1. Be sure to grasp and preach the main point.  A story does not consist of details collected together to offer you numerous launch points for vaguely connected ideas and insights.  The story consists of details deliberately chosen to help make the story work, to make the main point effective.  Be sure to grapple with the main point more than you hunt for “preaching points.”

2. Be careful to honour the form as well as the content.  Why chop it up and preach it as discourse when God made it a story?  This means that the bulk of your message should involve the best retelling of the story that you can manage.  Speaking of which, two critical elements of powerful story preaching:

3. Put your energy into effective description.  Study hard so you can describe well.  Build your sensory descriptive vocabulary so you can describe effectively.  Read C.S.Lewis or another great fiction writer to get a taste of compelling description.  Turn on your imagination again, because if you can see it, they will see it.  Take enough time for your descriptions to form on the screens in the listeners’ minds.  And pour similar energy into describing the application of your message too.  Speaking of energy…

4. Present with energy through engaging dynamism.  To be blunt, people don’t listen to dull stories.  To be honest, we rarely tell dull stories in normal life.  Ask me about my littlest girl’s birth last week and I’ll be engagingly dynamic.  I need to let that version of me show when I preach a Bible story.  When you preach a Bible story, remember that if you really care so it shows, they will care too.

I think these four suggestions are the very essence of powerfully preaching a Bible story.  What would you add?

I’ve been trying to get hold of a commentary series on the books of Samuel that does a stunning job of demonstrating the interconnectedness of the individual stories (a rarity in commentaries on narrative books!)

I’ve been pondering how the gospel writers wove together events and parables in a way that honoured their historicity, yet communicated their own theological emphases under the inspiration of God.  The gospels are not simply four perspectives on a car accident, it’s much richer than that!

So as we engage a story, we must break open the blinkers of the section headings and get a sense of what is going on around our focus text.  The context almost always sheds light on the point of our focus.

What is true on a local level, is also true on a macro level.  To be effective preachers, we need to be whole Bible people.  That is, we need to have a sense of how the whole fits together, not just historically, but as a greater plot.

The tension underlying every narrative is the fall of Genesis 3.  The characters in every plot are people responding to God as they hear His Word.  The resolution to the problem of Genesis 3 can never be the moral successes of particular characters, but rather the amazing intervention of God’s grace incarnated.

While we don’t need to always finish the macro story, we must always be aware of how our particular text fits into that larger narrative.  Only then can we be sure to avoid the simplistic little niceties of sharing tips for successful living through ancient tales with moral morals.  For whether we realize it or not, how we live this Thursday is part of the great narrative of God’s grace being spurned or celebrated in the epic of history and the annals of eternity.

So on a book by book level, on a canon-wide level, and on a history as a whole level, we must see individual plots as part of the bigger plot of God’s great story.  As preachers we have the privilege of shining light both in narrow focus, and in broad illumination.

This leaves me in the nice position of being finished with the series, yet not finished.  My plan is to allow an aspect of Biblical theology to put the finishing touches on the series.  Let me explain.

One of the big themes in the last chapters of Chronicles is that of the devotion of the kings to the Lord.  Some were, some weren’t.  And the biggest manifestation in pre-exile Israel lay in the issue of overt idolatry.  As the book ends, hope dawns with Cyrus’ decree that the temple should be rebuilt.  Perhaps God’s promise to David will be fulfilled after all?

So in the progression of revelation, we move to a post-exilic Israel where overt idolatry was never a feature again.  Historically we see this determination for purity in books like Ezra and Nehemiah, but canonically, the next step from Chronicles is Matthew.  It’s a new world in Israel in Jesus’ day.  No physical idols.  But no idols?

Jesus addresses the issue of the less tangible idolatry of his day in the Sermon on the Mount.  And the beauty of this is that Matthew 6 speaks so directly to our, typically non-physical idol, cultural setting.  In post-exilic Israel, as in the modern Western world, money has become the “ba’al” for many.  Yet the issue of our devotion to God remains paramount.  Who is bigger in our eyes?  The false god, indeed the replacement god of financial security, or the true God who really cares?

