Old Testament

The First-Person Exception Clause

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

I just received a really encouraging email from Steve.  Steve has attended a couple of my preaching seminars and also helped to set one up in his own church.  We had talked about the possibility of preaching in first-person, and he followed through on the idea.  Here are the highlights of the email with some added comments from me:

“Whereas I’ve heard another preacher do this with a slight tongue in cheek approach, I did the whole thing totally straight, trying to maintain the idea that I was Abraham telling my story to my grandchildren.” – that’s an important point, it’s so easy to slip into an ongoing humour that distances us from our character in order to connect with our listeners.  This may be appropriate in some settings, but I say if you’re going to go for it, go for it.  Now, was it easy?

“It was really tough going as I had no notes whatsoever and when you realise you’ve missed something it is so hard to think around whether you should go back and make that point you forgot or carry on, whilst still keeping totally in character.” Most people agree that Abraham would not use notes to give his message (I would suggest the same principle might apply as you give “your” message next time too, but that would be taking us off the point of this post).  Preaching without notes in any form provides that kind of challenge.  It does get easier, but never easy.  Here comes the exception clause:

“I think many were impressed with the fact I listed out Abraham’s genealogy from Abraham back to Noah. That was just a memory trick though and very early on in the sermon.” Generally we should avoid anything that smacks of showing off in our preaching.  It can be easy to do after spending hours with our nose in the books, but we are there to serve and communicate, not to show off.  However, Steve has made a comment here that I view as an exception to the rule – in this case such information would obviously be known by Abraham himself.  People may be impressed, but if used judiciously, this type of communication can serve to underline that this is a serious sermon.  But this should be carefully weighed so it is not the big talking point or lasting effect of the message:

“It was so good though as I was taking the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac and so many people came up afterwards and said that the story had come alive for them like never before and made them think what it really felt like for them both. You could really see people on the edge of their seats.” That’s the power of well-told narrative!

So, last words to a first time first-person preacher: “It was definitely worth doing though even if it was a real challenge.”

Bible Study Is Not a Hop

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

I don’t want to oversimplify Bible study, but in most basic terms it involves two steps. The first step is to understand what the author meant by what he wrote back then.  The second step is to then consider the enduring application of that text for us today.  Back then . . . today.  Two steps.  One.  Two.

Bible study is not a hop.  We cannot simply try to understand what the text means for us today.  But this happens all the time.  Last night I was enjoying a Bible study in Isaiah 28-35.  We noticed how easily writers will try to explain the content of the passage in terms of “us.”  The problem with this “melded” approach to understanding a passage is that it flattens and simplifies everything.

You might say that actually simplified is good when it comes to complex books like Isaiah.  Indeed, but not when simplified comes at the cost of understanding what Isaiah was actually writing, and at the cost of enjoying the multi-layered, complex, intricate and beautiful plan of God.  When we look at the way God works out His promises we should be stirred to cry out, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”  There is a richness to the way God works through history.  That richness can be lost so quickly – in the time it takes to change two steps into a hop.

Wherever we are in the Bible, let’s be sure to wrestle with what the author meant back then, followed by the possible applications for us either by enduring theological truth or by extension (interpretation before application).  One … two.  Not a hop.

The Challenge of Narratives 1: Old Testament

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Note – Peter has offered a clarifying comment on this post.

I’d like to offer a series of posts on the particular challenges for interpreting the major narrative sections in the Bible.  Today, the Old Testament.  In parts 2 and 3, the Gospels.  Then in part 4, Acts.

There are many challenges when interpreting Old Testament narrative passages.  These include the greater distance between the story and today (culturally, linguistically, historically) and the simple fact that we tend to lack a broad understanding of the sweep of Old Testament history.  However, the greatest challenge I see is:

Accurately grasping the enduring theological truth of a story.

This is a major challenge.  After all, we are not preaching a story about Jacob to his twelve sons.  A lot has changed since the story was written.  We have to wrestle with matters of continuity and discontinuity:

1. There are significant elements of discontinuity between the Old Testament and now.  Early OT narratives occur pre-Sinai, or pre-exile.  All OT narratives occur before the first coming of Christ, before the cross, before the resurrection, before Pentecost, before the founding and growth of the church.  The characters had less of the Bible to know and trust, they had a different relationship to the Holy Spirit than we do, their perspective on the world and history was different.  Whatever label you put on it, some things have changed.

2. There are some critical elements of continuity too. I’d like to mention two key elements of continuity.  Having taken into account all that has changed between those times and these times, some things don’t change.  Human nature doesn’t change.  God’s character doesn’t change.  While so much may be different, we continue to face the same two paths before us as the biblical characters faced: the path of trusting God, and the path of unbelief.

All Scripture is not written directly to us, or even to people whose situation was the same as ours.  But all Scripture is useful, applicable, relevant.  It’s our challenge as preachers to figure out how.

?-Centric Preaching

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There is a lot of discussion about whether preaching is anthropocentric or theocentric (man or God-centered).  Some like to get into the theocentric versus christocentric debate (God or Christ-centered).  I am not getting into that one in this post (although I will mention a helpful category I heard recently from Walter Kaiser – christocentric is one thing, but christo-exclusive is another . . . I like that helpful distinction!)

