Observation 1 – Masterful Handling of the Text

In four messages we were taken through the entire book of Daniel.  Not the easiest book to preach, nor the least controversial.  How was the text handled so effectively in the course of four one-hour presentations?

A. The speaker was sensitive to both the literary and historical context of the book.  He knew his Babylonian and subsequent world empire history and demonstrated a keen awareness of the various disciplines needed for pulling together the complexity of Daniel.

B. He was deeply aware of the literary structure of the book.  Layer upon layer of structure was masterfully woven together as the book was presented, leaving the listeners struck by the artistry of the writer.

C. He showed a remarkable ability to summarise the content of multiple chapters without losing the essence or the core intent of the passages.  The teaching had integrity, even when a chapter was surveyed only briefly.

D. The speaker was as bold as a lion, yet as winsome as a lamb.  In a mixed crowd of people from multiple denominations and disciplines, it would be tempting to try to please everyone with a sort of neutered presentation.  Not here.  There was a stunning level of courage in this presentation.  He knew that many would disagree on various levels, yet he was unashamed in his presentation of the book. I think this kind of courage required both a genuine winsomeness and an authoritative mastery of the book’s contents.

I was challenged by the obvious passion for the Word that showed in this series of talks.  But there was more to it than that, tomorrow I’ll look at the issue of targeted applications…

I would love to get the in-depth Jesus preaching seminar.  Surely it would involve issues of speaking with authority unlike the scribes, and how to select compelling images, effective storytelling, memorable motifs, etc.  But I want to suggest a slightly higher level, helicopter (or should I say more heavenly) view of the preaching process.

The gospels don’t give us the answer to how should we preach.  But as well as His example, there is also the consistent pattern of Jesus’ theology.  How should we pray?  He answered with a variation on the theme of what is the greatest commandment?  Since the pattern was so common in his teaching, allow me to speculate on an overview of the preaching preparation process from Jesus’ perspective.  Jesus, how should we preach?

1. Love God.  The first phase of the process is to be loving God by sitting at Christ’s feet.  Stop being manic and busy for God, but instead sit at His feet and allow Him to minister to you.  Don’t search the Scriptures and miss the person that is there, but seek the Lord in His Word and you will find Him.  Treat the Bible as if God is a good communicator and so diligently study and wrestle with the text, allowing it to do a work in you before you even think about offering it to others.  Love God in response to His self-revelation in His Word.

2. Love your neighbour (congregant, listener, audience, etc.).  That is, pray for the people who you will speak to.  Really spend time with God concerning them.  Then as you start planning your message, plan it prayerfully with a deep concern for them to understand, to stay engaged, to be able to follow, to feel the import and impact of the message of the text.  And as you preach it, preach with the winsomeness and grace of God permeating your demeanour, because God is passionately excited about incarnating His grace and truth!

I could be wrong, but I wonder if Jesus might give an answer along those lines.

Our God is a God who not only created everything, including time, but He also has stepped down into this world, and into time.  So, history:

Epochs and Eras – It is hard to fathom what the antediluvian world was like, it certainly wasn’t the same as after the flood.  Travel for Abram was certainly different than the travel experience of Paul.  Out of the swirling nations of the ancient world God called one man and began a story that has woven its way down through numerous epochs and era.  The Patriarchs and the pyramids.  The golden age of David and Solomon, finally a time of peace before the relentless march of empire upon empire.  The age of human philosophy and wisdom yielding nothing but a blank page in our Bibles.  The Greek culture and language outlasting the empire and sophisticating the Roman war machine.  Roads built for enforced peace then used to transport a message of true hope and peace.  And throughout it all, hints and promises and prophecies of a kingdom coming one day that will fill the whole earth.

