Another recent post on the Cor Deo site:
On a normal street in a town near somewhere, there is a church. I won’t describe the building in any detail because this may cause you to either disassociate yourself from it and start pointing the finger at others, or to feel like I am pointing my finger at your type of church. Let’s just say it is a church not unlike yours or mine.
Another post from the Cor Deo blog, this time from 1John:
As you read 1 John it is clear that John was profoundly marked by Jesus’ commandment in the upper room to love one another. He grasped that this was more than a pragmatic suggestion, but that it went to the very heart of what it was to be a disciple of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.
Here’s a post from January that was never linked to from here:
God is strong enough to handle whatever challenge you or I might be facing. I think most of us readily believe that. And yet His great strength sometimes is not the comfort we think it should be. Why?
Click here to go to the post pondering Isaiah 40 and our need for comfort from God.
Just catching up on Cor Deo posts, in case you missed any:
Why does Matthew end his great Christmas narrative with a whimper? Other sections of his gospel finish with strong summaries, so why not the first two chapters? Why have a great story end with some geographical details, an obscure reference to an unidentified prophecy and a comment about Jesus being called a Nazarene?
This week I am catching up on posts I have written for the Cor Deo blog in the past few weeks. Just in case you missed one . . .
Everyone assumes their perspective is a healthy and balanced one. If we can see one person off in one direction, and another off in the other, we must be the one holding the privileged position of balance. But maybe we need to take an often-overlooked factor into account.
This post ponders the impact of living in a post-Genesis 3 world . . . a reality that should impact every sermon we preach! Click here to go to the post.
This series is not about “adding tone” to lifeless letters and words. It is about recognizing the tone of the text, and then being sensitive to the impact of our tone as we preach that text. Here are a couple of example contrasts:
1. Tone of writer: Galatians and 2 Timothy. This is perhaps the two extremes in Paul’s writing. In Galatians Paul is very upset about the false teachers. He forsakes convention to deliver a stinging astonishment statement in 1:6 instead of the standard thanksgiving opening. In chapter 3 he is questioning who has cast a spell on the believers who he obviously loves deeply, but is so concerned about. And by chapter 5 he makes the strongest remark in all of his writings, again about the false teachers.
Compare that with the sensitivity of Paul in his later letter to Timothy, beloved Timothy. He writes about false teachers there too, but the tone is completely different. He is concerned, he is deliberate, he is urgent, but he is gentle at the same time. Paul wanted both letters to get through – one as a wake-up call, the other as an encouragement.
2. Imposed tone of preacher: Hebrews and Ephesians. One example of how we can impose a tone that contradicts the material we are preaching can be seen when we think about these two letters. Hebrews is a sermonic message designed to encourage and warn. It startles. It urges. It paints pictures and explains a small number of specific Old Testament texts in such a way as to urge the believers on. But preachers can bring in a foreign tone – one of theologically dense intensity that loses the energy of the original letter/sermon.
Or think about Ephesians. The opening sentence in 1:3-14 is abundant in language choice. The grace of God seen in the choosing, the giving of the Son, the giving of the Spirit, is lavished on believers. And what might we do with it? To be honest, too many of us turn it into a sterile detailed presentation of a theological doctrine triggered by one or two key words in the passage. I wonder if the Ephesian elders would recognize our presentation of it?
Tone matters. The tone of the text. And the tone of the preacher.
Just a little post to finish off this mini-series. So you have decided not to pluck a story and lift sometimes imaginary life lessons from it. You have studied it in its context and started to note the layers of intricate story within story crafting that the author has done. Maybe you’ve been nudged to recognize the meaning of the story with the help of commentaries too, of course. But how do you preach it? This can seem overwhelming.
1. Determine the main idea of the story. In light of its context, what is the main thought of the story you are actually preaching?
2. Figure out how much context you need to set. This is determined not only by the story itself, but also by your context. Some groups of listeners are ready to handle the bigger picture more than others.
3. Decide which layering details help communicate that main idea. There will be so much you could spot and point out, but some of it will not make sense to listeners, or will seem like exegetical trivia if you can’t give a full sweep and explanation. But if you don’t give some “fingers on the text” observations, listeners may think you are making up your own take on the meaning of the story.
4. Be sure to tell the story. So easy to think our task is to share exegetical insights and theological profundities and applicational nuggets. Remember that God inspired the story to mark lives. Let it do that. Tell the story.
5. Make the application the theocentric application intended by the text. It is about God and it is supposed to mark us in response to God. Don’t drop God out for the sake of a top-tip for creative truth telling in foreign lands.
6. Don’t forget to invite people into the text. Your preaching, with sensitivity to the flow of the book, should motivate listeners to want to read and dig for themselves. Don’t be shy to suggest that.
So much more could be said, but let’s leave it there for now . . .
Yesterday I suggested that we shouldn’t be plucking stories and presenting little life lessons. So what to do? I pushed the idea of seeing little story accounts in the context of the bigger sweep of stories in that section, and then seeing that section in light of the bigger story of the book, and the book in light of the biggest story of the whole Bible. Yes, but how?
