Preaching Christ from Genesis

by Sidney Greidanus

Sidney Greidanus's previous two preaching books --  The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text  and Preaching Christ from the Old Testament  -- have received wide acclaim.  Preaching Christ from Genesis  offers more of Greidanus's solid, practical homiletical fare.Packed with unique features,  Preaching Christ from Genesis

Genres: Theology, Old Testament

536 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 2007

About the author

Sidney Greidanus (born 1935) is an American pastor and biblical scholar.

Greidanus studied at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary before obtaining a Th.D. from the Free University in Amsterdam. He served as pastor in the Christian Reformed Church and taught at Calvin College and The King’s College before becoming professor of preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary in 1990.

Greidanus is best known for his emphasis on preaching Christ from Old Testament texts. He has been described as one of the most important and influential authors today in the area of biblical preaching.

Reviews

[Jon Pentecost · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greidanus provides beautiful reflections on Genesis. The most valuable aspect of this book is what's in the title--he is looking for how to get to Christ from the particular passage. He has several different possible avenues for getting to Christ, and those are useful categories to learn, even if I'm not completely persuaded all of them are sufficient avenues of preaching Christ on their own in one sermon.

The most frustrating part of this book is what is not there--most of Genesis. Griedanus has really only chosen the biggest 'hotspots' in Genesis. So it often felt like the texts where I needed the most help preaching Christ in a way that was consonant with the text were the texts where he gave no guidance. At times it seemed that Greidanus was writing with the assumption that a preacher would not preach consecutively through a book?

So a very useful tool, but only as a supplementary tool to other commentaries.

Used in preparing to preach Genesis in 2021, 2022.

[Matt Tyler]

Haven’t finished this as I will return to preach the rest of Genesis at a later time.

While I will likely return to it, I did expect it to be more useful than it actually was.

[Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent commentary on Genesis. It is not verse by verse, it is instead focused on putting sermons together from Genesis. For every passage Greidanus uses seven methods to see Jesus in the Old Testament: Redemptive-Historical Progression, Promise-Fulfillment, Typology, Analogy, Longitudinal Themes, New Testament References, and Contrast. After biblically using each of these methods he develops a Christ-centered theme for each text and develops an outline for a sermon from there. This book is obviously for people teaching, or preaching, through Genesis, but it is also an excellent and theologically sound book to use for study of Genesis.

[Doug Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like his book "Preaching Christ from Ecclesiastes", this book was very helpful to get insights into the place of the stories of Genesis in redemptive history. My co-pastor and I used it as a guide through our message series on Genesis and it was an excellent resource.

[Laurent Dv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just excellent, useful to any reader who wants to understand Genesis and get from it applications. Very christocentric and always cares for the meaning of any text of Genesis in the context of redemtive history

[Joe Haack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Used this for a sermon series on the life of Jacob. Only a few episodes in Jacob's life is covered, but when it was covered, this book was so very helpful.

[Timothy Decker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful early on, but many redundancies. The latter portion offered very little help. Also, his method to get to Christ was very limited.

[Kelton Zacharias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I preached through all of Genesis from Fall of '20 to Spring of '23, and I would have to say this was the most helpful resource. Unfortunately he does skip some sections of Genesis.

[Michael Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fantastic volume and enlightening. Especially helpful are Greidanus's different approaches to finding Christ in the Genesis narrative. His book doesn't breathe of a stuffy static interpretation, but a vibrant and robust interpretation. While this book is geared towards ministers, I did find his "sermon" examples to be a different approach to homiletics than I would likely take; but a helpful book nonetheless.