The Great and the Small - The Bible is a masterpiece of the great and the small.  The mightiest men on earth.  Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar, both relying on foreign nobodies to explain their terrifying dreams.  Alexander the Great…unmentioned.  The great Caesars of Rome playing a very minor support role in the great drama of the coming of the greatest of all, born in the most common of places, dying the most ignominious death, and turning the world upside-down.  Yet it is not just the Great-Seen-As-Small, although He is the focus of it all.  There are so many small people playing their part in the narrative of God’s great plan – from the small brother with big dreams, to the youngest of eight with his harp, to the teens taken to Babylon, to a shepherd of Tekoa, a young man fleeing naked and another falling sleepily to his temporary death.

Power and Politics - The story advances through time with perpetual shifts in power.  Each power figure thinking they are the ultimate and discovering they are not.  The hard-hearted king with his great nation seemingly under attack by its own gods, yet all at the hand of the One true God.  The arrogant-mouthed conqueror sent home in disgrace and killed by his sons.  The proud-hearted emperor turned into a beast of the field until he acknowledged who is really in charge.  The partying-victor brought to fearful humiliation by a finger writing on the wall.  The conflicted parties of a council with restricted powers stirred to rage by a carpenter-rabbi from Nazareth, who confounded the governor with real power in the region, while ignoring the entertainment-oriented “king” given his audience with a true King.  History seems to be a tale of waxing and waning powers, but actually it is the story of the only true power, thankfully with a truly trustworthy heart.

History and Geography, partners in powerful biblical teaching.

John Smith, in his History of Virginia (not highly relevant here), wrote:

As geography without history seemeth a carcus without motion, so history without geography wandereth as a vagrant without certain habitation.

So true.  So what are some of the elements of geography that will help our biblical teaching?

Nations and Empires - In the back of most Bibles are a set of maps.  It can’t be just one.  We need to get a sense of the ancient world from Spain to Iran, with Israel as a tiny place.  We need to see Israel and even Jerusalem close up.  But more than that, we also need to see a world changing through time.  The great Assyrian Empire, so feared, then gone.  The mighty Babylonians, then the Medo-Persians, the swift conquering, lasting cultural impact of Greece, the machine that was Rome.  We need to see Egypt and Assyria with Israel in between.  We need to see how Judea really was on the fringe of the Roman empire.  Nations and empires, kingdoms and regions.

Distance and Terrain – The fertile crescent was quite some distance for Abram, or for a captured Judean king.  The direct route from Babylon to Jerusalem was another story – that would need some major hill removal and valley filling if a motorway were ever to be made.  The lush green rolling hills around Galilee are not out of reach of arid Judean mini-mountains, but again the direct path via Sychar was seldom travelled, many preferring the fast falling Jordan river route.  Heading west wasn’t easy either – sea voyages were fraught with dangers from storm and foe (although there was the fishy option), but Roman roads and iron-fisted peace helped the spread of the gospel.

Cities and Towns – We all know that our town is not the same as the one down the road.  A city isn’t just more inhabited than a town, it is different on numerous levels.  So we must avoid seeing every biblical place as some sort of generic town.  Nazareth was a garrison town for Roman soldiers, Tarsus was a city of some means, also well acquainted with Rome’s fast moving war machine, and Philippi had its history with Rome too.  Yet each of these places was different.  Tekoa and Jerusalem are by no means the same.  A reading of Acts points to the strategic nature of hub cities in the growth of the church, while the most obscure of villages have a part to play in God’s plan - even little Bethlehem is graced beyond words!  And what about Rome, can the gospel penetrate even Rome?

All of this, and more, lies motionless without the vivifying force of history.  To which we turn tomorrow.

I believe it is possible.  If there is no personal warmth between preacher and listener, and if there is no vertical warmth between the preacher and God, then a highly applicational message could easily become an instructional rant based on a text.

This isn’t something any of us should strive for.  Problem is that if we think being relevant and applicational is the whole deal, then we can overlook the fact that communication is best offered in the context of interpersonal warmth.  As preachers our listeners need us to have that reality in both dimensions!