So maybe I will get to preach Matthew 6 tomorrow to finish the Chronicles series.  Maybe I’ll get to push further into the New Testament and consider other areas of covert idolatry facing believers today.  Or maybe I won’t!

___________________________________________

Next Week?  Eco-Preaching: Recycling Sermons

Here’s my thinking:

1. It can be an informal conversation between preachers and those who care about preaching.

2. It can be a place to link to helpful material beyond this site, and including this site.

3. It can help to spread the word about the value of the ministry of biblical preaching through a different network of people.

4. The informal conversations and comments there can feed into content for this site.

Here’s my request:

1. Would you help spread the word about it by clicking on this link and liking the page (this will help it get suggested to others as facebook sees it being liked by more people).

2. Would you help spread the word by linking to it with a comment on facebook and/or twitter (and any other means you have…perhaps direct message to preachers you know, or an email, or snail mail…telegram?)

Thanks so much for your part in this blog, I hope the associated facebook community can help to make it better and more helpful.

4. Use the content, but ignore the context.

I use the term use deliberately.  Sometimes the content of a passage could feel used because it isn’t understood in light of its context.  This could be a certain term or phrase that is plucked out of its setting in a sentence and used to make a point.  It could be the whole paragraph or section that is presented without awareness of how it fits in the flow of thought in the book.

I remember a conversation I had with a street preacher years ago.  There are some street preachers that do a tremendous work of communicating the gospel to a busy and distracted world.  This was not one of them.  We got into a discussion about the Bible and I asked him what his view of the Bible was.  “Oh, the Bible is like a treasure chest filled with jewels and treasures that we pick up and show to the world!”  Problem was, he was plucking phrases without context and shouting random references to washing in blood and becoming white as snow, etc.  It didn’t communicate.  It regularly offended (in the wrong way).

That street shouter was an extreme example, but let’s not be lesser examples of the same error.  Let’s be careful to always present a whole text in its context, rather than plucking the “useful” preaching bits and using, or abusing, them.

5. Use the context, but ignore the content.

I suppose this is a less common error, in my experience.  But it is possible.  I guess this happens more in the gospels.  The preacher preaches about the ministry of Jesus in general, but doesn’t present the unique details conveyed by the gospel writer in this particular instance.  (Or the preacher may preach the event accurately through harmonizing the gospels, but fail to preach the inspired text of the gospel in question.)  Contextually it is possible to say Jesus was doing such and such, but if you’re preaching a particular healing narrative, preach it with good awareness of the detail the writer chose to include.

The list will build tomorrow, but feel free to comment on these or other things that come to mind at any point.

The Bible contains a variety of genres.  Look at the New Testament, for instance.  Here we have a combination of historical narrative and occasional epistles.  The theology of the Bible is offered to us in the vivid action of the Gospels and Acts.  It is given in the concrete situations of the first century church.  As Karen Jobes puts it in her Letters to the Church (p13)

In his wisdom, God gave us, among the inspired writings, the letters of the apostles to specific Christians living in very concrete situations during times that were very trying the Christian faith.  Because of that, we get to see how the Christian life was to be lived out in the context of first-century culture, and we can identify the same or similar issues today that challenge us.  Rather than giving us a book of abstract philosophy or theology, God’s Word has come in the form of very practical and specific situations.  It is another instance of God’s incarnational intent, to be Immanuel, God with us.

So here’s my question for the day: do we make enough effort to communicate the context of the passages we preach?  I’ve seen quite a number of preachers who preach texts from the epistles as if they are abstract presentations of truth.  They sometimes do a decent job of putting in concrete contemporary applications, but the text itself is treated as abstract truth statements.

God has given us a gift as preachers.  He has done some of our work for us.  He has given us the section of the Bible that is most likely to be abstract logical argument as occasional writings – that is, specific presentations of the gospel applied to specific churches, in specific cultural milieu, with specific issues at hand.  As we re-present these texts to our listeners, before we even get to contemporary application, our listeners will be translating from 1st century concrete to 21st century concrete.

Let’s be careful not to rush past presenting the situation that sparked the writing of the text in an attempt to be relevant.  Helping people to see what occasioned the epistle will already be helping them to see its relevance to us.

