1. Paul on Mars Hill
Paul walked into Athens and saw statues to every Greek god a man could imagine. There was Apollo, god of the sun. There was Bacchus, god of wine. There was Aphrodite, goddess of love. There was Mars, god of war. And then, just to make sure they had not offended any deity by accident, there was an altar inscribed To the Unknown God. The Athenians were religious in every direction. They were also, by Paul’s reckoning, lost. He had a single sermon to preach to them, and a hostile audience of Stoics and Epicureans. He had to bring them, in a few minutes, from creation to Christ.
Notice what he did. He started where they were. I see that you are religious. You even have a statue to the unknown God. Let me tell you about Him. Then he reached for their own poets — in Him we live and move and have our being — and tracked the line forward to the Creator of all things, and to the resurrection of a Man through whom God will judge the world. The journey from unknown god to risen Christ took one sermon. That is the principle of this unit. The whole Bible is one Christ-tracking story. Every text in the Book belongs to that story. The pastor who can trace the line through the Bible can trace it through any single passage.
A word of caution belongs here before we go further, because this principle is easily misused. Saying that every text belongs to the one story that culminates in Christ is not the same as saying that every single verse is a direct prophecy, type, symbol, or reference to Jesus. Some passages point to Him directly, by promise or type or image, as the sections below will show. Others contribute to the story simply by being a true part of its unfolding — a law that reveals the holiness His righteousness would satisfy, a genealogy that traces the line His birth would complete, a wisdom saying that describes the good life His kingdom brings. Any route you draw from a text to Christ must still respect that text’s own context and genre. Christ-centered preaching is not a license to ignore what a passage actually says in order to arrive at Him by a shortcut; it is the discipline of showing, honestly and from the text itself, where that passage stands in the one story He completes.
2. The Whole Bible Is His Story
On the Sunday afternoon of His resurrection, Jesus walked the road to Emmaus with two heartbroken disciples. They did not yet recognize Him. He asked what they had been talking about. They told Him about Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had hoped would redeem Israel and who had instead been crucified. Then Jesus did something that became the foundation for every Christ-centered sermon ever preached after Him:
All the Scriptures. The things concerning Himself. Jesus took the whole Old Testament — Moses, the Prophets, the Writings — and showed how every part of it had been pointing at Him. The seed of the woman, the ram in the thicket, the Passover Lamb, the manna, the rock, the bronze serpent, the son of David, the suffering servant of Isaiah, the new covenant of Jeremiah, the resurrection Job hoped for. Every chapter of the older Testament was a chapter about Him. By the time the two reached the inn, they would see it.
3. The Macro-Arc of the Bible
Before a pastor can track Christ through any single passage, he must know the shape of the whole story. Six movements organize the entire library. Creation: God made everything good. The world had a Maker, and the Maker had a purpose. Fall: man rebelled, the curse fell, and every chapter since carries the wreckage. Israel: God chose a covenant people through whom He would bring redemption to the whole world, and the long history of patriarchs, exodus, conquest, kings, exile, and return is the story of that people being prepared and pruned. Christ: God Himself entered the story as a man, lived without sin, died for our rebellion, and rose again to break the curse. Church: the gospel goes out from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth, gathering a new people for God’s name. Consummation: Christ returns, the curse is fully reversed, and the original Eden is restored as a city of God forever.
Every passage in the Bible sits somewhere on this arc. The arc is the map. A Genesis story sits before Christ and forward-looks to Him. A Gospel passage has Him at its center. An Epistle unfolds what He did. Revelation looks forward to His return. The pastor without the map reads each passage as a stand-alone moment and misses what makes every passage a chapter in His story.
