圣经神学与福音宣讲
释经讲道能够一直都是福音性的吗？
有时候讲道人避免阐释圣经的一些书卷，因为他们认为这一方法有益于向成熟的基督徒教导神学，但是不益于帮助非信徒明白福音。
当牧师考虑传讲旧约书卷时，这一顾虑尤甚。研读亚伯拉罕的一生，或是一系列哈该书的研经，如何在一个又一个主日表达清楚福音？我们要单单在讲道末尾打出一个福音预告吗？“对于今日的非基督徒朋友们，就这篇关于亚伯拉罕的割礼的信息，最后我想告诉你们的是，你们可以如何白白得到永生的礼物。”然后切到讲台呼召。
还有另外一种更加自然、忠心传讲福音的方式，可以每个主日上传讲，甚至从旧约传讲。这就是采用圣经神学。
宏大的故事
何谓圣经神学？可以将其定义为对圣经整体故事主线的研究。圣经66卷书整体上讲述了神的使命这个单一叙事，就是借着耶稣基督的受死和复活，拯救一群子民，建立神国，彰显祂的荣耀。旧约为耶稣铺路，将我们引向耶稣。福音书彰显了耶稣及其作为。新约其余的书卷揭开了耶稣受死和复活的影响力，一直到上帝完全成就祂的使命。我们越多抓住这一至关重要的情节，就越能看到讲道的经文如何与福音相关联。
带着圣经神学的意识传讲圣经经文犹如在篮球场上有“球场意识”。优秀的篮球运动员不只是专注在运球、进球。他们也意识到球场上自己的队友和防守的位置，以及比赛的节奏。同样地，好的释经讲道不只是就手头上的经文提供一篇流利的评论。它也有球场意识，就是在这段经文前后发生了什么，以及它如何与神的宏大故事整体的进程相联系。
圣经神学的应用
让我们看一些可能会用到的圣经神学策略，以使特定的经文与圣经的主要故事，即福音故事相关联。你可以把这些策略看作是将我们从经文带到福音的可行途径，就像智能手机上的地图应用提供可能的路线，指引你从所在位置去到目的地。
1. 应许与应验
我们以通向福音最简单、最直接的途径开始。在应许与应验中，你在研读的经文包含一个预言或是应许，明显地应验了福音的某一方面。应许与应验是圣经神学低垂的果子：容易发现，容易摘到。
所以，如果你传讲弥迦预言有关从伯利恒出来的统治者（弥5：2），你可以轻轻松松地邀请会众翻到马太福音2：6，看看这在耶稣降生时是如何应验的。或者你如果定意讲解亚伯拉罕的生平，你应该在某一点上将神应许祝福亚伯拉罕的后裔或是“那一位后裔”（创12：7；13：15；17：8；24：7）与这些应许在耶稣里的应验相连（加3：16）。
除了给与我们通向福音的明显途径之外，应许和应验也向我们展示出，新约作者如何从福音的角度阐释旧约。我们越多学习透过使徒们的释经透镜研读圣经，我们就越能从其它经文抓住福音，即使是那些没有在耶稣里明显应验的经文。
2. 预表
预表类似于应许和应验，只不过后者是口头预言，在耶稣里应验；而前者是预示耶稣和福音的事件、体系或者人物。可以认为预表是一种非言语形式的预言。
以耶路撒冷的圣殿为例。圣殿在旧约中扮演着核心角色，是神的救赎和统治临在子民当中的地方。但是圣殿最终指向耶稣。耶稣站在圣殿里，语出惊人：“你们拆毁这殿，我三日内要再建立起来”（约2：19）。众人以为耶稣是说实际的圣殿建筑，但是“耶稣这话，是以他的身体为殿”（21节）。就像圣殿一样，耶稣昨日、今日是神在其子民中道成肉身的临在，为要拯救、统治。这也是为何使徒一再地将教会，就是在基督里的人，等同于圣灵的殿（例如，林前3：16-17；弗2：19-22；彼前2：5）。
鉴于此，假设你在讲解诗篇122篇，那里讲到往耶路撒冷神的圣殿的喜乐：“人对我说：‘我们往耶和华的殿去’，我就欢喜”（1节）。你可以使用这个圣殿预表帮助人们（即使是尚未加入教会的人）看到借着信心到耶稣那里去这一更大的喜乐。
新约到处是此类耶稣及其作为的预表。使徒看耶稣为末后的亚当，真正的逾越节的羔羊，新的摩西，一次永远的赎罪祭，至高的大祭司，出自大卫后裔的、受膏的君王（弥赛亚），真正的以色列，等等。这些频繁使用的路线能够从圣经中的很多地方准确地带领你到耶稣及其救赎工作那里。
3. 主题
我用“主题”一词来描述圣经故事主线中经常出现的主旨或意象，它们不像预表那样直接指向耶稣。然而这些主题或主旨整体上与福音相联，能够帮助我们确定经文在展开的圣经故事中的位置。
