In the new book, Calvin for Today, by Joel Beeke, there is an excellent chapter by David Murray, entitled, "Calvin on Preaching Christ from the Old Testament." Murray writes,

"There is a widespread crisis in preaching from the Old Testament today, and consequently in preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Fewer and fewer sermons are being preached from this part of the Bible, and those that are preached do not appear to command the same interest or respect as New Testament sermons."

Noting that there is a paucity of preaching from the Old Testament in our churches today, he says,

"Some surveys have found that only twenty percent of Christian sermons are from the Old Testament."

In this same vein, I was surprised that when we started our exegetical study of the book of Deuteronomy, there was not a single person in our congregation who had ever heard expository messages on Deuteronomy. Murray expands on this,

"This imbalance in the spiritual diet of most Christians explains many of the spiritual problems in the modern church and the modern Christian. How can we expect our congregations to be healthy when they are being largely deprived of thirty-nine of the sixty-six books (60 percent) of the Bible—the very books that provided the spiritual nourishment of Christ and His apostles?"

Murray give several very helpful handles on interpretive principles:

Theological Pillars

• Pillar 1: By preaching the Old Testament, we are preaching Christ’s words
• Pillar 2: Christ is the only teacher of His church
• Pillar 3: By preaching God, we preach Christ
• Pillar 4: The Old and New Testaments are united by the covenant of grace
• Pillar 5: What was said to Israel was said also to us
• Pillar 6: Every Old Testament believer was saved through faith in Christ
• Pillar 7: The old Testament believers had the Holy Spirit
• Pillar 8: The hope of Old Testament believers was spiritual and heavenly
• Pillar 9: The law was a schoolmaster that led Old Testament believers to Christ
• Pillar 10: There were differences between the Old and New Testaments

Practical Pillars

• Pillar 1: The aim of all Old Testament study is to find and preach Christ
• Pillar 2:The New Testament is our exegetical guide to the Old Testament
• Pillar 3: If you cannot be Christ-centered in exegesis, be so in application
• Pillar 4: Preach the original message to the original audience
• Pillar 5: Highlight partial fulfillments before highlighting the final fulfillment
• Pillar 6: Preach Christ from all genres of Old Testament literature
• Pillar 7: The Old Testament should be preached frequently
• Pillar 8: Build Christ-centered Old Testament preaching slowly and safely