Is it a Christ-Centered Sermon? Appendix Two

Only Jesus resolves redemptive themes

“There are quite a number of what Don Carson calls ‘inter-canonical’ themes that ‘cut across’ the entire Biblical corpus. Alec Motyer points out that the Old Testament asserts truths in apparently irreconcilable tension with each other. Thus these themes have ‘thickening plots’ as the Old Testament goes on. In other words, like all good stories, there is dramatic tension within the themes that seems almost insoluble. Only in Christ, however, are the ‘tensions’ in these themes resolved and fulfilled. With this approach, rather than only looking for ‘types’ we should look for questions the text raises tow which only Jesus can be ‘the answer in the back of the book’ (Tim Keller, Preaching the Gospel in a Post-Modern World, 36).