一个经典的圣经主题是创造。圣经开篇说到“起初，神创造天地。”神从混沌中创造了秩序，按照自己的形象造了亚当和夏娃，命令他们管理被造物，并且生养众多，遍满全地，一切为了神的荣耀。可悲的是，亚当和夏娃未能守住呼召，背叛了神。
但是神计划救赎祂的创造。纵观旧约，我们不断看到创造“重新开始”。在一些事件中，神仁慈地与祂的子民重新开始，而对新开端的描述带有创造意象和用语。这些重新的创造包括洪水过后的挪亚及其一家，以色列出埃及并进入应许地，所罗门建立的伊甸园般的王国，甚至包括以色列民从巴比伦被掳归回。然而，在每一个例子中，新的开始都失败了。人类背叛了。亚当一次次哽噎。这些再造的亚当中是否有一个能使一切好转起来？
有。末后的亚当，耶稣基督，完美地遵行了天父的旨意。耶稣的复活及其子民得赎开启了真正的新创造，并且今日持续扩张。耶稣派遣祂被赎的子民降服全地，借着福音信息使神的子女遍满全地。终有一日，这一工作要在新天新地里完美告终，比最初的创造更加至高、更加荣耀。
你是否看到，能够追踪创造主题如何提供了一个框架，以便自然地从许多经文追到新的创造的关键转折点，即耶稣的受死和复活？
圣经主线中还交织着很多其它的主题线索，例如圣约、出埃及、主的日子、神的国度。
4. 道德教导
但是，若是你想要讲解箴言，或是十诫呢？若是你真地疯了，想要从利未记进行释经性福音讲道？这类经文看起来更适合教导成熟基督徒生活准则，而不是向尚未得救的人展示耶稣做了什么，以致他们可以成为基督徒。
再一次，圣经神学指明了从律法到福音的道路。我们可以至少以三种方式，顺着圣经主线的进程，阅读特定的道德命令。首先，圣经中的律法和道德准则让我们看到我们的罪，看到我们需要一位救主，因此把我们引向耶稣。正如经常提到的，神的诫命犹如一面镜子，让我们面对自己的道德缺陷。当我们阅读以色列长期的道德沦陷，我们看到的是人类的故事，也是我们自己的故事。“没有一个因行律法能在神面前称义，因为律法本是叫人知罪”（罗3：20）。
第二，圣经的道德命令将我们指向耶稣，祂是完美遵行这些的那一位。祂来不是要废弃神的律法，而是要在各方面成全律法（太5：17）。神其他的儿子们（亚当、以色列、以色列的君王）都是浪子；惟有耶稣取悦父神。因此，圣经的道德命令最终显示了耶稣本身的性情。
第三，借着倚靠耶稣复活的能力，以及住在我们里面祂的圣灵，我们现在可以成为顺服的子女，遵守神的律法。耶稣救我们脱离罪的权势，“使律法的义成就在我们这不随从肉体，只随从圣灵的人身上”（罗8：4）。
因此，假设你在传讲箴言书11：17，“仁慈的人善待自己；残忍的人扰害己身”。借着跟从圣经神学的路径，你不会单单传讲长达30分钟、如何变得更加仁慈的信息。你可能也会显出，我们是如何仁慈不足，而残忍有余，连自己都不易察觉。你会把人们指向耶稣，祂是仁慈的化身，祂甚至为罪人舍命。最后，你会把耶稣的仁慈、恩典与自己相连，帮助自己靠着圣灵，生命改变。
5. 解答谜团
当我们开始意识到圣经神学的进程，我们也会看到福音如何常常解决旧约谜团。当犹大支派遭流放，耶路撒冷没有王时，神会如何成就祂对大卫的应许？如果圣殿的献祭能够消除罪，为何神审判以色列？旧约经常谈到神祝福义人，审判恶人，为何现实却相反？
还可以说很多，但是眼下，我们可以说，当你遇到一个圣经难题时，思考耶稣的福音可以如何解决这一谜团。如同一部伟大的小说，旧约设置了情节张力，主角耶稣会解决。
“你在这里”
当我们使用圣经神学来实践这种有福音意识的解经，非信徒身上会发生让人兴奋的事情。他们不仅周复一周地要面对自己的罪，了解耶稣，被呼召悔改、相信；而且，他们开始确定自己在神的工作历史进程中的位置。福音不仅是一个比喻，或是一个理念，如果“合乎其胃口”，他们可以随意使用或者丢弃。相反，耶稣的故事是一股历史的力量，扎根于过去，持续到现在，并掌管永恒。在圣经世界作工的神也在他们的世界作工，因为这是同一个世界、同一个历史、同一个故事。
Biblical Theology and Gospel Proclamation
Can expository preaching be consistently evangelistic?
