and we are quite prepared to accept that for a range of very understandable and practical reasons, many, if not most, preachers will never be able to achieve complete success. However, our second purpose in writing is to present a number of paradigms and very practical helps that should allow most preachers to have a really decent shot at preaching through the entire Bible over long-term ministries to their congregations. As we lay out these suggestions, we are also convinced that even if preachers never quite end up bringing every single part of the Bible to their congregations but maintain it as their working goal to do so, they will at least end up offering a far fuller, more balanced, and even-handed program of teaching than they would by taking any other approach. There is nothing to be lost in aiming high.

Given these two purposes, it should be clear that this is not at all a book about how to preach a sermon. There are already many excellent books giving instruction on preaching, ranging from those that introduce the rookie to the basics of pulpit work right through to those that can stretch and deepen the most seasoned preacher.1 Instead, this book is about what to preach, and about how to plan and manage a long-range, ordered, and deliberate preaching program.

Why a Book Like This Is Needed

In light of the standard evangelical convictions about the nature of Scripture, it would seem that it ought to be very commonplace for pastors and teachers to work toward preaching through the whole Bible for the people they serve. And yet the reality is that it is not. This is not only sad, but also somewhat ironic, given the heritage of the church in the Western world since the Protestant Reformation.

In the medieval period, despite the fact that the Mediterranean region was highly controlled by the Roman...