I can think of many sermons that were formative in my spiritual walk and ministry. One that I will never forget took place in a packed arena in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2014. To better grasp why this sermon was particularly impactful for me, I need to briefly share the backstory of my personal ministry.

In October 2010, I became the lead pastor of Providence Church in Frisco, Texas. Prior to that, I had spent thirteen years as a traveling itinerant preacher, speaking at churches, conferences, retreats, and other Christian events. The move from itinerant preacher to pastor marked a significant shift in my preaching. My previous ministry did not afford me the opportunity to preach through large sections of Scripture. As a local pastor, however, I began preaching verse by verse through whole books. It became a joy for me to see Jesus in every page of the Bible — both New Testament and Old.

Every Passage Profitable

In Acts 20, Paul tells the elders of the church at Ephesus that he “did not shrink” from two crucial tasks: “declaring anything that was profitable” (verse 20) and “declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (verse 27). Paul’s point is clear enough: What is profitable for believers is to have a steady diet of the whole counsel of God. Yet in many churches, the preaching is mainly topical and avoids large portions of Scripture that seem difficult to explain or appear irrelevant to life today. This is especially true concerning the Old Testament. Perhaps as a result, many Christians act as if the Old Testament is merely a preamble and that only the New Testament is truly Christian Scripture. But this is not the way the New Testament itself views the Old Testament.

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul writes that the events of the exodus serve as an example for us, written down for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10:11). In fact, we find the heart of the Christian message, the gospel of Jesus Christ, not merely in the New Testament but also in the Old. Paul tells the Galatians that the gospel was preached “beforehand to Abraham” when he was told that God’s blessings would flow from him to all nations (Galatians 3:8). The gospel is foretold in the Old Testament and fully revealed in the New Testament. And so, in Luke 24:27 and 44, Jesus tells his disciples that all the Law and Prophets testified of him.

This brings me back to that April day in 2014 when I was sitting in the audience of a Together for the Gospel Conference. Ligon Duncan stepped into the pulpit and preached a message from Numbers 5 titled “The Gospel by Numbers.” It sent my heart soaring with love for the whole counsel of God’s word and for preaching Jesus in all of Scripture.

Jesus in Numbers?

Ligon did a masterful job preaching the gospel not only from the Old Testament but even from the ceremonial laws of the Pentateuch. He started by reading from the laws that were given to Moses in Numbers 5:1–4 regarding unclean Israelites. The Lord told Moses that everyone who was leprous, had a discharge, or came in contact with a dead person was to be put outside the camp. Ligon admitted that, at first glance, this command might seem harsh. So, he asked, “How are we to understand this?”

“What is profitable for believers is to have a steady diet of the whole counsel of God.”

I believe good expository preaching not only delivers the message of the text but also teaches listeners how to study the Bible for themselves. And one good way to study any passage of Scripture is to ask what it says about man, God, and the gospel (or Jesus). And Ligon did just that by stating that the key to understanding the commands in Numbers 5:1–4 is to see the practical, theological, and Christological reasons for them.

The practical reason for these commands is that if the diseased person were not quarantined, the entire camp could be infected, and potentially many would perish. So God was actually loving his people when he commanded separation.

The theological reason for these commands is found in Numbers 5:3, where God says the diseased people had to be quarantined because they would otherwise defile the camp, “in the midst of which I dwell.” This reason shows the holiness of God and the defilement of sin. Ligon pointed even further back to the beginning of the Old Testament when Adam and Eve were put outside the garden of Eden because of their sin, which defiled them and rendered them unfit to be in the presence of God.

The mountain peak of the sermon came as Ligon laid out the Christological reason for these ceremonial laws. In Luke 5:12–16 and 8:40–56, Jesus touches a leprous man, a woman with a discharge, and a dead girl — and in every instance, the people are healed or raised to life, and Jesus is not made unclean. Ligon declared that Jesus did what the ceremonial laws could never do. Those laws told Moses what must be done to the unclean, but they didn’t tell him how the unclean could be healed and cleansed. But Hebrews 13:12 shows how Jesus accomplishes what the law couldn’t:

Jesus . . . suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

Jesus took our sins, our uncleanness, on his shoulders at the cross — going “outside the camp” (Numbers 5:3) — so that our reproach could be taken away and we could be healed, cleansed, and reconciled to the Father through his finished work.

Whole-Counsel Christ

This fantastic sermon reinforced and reinvigorated my zeal to preach Jesus from every portion of God’s word. I came to see even more how important this task is for every pastor.

Twice in Luke 24, Jesus opens the minds of the disciples to understand how all of the Scriptures point to him (verses 27, 44). These disciples knew the Scriptures very well, but they didn’t have the hermeneutical lens they needed to understand them rightly. They didn’t see how all of Scripture points to Jesus. Without this lens, we can easily read the Bible in a moralistic, man-centered way that pushes us to simply do better, leading ultimately to despair and death. But with this lens, we are equipped to read the Bible with Jesus at the center. Wherever we might be reading, we turn in faith to Jesus rather than looking to ourselves for forgiveness, life, peace, and strength to obey.

Ligon’s sermon made me more committed than ever to preaching Jesus from the whole counsel of God. By God’s grace, I will not shrink back from any passage — even ceremonial laws! — but will train God’s people to read and apply the whole Bible correctly while imparting life in the gospel of Christ and him crucified.