Based on the nature of Scripture, I think it is vital that we grasp the necessity of theocentric interpretation, and consequently, preaching.  Kent Edwards, in a journal article, stated:

The point of a biblical story is always a theological point.  We learn something about God and how to live in response to him when we understand a biblical story.  The narrative literature of the Bible is concretized theology.
J.Kent Edwards, JEHS 7:1, 10.

How true that is!  Even if you were to study Esther, the story in the Bible where God is textually absent, it doesn’t take long to recognize that God is very much present as the hero of the story!  Let’s be sure we don’t study Bible passages, stories in particular, and merely derive little lessons for life.  We can leave that with Aesop’s Fables.  Let’s be sure we grapple with the theological point of every story, the intersection between God and humanity.  God’s Word is all relevant and useful, so our preaching should likewise be relevant and useful to life.  But we also center our preaching on God, because the Bible is centered on Him!

Do You Preach Bible Stories?

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Biblical narratives spark differing reactions.  I just had a conversation with someone who preaches periodically.  I mentioned the subject of my seminar this weekend and he responded that he loves preaching on that kind of passage.  Yet others seem to avoid narratives, especially Old Testament narratives, at all costs.  The difficulty for the avoiders is that there is so much narrative in the Bible.  Ray Lubeck counts 44% of chapters as being predominantly narrative.  Michael Rydelnik has a more general approach when he concludes that three-fourths of the Old Testament and half of the New Testament is narrative (more like 70% of the whole).

I think it is accurate to say that narratives are generally easy to read, but they can be hard to interpret accurately (we all like a good story, but that doesn’t mean we always “get it.”)  As far as preaching is concerned, on one level they can be relatively easy to preach, but they are usually hard to preach well.

So the challenge today is two-fold.

1. For those who jump at the chance to preach narrative. Make sure you are really seeking to grasp the point of the story rather than merely making the easy moralistic observations that can easily jump out of such stories (we’ll address the various short-cuts to be wary of in the next few days), and strive not just to preach the narratives, but to preach them well.

2. For those who do gymnastics to avoid preaching a narrative. Take the plunge, they are so rich for both personal study and preaching.  Take the hint, God inspired a lot of the Bible in narrative form.  Take the opportunity to provide a more balanced diet for all who hear you.

Biblical Narrative: Two Truths Together

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I’m giving a lot of thought to the preaching of biblical narrative at the moment.  I have a seminar on the subject coming up this weekend and I am thoroughly enjoying preparation for that event.  Somehow, when it comes to narrative passages, there are two truths that don’t seem to sit easily together in peoples’ minds.  These are the historical accuracy of the biblical narratives, and the literary artistry in the biblical narratives.

On the one side you have some conservative preachers who treat the narratives as historically accurate, but essentially no different than any other biblical text (just dissect and deliver!)  On the other side you have other less conservative writers who may recognize the literary skill, but deny historicity (my mind goes to Robert Alter’s term “historical fiction” in reference to the Hebrew Bible).

I appreciate this definition from Jeffrey Arthurs’ excellent book, Preaching with Variety:

Biblical narrative can be defined as a historically accurate, artistically sophisticated account of persons and actions in a setting designed to reveal God and edify the reader. (Page 64)

He goes on to write, “Although biblical narrators do not make up events and characters, they do select, arrange, and depict them with skill.” Historical accuracy and sophisticated literary artistry are not mutually exclusive categories.  As Leland Ryken put it in Preach the Word, “While fictionality is a common characteristic of literature, it is not a necessary feature of it.” (Page 45)

As we prepare to preach biblical narratives, let’s make sure we don’t fall into the either/or thinking.  Historical accuracy.  Literary artistry.  Two truths that sit comfortably together.

Preaching One Text – Part II

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Yesterday I addressed why it is generally best to preach on a single text.  Today I’d like to address a possible misunderstanding that might result from this suggestion:

This emphasis on preaching a single text does not mean that I advocate preaching biblically naive or theologically unaware messages.  To really understand a particular passage usually requires us to study (or at least be aware of) other passages that feed into it.  For instance, can we grasp what is going on with the marriage issues in Ezra/Nehemiah without being thoroughly informed by the Torah?  Can we understand the prophets as they seek to enforce the covenant if our awareness of that covenant in Deuteronomy is lacking?  Can we grasp New Testament teaching built on Old Testament paradigms if our Old Testament pages remain clean and stuck together?  Walter Kaiser speaks of the “informing theology” of a passage.  We must be careful not to miss critical elements for understanding our preaching text when those elements are recorded earlier in the Bible.

Having studied to the full extent of our resources (time and skill), we then need to consider what our listeners actually need to hear.  A sermon should not be an information dump in which every detail of our exegesis is piled onto the ears of our listeners.  Perhaps no “informing theology” is necessary to communicate this passage.  Perhaps only a brief summary will do.  Sometimes we need to have them turn the pages and see it for themselves.   We must do everything we can to fully understand the passage, but remember that all our work cannot be squeezed into the minutes available for preaching, or squeezed into the minds and hearts of our listeners.  We study at length, then cut out everything unnecessary for preaching the main point of the message.