A good friend of mine has a stock of great sayings, one of which goes, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  So true in preaching.  A chilling of the temperature in our personal walk with God will show in our communication with others.  Even the most winsome of texts can become an opportunity to hammer on the duty theme again, for example.

Let’s leave it there, that almost qualifies as a short thought!

Preaching to two peoples: There are only the saved and unsaved, technically there is no “half-saved.”  Having said that, from the perspective of the listener there does seem to be a spectrum – from complete newcomer to all things Christian, to those feeling drawn, to those on the cusp of trusting, to those who are newborn, those who are in the midst of their first love, those who are growing with the usual growing pains, those established, those entrenched, those with doubts, etc.  But lest we get overwhelmed, let’s remember that there are those present who don’t get the culture in which we worship, or the content of which we speak.  And there are those that do.  Both can and should be engaged with God’s Word.

Preaching to two genders: I remember being in a discussion where the presenter was arguing that all preaching is male oriented.  Not only are most biblical characters male, but so are most characters in illustrations, and those illustrations tend to be sporting or reflective of male interests.  This was a fair point and worth pondering.  At the same time, one member of the group pointed out that he has no problem getting women into his church, but it is the men he struggles to keep.  Statistics would back him up, too.  I don’t think there’s an easy solution to this, but we certainly should prayerfully pursue a sensitivity to the congregation before us.  And let’s avoid the stereotypes.  Not every male is Tarzan.  Not every female knits.

Preaching to multiple generations: It can feel irrelevant to sense the preacher only feels comfortable with the elderly of a certain generation.  It must feel tiresome to know that the preacher thinks only of the “church of tomorrow” in an attempt to be contemporary and relevant to a certain generation.  Truth is that the church is made up of more than one generation.  Jesus honoured the children when his disciples would have dismissed them.  The Bible repeatedly honours the widows and the vulnerable.  We daren’t preach only to the twenty-somethings or the settled late-careerists.

I like the way my friend works.  He puts five representative names on cards and spreads them out on the table as he formulates his message.  Will this connect with him?  Will she feel engaged?  And them?

“One of the great perils that face preachers…is the problem of hyper-intellectualism, that is, the constant danger of lapsing into a purely cerebral form of proclamation, which falls exclusively upon the intellect.  Men become obsessed with doctrine and end up as brain-oriented preachers.  There is consequently a fearful impoverishment in their hearers emotionally, devotionally, and practically.  Such pastors are men of books and not men of people; they know the doctrines, but they know nothing of the emotional side of religion.  They set little store upon experience or upon constant fellowship and interaction with almighty God.  It is one thing to explain the truth of Christianity to men and women; it is another thing to feel the overwhelming power of the sheer loveliness and enthrallment of Jesus Christ and to communicate that dynamically to the whole person who listens so that there is a change of such dimensions that he loves Him with all his heart and soul and mind and strength.”

Not only do we need to address the whole person before us, but also all the persons before us.  Ramesh Richard lists three attitudes that will be listening during a message:

1. The I Don’t Cares! These are not hostile, they just don’t feel they should be there. They are there out of a sense of duty to friends or family, or habitual routine. For this attitude the need raised at the beginning of the message is critical. Without it, they are free to continue their inner stance of not caring.

2. The I Don’t Knows! They lack the background awareness that others may have regarding God, the Bible, Christianity and church life. These people need good biblical content clearly explained.

3. The I Don’t Believes! These people are doubtful about the truth of what is said, or the applicability of it to real life. They are likely to test what is said with questions such as, “Is this truth coherent?” or “Is the sermon consistent?” or “Is this truth practical?” and especially, “Will this work?” For this attitude you must demonstrate a coherent consistency as well as practical relevance.

Before preaching it is worth prayerfully considering whether the sermon is merely cerebral or emotional, and whether it will engage these three attitudes.  Is a clear and valuable need raised? Is there sufficient accessible explanation? Is the message relevant and life engaging? We preach not to get our study into the public domain, but to see the lives, the hearts, the attitudes of our listeners changed by exposure to God’s Word.

