Untitled Sermon (3)
Each Lexham Theological Wordbook article begins with a brief definition of the concept and is then divided into three main sections: the Concept Summary, the Theological Overview, and the Lexical Information. The Concept Summary gives a brief explanation of the biblical concept, usually noting the most relevant words and phrases used to express the concept. The Theological Overview is the main biblical-theological synthesis of the concept, covering the significance of the concept in the OT and the NT as well as discussing any development in how the concept appears to have been understood and expressed. Anyone should be able to get an essential understanding of the topic from these first two sections, which were designed to summarize and synthesize the more detailed information found in the Lexical Information section.
For Luke, history mattered. The church depended on it. History mattered to Paul too. He tells us that all of his preaching, indeed Christianity itself, hangs on one combined historical event: the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:12-18). For the Old Testament it was “Remember the Exodus,” an event of redemption that prefigured the work of Christ. For the New Testament, it is “Remember Christ and his cross.”
What we learn from all of this is that Christianity isn’t a religion of abstraction or of speculative philosophies. God revealed himself in a physical place and in real time. There’s no virtual revelation. And the apex of his revelation to his creatures is the incarnate one, the God-man, Jesus Christ, who was born in history, lived in a real place in flesh and blood, and died in plain view. He rose again not in some abstract way but in reality. He appeared to the disciples and to the crowds (Luke 24), and he ate fish on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias (John 21).
For Luke, history mattered. The church depended on it. History mattered to Paul too. He tells us that all of his preaching, indeed Christianity itself, hangs on one combined historical event: the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:12-18). For the Old Testament it was “Remember the Exodus,” an event of redemption that prefigured the work of Christ. For the New Testament, it is “Remember Christ and his cross.”