Preachers sometimes shy away from expositing books of the Bible because they suspect that approach is good for teaching theology to mature Christians, but bad for helping unbelievers understand the gospel.
This concern grows when pastors contemplate preaching an Old Testament book. How could a study of the life of Abraham or a series in Haggai make the gospel clear, Sunday after Sunday? Do we simply slap an evangelistic trailer onto the end of the sermon? “For our non-Christian friends here today, I’d like to end this message about Abraham’s circumcision by telling you about how you can receive the free gift of eternal life.” Cue the altar call.
There is another, more organic way to proclaim the gospel faithfully Sunday after Sunday, even from the Old Testament. It’s by employing biblical theology.
THE BIG STORY
What is biblical theology? We might define it as the study of the Bible’s overall storyline. Together, the 66 books of the Bible tell a single narrative of God’s mission to save a people and establish a kingdom for his glory through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament sets the stage for and leads us to Jesus. The Gospels reveal him and his work. The rest of the New Testament unfolds the implications of Jesus’ death and resurrection, all the way until God fully accomplishes his mission. The more we grasp this overarching plot, the more we can see how our preaching text relates to the gospel.
Preaching a passage of Scripture with an awareness of biblical theology is like having “court sense” in basketball. Good basketball players don’t just focus on dribbling the ball to the hoop. They are aware of the location of their teammates and defenders on the court as well as the flow of play. Similarly, good exposition doesn’t merely provide a running commentary on the verses at hand. It also has a court sense of what else is going on before and after the text, and how it all relates to overall progression of God’s big story.
BIBLICAL THEOLOGY IN ACTION
Let’s look at a few biblical theology strategies we might use to relate our particular passage to the main story of the Bible, the gospel story. You might think of these strategies as possible paths that take us from our text to the gospel, like optional routes on a smart phone map app that guide you from your current location to the desired destination.
1. Promise and Fulfillment
We start with the most simple and direct route to the gospel. In promise and fulfillment, the text you’re studying contains a prophecy or promise that is explicitly fulfilled in some aspect of the gospel. Promise and fulfillment is the low-hanging fruit of biblical theology: easy to see and grasp.
So if you’re preaching Micah’s prophecy about a ruler coming out of Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), you can easily invite the congregation to turn to Matthew 2:6 to see how it is fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. Or if you do decide to exposit the life of Abraham, you should at some point connect God’s promises to bless Abraham’s offspring or “seed” (Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 17:8; 24:7) to their fulfillment in Jesus (Gal. 3:16).
In addition to giving us obvious ways to get to the gospel, promise and fulfillment also shows us how the New Testament authors interpreted the Old Testament in light of the gospel. The more we learn to read the Bible through apostles’ interpretive lenses, the better we will get to the gospel from other texts, even those without an explicit fulfillment in Jesus.
2. Typology
Typology is like promise and fulfillment, except rather than a verbal prophecy being fulfilled in Jesus, we see events, institutions, or persons that foreshadow Jesus and the gospel. You might think of typology as a non-verbal prophecy.
Take the temple in Jerusalem for example. It played a central role in the Old Testament as the place of God’s saving and ruling presence among his people. But it ultimately pointed forward to Jesus. Jesus shocked the crowds when he stood in the temple and said, “Destroy this sanctuary, and I will raise it up in three days” (John 2:19). They thought he meant the literal building, but “he was speaking about the sanctuary of his body” (v. 21). Like the temple, Jesus was, and is, the physical presence of God among his people to save and reign. That’s also why the apostles repeatedly identified the church, those who are in Christ, as the temple of the Spirit (e.g., 1 Cor. 3:16-17; Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Pet. 2:5).
In light of this, let’s say you’re expositing Psalm 122, which communicates the joy of going up into God’s temple in Jerusalem: “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (v. 1). You can employ the temple typology to help people, even unchurched people, see the greater joy of going to Jesus by faith.
The New Testament is full of such types of Jesus and his work. The apostles saw Jesus as the last Adam, the true Passover lamb, the new Moses, the once-for-all sacrifice of atonement, the great high priest, the anointed king (Messiah) from David’s lineage, true Israel, and more. These well-traveled routes can faithfully take you from many places in Scripture to Jesus and his saving work.
3. Themes
I’m using the word “themes” to describe recurring motifs or images in the biblical
storyline that don’t point directly to Jesus the way typology does. And yet these themes or motifs are integrally connected to the gospel and can help us locate our text in the unfolding biblical story.