We may preach one passage, but let us not preach biblically naive or theologically unaware messages.

Why We Preach

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Where there is no vision, the people perish . . . so starts a well-known, oft-quoted and usually misunderstood proverb (Proverbs 29:18).  The second half of the proverb completes the thought and makes it clear that this is not about having vision statements, 5-year plans and strategic documents (good as those all are).  It is about a word from the Lord.  Where there is no word from the Lord, the people go wild, they cut loose, they sin with abandon.  The same verb is used twice of the Israelites sinning out of control with the golden calf (they weren’t just dancing – Exo.32:25!)  It is used to describe the wickedness promoted by King Ahaz (2Chron.28:19).

So as you continue to prepare for Sunday, remember how important it is that God’s people hear the word of the Lord.  If we consistently fail to preach the Word, the results will become evident.  Whether or not you have a vision statement in the church, make sure the Word of God is preached clearly, accurately, faithfully and applicatonally.

Preaching Sermons on Sermons

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I don’t mean preaching your sermon based on another contemporary preacher’s sermon.  I mean preaching a sermon based on a Scriptural sermon.  There’s lots of them.  It can be fascinating to wrestle with a sermon in its context since you would expect to find a sense of context, purpose, application, explanation, etc.  If you haven’t given this any thought before, here are some places to go:

The Sermons of Acts – Acts is a book of action, but interestingly, the sermons are not introductory to the action, they are the action!  Obviously the sermons in Acts are summaries of the original message, but studying them in their context and looking for what specifically the preacher was saying can be very satisfying.  Paul has at least three sermons (not counting defense speeches).  Peter also preaches in Acts (very slightly harder to understand and apply directly since things were shifting pretty rapidly in those first months, but still worth studying!)

The Sermons of Jesus – Matthew, for example, alternates between discourse (sermons) and narrative (action).  So you have great blocks of teaching – the sermon on the mount, instructions to the disciples, parables of the kingdom, olivet discourse, etc.  Since some of these are distilled surveys of teaching, it can be hard to define a specific sermon text, but it is so worth the effort.  Who was he preaching to?  Why did he preach it?

The only complete sermon – I see only one complete sermon in the Bible.  It takes about 50-55 minutes, and it is absolute dynamite.  The book of Hebrews is a sermon written down.  The more I study it, the more I see it as a sermon.  So many features of orality, so much application, so careful in its exposition, so powerful in its relevance to the first hearers.

Other sermons – then you’ve also got snippets of sermons throughout the Old Testament prophets.  What a treasure so often neglected.

A case can be made for the oral nature of much of Scripture.  With diligent prayerful study, you will find preaching sermons on the Bible’s sermons is immensely satisfying for you, and powerful in the lives of your listeners.

No Greek or Hebrew? A Tip

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

A very significant proportion of preachers around the world have had no training in the original languages.  After hearing yet another example in the last weeks, I’d like to give a tip regarding “this word literally means…” Generally speaking, unless you have thoroughly researched it.  Don’t use it.

The latest example I heard from the leader of a Bible study.  The verse seemed to be clear enough in content, but then we were given an exciting insight into the Hebrew text, “in the original language this word literally means . . .”  Interesting, perhaps even exciting, but actually, wrong.  It struck me as being slightly bizarre at the time, but not having my Hebrew text in front of me, and not wanting to “lord it over” in some way, I just made a note to check it later.  There’s no way it could be understood that way, unless the source of the alternative understanding had a particular theological agenda (which I’m fairly sure I can guess).

Sometimes “this literally means” might be helpful. It’s rare, but now and then this kind of background linguistic knowledge can add a nuance or some colour to our understanding of a passage.  One example is where a dynamic equivalent translation is “hiding” the repetitious use of a term (eg.”flesh” in Romans 6-8).  It is helpful to know there is a theme being repeated, and that the term used has particular connotations lost in some dynamic translations.

Often “this literally means” is not helpful. Remember that a decent translation (of which we have many in English) is the work of scholars trying to convey the meaning of the original text.  That means they tried to choose words that would express the thought and meaning of the original.  An “insight” that moves us in a new direction is not helpful if that insight is not accurate.  Without a decent amount of training in the original languages it can be hard to tell if someone knows what they are writing or speaking about.  Typically it is worth checking the “insight” against more than one academic commentary, or asking someone with genuine skill in the language (i.e. not just a course or two).

Sometimes “this literally means” is borderline heresy. Here’s the real danger, not just that our dabbling in “original language” comments lead our listeners slightly off track (although that is bad enough), but that we actually verge on heresy.

We are so blessed with good translations in our language.  If you have not had opportunity to seriously study Greek and Hebrew for a couple of years or more, it’s best to not pull out the “this literally means” type of comments.  Just as you may get it wrong, so do others, and some of them get their insights published!