1. Read the big sweep, then repeat. It is very hard to grasp the big picture of the Bible without reading large chunks of it. Simply digging deep into the meaning of a sentence will not give the big picture awareness that the Bible invites. Even checking commentaries and reference tools will only offer a limited awareness of the sweeping sense of Scriptures. While some commentaries are becoming more alert to the structuring and flow of a book, nothing can replace the benefits of knowing the big picture for yourself.
2. Look for the links between smaller narratives. Develop a sensitivity for links and contrasts offered by the biblical writer. Check the little theme of laughter ribboned through Genesis 17-21, and it isn’t simply Sarah and Isaac. Look at the relative locations of Jacob to his family either side of the wrestling match. The Bible is fairly sparse on detail compared to modern fiction writers, but what is there is there on purpose.
3. Ask why stories are neighbours. Why does the story of Abraham with Gentile Abimelech come after the story of Lot being dragged out of Gentile Sodom, which is really a story about Abraham watching God’s justice and promise in action? Without becoming dogmatic based on the limited links you might recognize, do probe the flow of the text and ask good questions. Don’t only probe within a text. Think about the contrasts and comparison points between Joseph in Genesis 37 & 39 and Judah in Genesis 38 . . . leaving the land, garments, goats, compromise, etc.
4. Don’t focus on little life lessons, look for how the text reinforces bigger realities. Life isn’t ultimately about how we do business, or how we do wrestling, or how we do temptation, or how we do sojourning. Life is primarily about how we relate to the one true God who makes promises and keeps them, who is involved in life yet sometimes apparently distant, etc. Preach about God and living in response to His self-revelation. Don’t just tip your hat to God and focus on how we can be more like a Bible character in our quest to live essentially independent lives of obedience to divinely inspired example (stretched to make preaching points).
We are trained as children to pluck out Bible stories and learn a lesson. Let’s try to fix that as adults.
You know the routine. You select a story, such as Abraham and Isaac on the mountains of Moriah. You tell the story. You offer a lesson…be willing to obey God whatever He asks. Job done. And the children go away thinking that that is how to handle the Bible. Pluck the story, point to a life lesson.
Then as adults we can easily do the same thing. You select a story, such as Jacob wrestling with the stranger at night. You tell the story. You offer a lesson…or maybe several (adults can cope with more): three top tips for handling complex threats. (I’m making this up, although it is true that preaching this way doesn’t require much time.) Be careful what situations you put yourself in. The dark is dangerous. Fight hard because God doesn’t let anything happen to you that you can’t cope with. (Forget that last one, it is problematic on so many levels!)
God did not give us a compendium of life lessons dressed up as character stories. The Bible writers were masterful in crafting the historical accounts into literary masterpieces. The brevity of individual stories woven together into epics of grand proportions. So what to do?
1. Study stories in the context of the bigger stories. Abraham and Isaac heading to the mountains of Moriah is the climax of a twelve chapter, decades long faith journey for Abraham and God. It wasn’t a random test coming out of nowhere. It was a heartbreaking and confusing test in the context of a story that had stretched as long as many of us live on earth. Promise, travel, gradual response, family separation, land assignment, further travel, false starts, wrong-headed plans, bizarre marital failures, repeated promises, eventual faith, later covenant sign, divine protection over the marriage and very late promise fulfillment.
2. Study bigger stories in the context of the bigger stories. So don’t just make sense of Jacob’s wrestling in the context of Jacob’s bigger story, see it as part of the sweeping story from Abraham’s promise down through the generations. Jacob was a deceiver, as was Laban, and the threat of Esau was massive . . . but was God a deceiver? Could He be taken at His word? Was Jacob’s big issue really his problematic relatives? Or was it himself and his own view of God?
3. Study bigger stories in the context of the biggest story. While this shouldn’t override the passage and completely change its meaning from what it could have originally meant, we have to be sensitive to the whole Bible epic of God’s dealings with humanity.
Tomorrow I’ll poke at this issue from another angle.
I just posted a summary of a message on Isaiah 40 on the Cor Deo site. If you haven’t seen it, let me share a few thoughts here first. In simplistic terms, the section preached focuses on the greatness of God and the graciousness of God. I think there are two easy mistakes to make here.
1. To focus purely on the greatness (since that is the focus of vv12-26, the majority of the text). I think this can lead to an impressive presentation of theology, but a weak message in terms of what is needed. Not only by listeners today, but also in respect to the original intent of the passage in light of the first verse – to offer comfort.
2. To simple offer two paradoxical truths. Two things about God. He is great. He is gracious. Two points. And potentially, two messages. Simply balancing the two sets of truths is better than mistake number 1, but it is still not engaging with the text in terms of what the author was trying to achieve.
As you read the summary you won’t see all the illustrations and applications made in my preaching of it, but you will get a sense of the flow of the message. In particular, you should see how I addressed the greatness and graciousness issue.
One further thought. I think it is important to see the flow of a text. I have heard this passage preached, actually, I think I have preached this passage, as a selection of theological truths to pluck and present. It makes for a lot of positive feedback, but I don’t think this approach really honours the text God inspired Isaiah to record.
Enough for now, here’s the link to the post: Not Comforted by God’s Greatness?
Biblical Preaching 