A classic biblical theme is creation. The Bible begins with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God brought order out of chaos, made Adam and Eve in his image, and commanded them to rule over creation and fill it with their offspring, all for God’s glory. Tragically, Adam and Eve failed their calling and rebelled against God.
But God had a plan to redeem his creation. Throughout the Old Testament we see repeated creation “reboots,” events where God graciously begins again with his people, and the new beginning is described with creation imagery and language. These creation reboots include Noah and his family after the flood, Israel’s exodus from Egypt and entrance into the promised land, Solomon’s establishment of an Edenic kingdom, and even the Israelites returning from Babylonian captivity. Yet in each of these instances the reboot failed. Humanity rebelled. Adam choked again and again. Would any of these Adamic recasts ever get it right?
Yes. The last Adam, Jesus Christ, did the will of the Father perfectly. Jesus’ resurrection and the salvation of his people launched the true new creation. And it continues to grow today. Jesus sent his saved people out to subdue the earth and fill it with sons and daughters of God through the gospel message. And someday this work will culminate in a new heavens and earth, far greater and more glorious than the original.
Can you see how being able to trace the creation motif provides a framework for organically moving from many texts to the key turning point of the new creation, the death and resurrection of Jesus?
There are many other thematic threads that weave together in the biblical storyline, like the covenants, the Exodus, the day of the Lord, and the kingdom of God.
4. Ethical Teaching
But what if you’re trying to preach through Proverbs or the Ten Commandments? What if you were really crazy and tried do expository evangelism from Leviticus? It seems those kinds of passages are better for teaching the “do’s” and “don’ts” of mature Christian living rather than showing unsaved people what Jesus has done so that they could become Christians.
Again, biblical theology maps a way from law to gospel. We can read specific moral commandments within the flow of the Bible’s storyline in at least three ways. First, the Bible’s laws and ethics lead us to Jesus by showing us our sin and need of a savior. As has often been said, God’s commandments act like a mirror to confront us with our moral deformity. As we read Israel’s history of chronic moral collapse, we see humanity’s story, and our own. “For no one will be justified in his sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law” (Rom. 3:20).
Second, the Bible’s moral commands point us to Jesus as the one who perfectly kept them. He didn’t come to destroy the law of God but to fulfill it in every way (Matt. 5:17). All of God’s other sons (Adam, Israel, Israel’s kings) were prodigals; Jesus alone pleased the Father. And so the ethical commandments of the Bible ultimately reveal the character of Jesus himself.
Third, through reliance on the power of Jesus’ resurrection and his Spirit in us, we can now keep God’s laws as obedient sons and daughters. Jesus rescued us from the power of sin “in order that the law’s requirement would be accomplished in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4).
So imagine you’re preaching Proverbs 11:17: “A kind man benefits himself, but a cruel man brings disaster on himself.” By following the contours of biblical theology you won’t merely give a 30 minute message on how to be more kind. You might also show how we fail at kindness and excel at cruelty in subtle ways. You will point people to Jesus’ embodiment of kindness, especially in giving his life for sinners. And finally, you will connect that kind grace of Jesus to ourselves as the fuel for our own transformation through the Holy Spirit.
5. Puzzle-Solution
When we begin to sense the flow of biblical theology, we will also see how the gospel often solves Old Testament puzzles. How would God fulfill his promises to David once Judah had gone into exile and there was no king in Jerusalem? If the temple sacrifices took away sin, then why did God judge Israel? The Old Testament often speaks of God’s blessings on the righteous and judgment on the wicked. So why do we see the opposite?
We could say more here, but for now suffice to say that when you encounter a biblical conundrum, consider how the gospel of Jesus might resolve the mystery. Like a great novel, the Old Testaments sets up plot tensions that the hero, Jesus, resolves.
“YOU ARE HERE”
When we use biblical theology to practice this kind of gospel-conscious exposition, something exciting happens for unbelievers. Not only are they confronted by their sin, introduced to Jesus, and called to repentance and faith week after week. They also begin to locate themselves within the historical flow of God’s work. The gospel isn’t merely a metaphor or idea that they are free to use or discard if it “works for them.” Rather, the story of Jesus is a historical force rooted in the past, continuing in the present, and dominating eternity. The God who acted in the biblical world is acting in their world too, because it is the same world, the same history, the same story.
作者：Jeramie Rinne
杰拉米·莱尼从戈登-康威尔神学院获得道学硕士学位，正在担任马萨诸塞州辛翰市南岸浸信会主任牧师。他经常为九标志期刊撰文，是the Good Book Company出版社的忠心作者，西缅基金会释经工作坊导师。他与妻子珍妮弗和四个孩子住在波士顿南岸区。
翻译肢体：王悦
用圣经视野和实用资源装备教会领袖
进而通过健康的教会向世界彰显神的荣耀
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