The Old Testament Collection: Preaching Christ in the Old Testament during the Church Year

This CD-ROM resource contains sermons that move through the Old Testament in historical sequence, starting with Genesis and ending with Malachi, over a year’s time. These sermons mesh with appropriate Church Year themes. Generally, sermons during the Advent and Christmas seasons are based on texts from Genesis; sermons in the Epiphany season are from the rest of the Pentateuch; sermons in Lent derive from texts in the former prophets; sermons in the Easter season are on texts describing the life of David; the Pentecost sermon is on Solomon’s dedication of the temple; sermons for roughly the first half of the Sundays after Pentecost are from texts on the period of the divided kingdom; and the remaining sermons treat texts on the story of Judah to the end of the Old Testament.
 Why a resource like this? Several reasons:

• It provides preachers, high school religion teachers, and college theology professors teaching Old Testament survey a set of tools with which to sketch the contours of Old Testament history and theology. Note that the sermons do not go into detail on the prophets, and they hardly touch wisdom literature. The accent here is on telling the Old Testament story in a day of declining biblical literacy.
• Bible class attendance is sluggish. In many congregations, any message for widespread dissemination must be included in church services, where the people are. This resource gives preachers a relatively “painless” way to go through the Old Testament in sermons that can be preached week in and week out for an entire Church Year if desired. Or perhaps these Old Testament sermons could be preached one quarter or season of the Church Year at a time, thus taking several years to use all 61 sermons.
• Expository preaching resources often ignore the Church Year. This resource sets up preachers and others with a way to put people in touch with the Old Testament Scriptures in sequence without ignoring church year themes and emphases.
• Expository preaching resources seldom feature a Lutheran sensitivity to Law and Gospel. This resource does. Conversely, Lutheran preaching resources may or may not be expository in orientation. The sermons in this resource are.

 Many preachers hesitate to preach on Old Testament texts for fear of not making connections to the Gospel of Jesus Christ that are in character with the Old Testament text. This CD resource contains 61 sermons drawn from Old Testament texts featuring a sensitivity to the application of Law and Gospel without ignoring Church Year themes and emphases.  

Ken Schurb is pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Moberly, Missouri. He has a PhD in History from Ohio State.

Testimonials

This splendid volume of Old Testament sermons on the Church Year presents clear and compelling evidence of the truth of St. Augustine’s couplet: “The New is in the Old concealed, the Old is in the New revealed.” Although the texts are all Old Testament texts, the sermons are a simple proclamation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Ken Schurb makes certain the reader will recognize himself in both familiar and unfamiliar Old Testament events.

This collection is replete with examples and illustrations all designed to help preach faith into the hearts of the reader. It is a must for your library.
—Rev. Dr. John W. Saleska (Director, Concordia Bible Institute, Mequon, WI)

High school and college instructors of Old Testament history and theology will here find a unique resource for course organization and design along with effective tools for use in classroom presentations.

Moving in historical sequence rich in contemporary applications, Dr. Schurb puts a fresh face on Old Testament history while providing insightful practical theology applications.

The framework is filled with just the appropriate anecdote, observation, or illustration so helpful in classroom instruction and appreciated by both student and instructor.
—John C. Bobzin (Religion Department, Saint Paul Lutheran High School, Concordia, MO)

System Requirements

• Windows XP, Windows Vista, or later
• Mac OS X 10.4 or later
• CD-ROM drive
• Word processing program that supports RTF or PDF files