But let me throw this into the mix from a few centuries ago. Richard Sibbes is a preacher worthy of our attention.  According to Sibbes, the incarnation is a greater mystery than that of creation…

“We cannot too often meditate of these things.  It is the life and soul of a Christian.  It is the marrow of the gospel.  It is the wonder of wonders.  We need not wonder at anything after this.” (Sibbes, Works 5:485)

Like Sibbes and those puritans who were like him, may we be stirred as we ponder the Incarnation.  May it elicit wonder and thankfulness in our hearts.  May we be stirred to preach the Christ who

“hath taken our flesh upon him for that purpose, that he might have experimental knowledge of our infirmities and weaknesses, and from that he might be the more sweet, and kind, and gentle to us.” (Sibbes, Works 5:480-2)

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Next week - Handling the Text as a Preacher

A week of posts on our handling and presenting of the biblical text.

Here’s an application shotgun blast:

Biblical teaching on the future gives us encouragement in trials (John 14:1); comfort in griefs (1Thess.4:13-18); motivation for purification (1John 2:28-3:3); it moves us toward morality (Col.3:1-5ff); it drives us to diligent spotlessness (2Peter 3:14); it leads us to lay aside lusts (Rom.13:11-14); encourages exemplary living (1Thess.5:1-11); fires our faith (Heb.10:35-39); spurs us to strengthen our hearts (James 5:7-8); produces perseverance in our service (1Cor.15:58); fires us to finish well (2Tim.4:7-8); focuses our passion for preaching (2Tim.4:1-2); stirs worship as we see the sovereign plan of God (Rom.11:25-32); and offers blessing for both reading and heeding (Rev.1:3).

I could have added more, but you get the point.  (1) There is a lot of biblical content that points our thinking to future things and eternity.  I didn’t touch on the gospels, or the Old Testament, in that blast.  Two more mega rounds of applicational value.  If we are going to preach the Bible, we can’t help but point our listeners to the future.

If we are going to seek biblical transformation in the lives of our listeners, we can’t help but speak of the future.  As we see in the blast above, (2) the Bible assumes that our values are shaped by the future.  Where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.  Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.  Can a follower of Christ really represent Christ in this world without having eternally shaped values?

We live in a world marked by hopelessness.  Whether it is the forlorn agony of poverty, or the vain emptiness of wealth, we are surrounded by the hopeless. (3) Of all people, followers of Christ should be marked by hope, which is a biblical fruit of future focus.  If we preach a Christianity bereft of future reference, we snap a leg from the stool of truth on which we sit.  Sadly too many believers are trying balance on faith and love, but hope is strangely absent.

Let’s be sure to preach the Bible, shaping values and stirring hope.

I think application is generally best incorporated throughout a message.  So instead of lengthy explanation followed by a block of application at the end, we can demonstrate the relevance of the message from the introduction onwards, and at every transition, within every movement of the message, etc.  But with the passage we were looking at yesterday, I felt that this was an opportunity for strategic application saving.

His passage has two foci of potential application.  One relates to the kind of people we will encounter as we go out into the world to share the gospel.  The second relates to the kind of people we are within the church.  My suggestion was to make the whole focus on the former, and save the latter until the very end.  Why?

My sense was that if he hinted at, or overtly referred to, the possibility that there might be people with false motives in the church, then subconsciously the listeners would have their guard up.  Instead, better to focus the application of the passage on “the big world out there and what we will encounter as we share the gospel” for the bulk of the message, allow the listeners to become engrossed in the narrative from Acts, and then at the end introduce the “but what about us in here” target.

Withholding an aspect of application can be very strategic when listeners drop their guard and are therefore more open to be struck by its relevance.  Our tendency as preachers is to give away too much early on in the message.  Even a little comment like, “this passage speaks to what we will meet out there, and also what kind of people we are…” – that mini comment early on could change the reception of the entire message.

If part of the relevance of a message might be resisted, pay special attention to when you introduce the thought.  One option is to avoid early references to it, get the guard to drop, and then perhaps it will hit home more strategically.