4. Four Roads to Christ
From any Old Testament passage, there are four reliable roads to Christ. Promise. God said it; Christ fulfilled it. Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman; 2 Samuel 7, the son of David; Isaiah 53, the suffering servant; Jeremiah 31, the new covenant. The line runs straight from the promise to the Person. Type. A historical figure or event prefigures Christ in shape if not in identity. Adam is a type of the second Adam. Joseph is a type of the brother betrayed who saves his family. Moses is a type of the prophet who would come. The bronze serpent in the wilderness is a type Jesus Himself claimed. Image. The Bible uses pictures that Christ later inhabits. The Passover lamb. The manna. The rock that gave water. The high priest. The temple. He says, I am the bread, I am the door, I am the way, and every image He claims has a long Old Testament history that He is fulfilling. Presence. The pre-incarnate Christ appears throughout the Old Testament — the fourth Man in the fiery furnace, the Angel of the Lord wrestling Jacob, the Captain of the host meeting Joshua. The same Person who will be born in Bethlehem has been walking through Genesis already.
For any Old Testament passage you will preach, ask which of the four roads connects it to Christ. Most passages have at least one. Some have all four. Passages that offer none of the four directly — a wisdom saying, a law code, a genealogy — still find their place in the larger story this unit has traced; even there, be honest about the difference between a passage that names Him and a passage that simply serves the story that leads to Him.
5. The Man of Vision in Cochrane
Outside the town of Cochrane in Alberta, Canada, there is a bronze statue called The Man of Vision. It depicts a cowboy on horseback at the original Cochrane Ranch site, looking out over the Bow Valley. The statue is the most visible sight in town. If the apostle Paul had traveled through Cochrane the way he traveled through Athens, he would have stood beneath that statue and reached for the gospel through it. I see your Man of Vision watches over the valley. Let me tell you about the original Man of Vision. He would have begun where the town was and worked toward Christ.
Every pastor walks into a Mars Hill on Sunday morning. The statues are different, but the principle is identical. Your people are religious about something — their work, their team, their politics, their bodies, their family. They have erected altars to gods they do not name as gods. Your task as the preacher is not to mock the altars. It is to find the line that runs from where they stand to Christ, and walk them up it. The Cochrane Man of Vision watches the valley; the Christ of God sees His people and is seen by them. Begin with what they know. Track to who He is. That is hermeneutics in motion in the public square.
6. As a Man, But as God
The center of Christ-tracking is the Person Himself, fully God and fully man. Christians have affirmed this from the earliest councils, and the whole Bible bends toward this confession. Either Jesus is God or He is the greatest fraud who ever lived. There is no third option. The pastor who tracks Christ through the Bible must hold both natures in view at once. The Apostle John’s Gospel begins by saying both in one verse: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Hebrew prophets had seen Him coming as the Mighty God and as the Suffering Servant. The Gospel writers told us how the two natures lived in one Person. Here is the contrast that walks through the whole story.
As a man He was born in a manger; but as God He is the Everlasting One. As a man He was hungry; but as God He is the Bread of Life. As a man He was thirsty; but as God He is the Living Water. As a man He was tired; but as God He said, Come to Me, all that are weary. As a man He was tempted in all points; but as God He was sinless. As a man He wept in Gethsemane; but as God He wipes away every tear from our eyes. As a man He was baptized with water; but as God He baptizes with fire. As a man He walked with those in darkness; but as God He is the light of the world. As a man He was called a Nazarene; but as God He is called Emmanuel. As a man He was the Son of Man; but as God He is the Son of God. As a man He was called a lunatic; but as God He is called Lord. As a man He was called a servant; but as God He is called Savior. As a man He died on a cross; but as God He could have called a million angels. As a man He was laid in a tomb; but as God He came crashing out three days later with all power in His hand. As a man He had scars in His hands; but as God He sits at the right hand of the Father.
That is the Bible in seventeen lines. That is the Person every passage tracks toward. Whatever text you preach on Sunday, somewhere in the line of your sermon He must appear in both natures. Some texts will lean on His humanity — His tears, His hunger, His weariness. Some texts will lean on His deity — His authority, His resurrection, His judgment. The full Christ requires both, and the Bible insists on both. A sermon that gives you only one of the two has not yet tracked all the way to the Person.