1. Make sure you’ve understood how the detail relates to the whole before you say anything else about it.  

Biblical narrative tends to be sparse in nature.  Papyrus was expensive and the writer’s were sober.  They didn’t waste words.  So if a detail is present, assume the detail is important to the specific goal of the passage.  Rather than rushing into an easy preaching point, be sure to make sense of the detail in the whole passage, and the whole passage in light of the detail.  Once you know how it is working here, then maybe it bears some passing interest in its own right.

2. Make sure any comment you make concerning the detail is rooted in its context.

Plucking a phrase or sentence out of context to say something it doesn’t say . . . well that is the arena of the cults.  Let’s not subtly prepare our people for the cults by modelling cult-like Bible handling in the pulpit (or they might go for it on their doorstep!)  A text is saying something.  You can’t legitimately say anything from a passage, be sure to say the passage’s something.  Context will always be the key to correctly interpreting the meaning of a detail.  If it doesn’t mean what you want to say, be patient until the passage does say that.  Perhaps even select a preaching passage accordingly, but be committed to saying what the text is actually saying.  Never force.

3. Make certain any passing applicational point is rooted biblically.

There may be a place for a passing application point, but be sure the application is genuinely biblical.  Many a moralistic point has been made that is more preacher’s culture or personal preference than biblical teaching.  Many are committed to the idea of comparing scripture with scripture during the interpretation phase of biblical study.  I think more would do well to compare scripture with scripture in anticipation of making their applications.  I think Haddon Robinson said a few times that there is more heresy per square inch in the field of application than in any other aspect of preaching.

More could be said on all this, what would you add, or clarify?

So what sort of insightful incidental comments are best left unsaid altogether?  Tomorrow I’ll address the potentially appropriate ones, but for now, just the baddies:

1. Distracting moralisms – For example, the preacher is working through the story of Zaccheus’ encounter with Jesus.  The setup is finished, Jesus has just called Zac down from the tree and there is an interim comment before the big scene in his house.  The interim comment is about the crowds grumbling.  Cue preacher going off on a gentle tirade about grumbling and how bad that is for a church.  A couple of wilderness quotes, the threat of excessive quail dinners and then the diversion is over, back to Zac’s dinner table.  Oops.  And then some.  This story has nothing to do with whether people should grumble or not.  Actually, if the preacher had observed more closely, it would have become clear that the comment by Luke is not wasted at all.  The crowds grumbled at Jesus!  Here is the key point in the story, the moment when Jesus diverts anger onto himself to free up sinner Zac.  By looking for a moralistic application point, the preacher has missed the transformational gold of grace in action.  Chances are, after missing that, the same preacher might go on to make Zac’s proclamation of distribution into part of his salvation negotiations, rather than the pure response that it actually is.

2. Errant critiques – For example, the preacher is working through the story of the blind man healed in two stages.  In this case he hadn’t given any attention to the preceding content in Mark 6-8, which is so critical to understanding this unique story.  Getting to the end of the passage, his eyes are drawn by the red ink of Jesus’ words in verse 26.  ”Do not enter the village.”  Voila!  Preaching point.  We don’t do follow-up these days!  We need to learn from Jesus.  Jesus didn’t just heal, he also gave instruction.  Don’t go back into the world.  Just follow me.  Etc. Etc.  Meanwhile the more astute listeners have their eyes on the text wondering how the preacher missed the first half of the verse.  Did Jesus ask this blind man to follow him?  Or did he actually send him to his home?  It is perilous to be looking for preaching points, rather than really reading the passage to understand it.

3. Personal soapboxes – I’m out of words, but you know what I mean.  The slightest hint in a passage and off goes the preacher on a personal crusade.

So easy to preach in vague connection to a text.  So much safer and better to preach the message of the text.