7. Three Errors in Christ-Tracking
The first error is forcing every detail to mean Christ. The five smooth stones in David’s bag are not the five wounds. The thirty pieces of silver in Joseph’s story do not exactly equal the thirty Judas threw down. Some details connect; many do not. The pastor who assigns christological meaning to every named object loses the legitimate connections in a fog of invented ones. Honor what the text makes; resist what it does not.
The second error is ignoring the connections the Bible itself makes. The pastor preaches Genesis 22 as a story about a father’s faith and never mentions that the New Testament treats it as a picture of the Father offering the Son. He preaches Numbers 21 as an episode with a bronze serpent and never quotes John 3:14: as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. The Spirit provided the map; do not refuse to follow it.
The third error is skipping the Old Testament entirely. The pastor who preaches only from the Gospels and the Epistles starves his people of three-quarters of the Bible and disconnects them from the soil out of which the gospel grew. Without Passover they cannot understand the Lord’s Supper. Without the priesthood they cannot understand Hebrews. Without David’s kingdom they cannot understand the throne the angel promised Mary’s Son. Skip the Old Testament and the climax loses most of its weight.
8. The Mars Hill Preaching Method
Paul’s Athens sermon is a method, not just a model. It can be reduced to four steps that a pastor can use any Sunday. One: begin where they are. Paul began with their altars, not with his Bible. The pastor who begins each sermon with a question, a story, an observation about the community life of his people, has already passed the threshold the same way Paul did. Two: name the unknown that lives in their lives. The Athenians had a literal altar to the unknown god. Your people have unnamed longings, unnamed griefs, unnamed fears. Name them. Show your people that the Bible speaks to those specific unknowns. Three: introduce the One they have been unwittingly seeking. Paul said, that unknown God whom you worship without knowing — I declare Him to you. The pastor takes the same posture. The longing you have not been able to name, the home you have not been able to find, the forgiveness you cannot manufacture — let me declare to you the One who has been seeking you all along. Four: drive to the resurrection. Paul did not stop at theism. He pressed all the way to the Man whom He has appointed, of whom He has given assurance by raising Him from the dead. Without the resurrection there is no gospel. End every Mars Hill sermon at the empty tomb.
9. The Three Responses on Mars Hill
When Paul reached the resurrection, the Athenians divided into three groups. Some mocked. The Greek philosophers laughed at the idea that a man had come back from the dead. They had a categorical framework that excluded the resurrection, and they rejected the sermon. The pastor must expect mockers in every congregation. Some will laugh, sometimes openly. Do not stop preaching the resurrection. Some delayed. They said, we will hear you again on this matter. This is the most common response, and the most dangerous. Delay is decision, and most who delay do not return. The pastor must press for response now. Some believed and were saved. Dionysius and Damaris and others clave unto Paul and believed. Even the smallest Mars Hill response carries the seed of a church. Paul left Athens with a few converts, and from those few a community of faith eventually formed.
Preach with the three responses in mind. The mockers do not need a softer message; they need a sharper one. The delayers do not need more time; they need a stronger invitation. The believers do not need encouragement to keep waiting; they need a church to belong to. Your hermeneutics will deliver each kind of hearer to one of these three doors. Make sure your preaching keeps all three open.
10. God Had His Address
A pastor tells the story of a boy, born illegitimate, whose parents abandoned him. He used rocks for a pillow. He bathed in the St. John’s River. He sold aluminum cans for food and studied under the light of a 7-Eleven. He slept some nights at the police station for warmth, others on the pavement under a bridge. Within thirteen years he was a pastor preaching every Sunday to fifteen hundred people. He looked back and said, God had my address. David said the same in Psalm 27: When my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up.
Pastor, the people in front of you on Sunday have their own Mars Hill. Some are wealthy with altars to careers and family. Some are sleeping under their own bridges with no altars at all. The God of the Bible has every one of their addresses. The whole Book has been pointing at the One who came to find them. Track Christ through your text this week and you will be doing what Paul did on the Areopagus. Begin where they are. End where He is. He had their address before they knew His name.