Stage 2 – Passage Study

Abort Sermon! Abort Sermon?

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

On one level it is a feeling that can come for any reason.  A little moment of doubt.  An unexpected event, or listener, or conversation, or comment . . . and suddenly the temptation is there to give up on the planned message.  Some may have this feeling every time they preach.  Others may never get it at all.  But is there a genuine reason to abort the message and switch to something else?

In his excellent chapter on Charles Simeon in Preach the Word, J.I. Packer states the following:

Simeon would go on to remind us that expository preaching should be textual in character.  The preacher’s task, according to him, was not imposition, giving texts meaning the do not bear; nor was it juxtaposition, using texts merely as pegs on which to hand general reflections imported from elsewhere (“preachments of this kind are extremely disgustful”); it was, precisely, exposition, bringing out of teh texts what God had put in them  “I never preach,” said Simeon, “unless I feel satisfied that I have the mind of God as regards the sense of the passage.” (Preach the Word, 147)

There may be more than one reason to abort a sermon, but this one alone is worth pondering.  If we are not satisfied that we have the mind of God as regards the sense of a passage . . . we should not preach it!  Better to preach an unprepared sermon at a moment’s notice on a text we do understand, than to preach a prepared sermon built on shaking exegesis.  If you really don’t get, don’t preach it.  Abort sermon!

The Non-Academic Preacher Compliment

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Last week I spoke to a friend who had asked to borrow my master’s thesis.  He was positive about it, but mentioned that he’d had to look up some terms I’d used.  He was a bit surprised since he doesn’t have that challenge when I preach.  That’s an encouraging compliment in my eyes!

Here’s a quick quote that is somewhat related in Phillip Jensen’s chapter, “Preaching the Word Today” in Preach the Word, the book of essays in honor of Kent Hughes:

With the discriminating eye of the cynic, the modern scholar can deconstruct the author’s writings so as to explain what he “really” meant.  Only the expert – never the ploughboy – can know what was meant.  The priesthood of all believers is no longer replaced by the sacerdotalism of the sacramentalists but by the arrogance of the academy.

We need to be so careful.  I think it is good to get the best academic training possible (a matter of good stewardship), but we need to be very careful not to develop the easily associated arrogance that comes with training, nor to carry that arrogance into the pulpit.  We serve the priesthood of all believers; we are not the priesthood for all other believers.

Let’s make sure we open up the Bible in peoples’ laps, rather than moving it further away from them.  Let’s make sure we communicate well, rather than impress with lofty language that the ploughboy doesn’t understand.  Let’s make sure we prepare for ministry and prepare for a message as fully as we are able, but not let that show in any way that will hinder our listeners.

Double Sermon Experiment: Lessons Learned

/ Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I have suggested this before, but decided to try it again on Sunday.  One passage, two messages.  In the afternoon I had some doubts.  Perhaps I should do something different?  I prayerfully decided to stick with the plan and I’m glad I did.  (Despite this moment of doubt, the afternoon was less of a trial than it would have been had I needed to switch gears and mentally prepare for a totally different text!)  Here are some observations:

1. A second message in the same passage allows the preacher and the listeners to soak in a text, rather than jumping around. I appreciated this and it seems the listeners did too.  Perhaps we too quickly move from one part of Scripture to another in a two-sermon Sunday.

2. A second message allows elaboration on that which is squeezed by time in the first message. In this case I was preaching a fairly lengthy narrative in a limited time.  Consequently I could not develop the application of the passage to the extent that I felt necessary.  The evening message allowed more complete and concrete application of the main idea.

3. A second message allows for more exegetical work to show, to reinforce the authority of the main idea. I preached the story in the morning, then in the evening I reviewed it briefly before demonstrating how the context reinforces the main idea.  Hopefully this would result in people understanding the process of Bible study more (importance of context), and would motivate some to jump into the book for themselves.

4. A second message allows the main idea to be restated, reiterated and reinforced. Perhaps this is the best benefit of all.  In this case I had a main idea that I think was biblical, fairly clear and important for our lives today.  No matter how well I preached the first message (I’m not saying I did, I’m being hypothetical), I would not want to be overconfident in terms of how well my idea got through.  However, having had review, reinforcement and concretized application in the evening, I’m a little more confident that the main idea might be pondered and applied in the days ahead.

I commend this approach to you.  Study a passage, then preach two messages instead of one.  It allows for more focus over two services, for developed application, for more exegetical work to be demonstrated, for the main idea to have greater effect.

The Challenge of Narratives 4: Acts

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Unlike the Old Testament narratives, and in some senses, even unlike the gospel narratives, the Acts narratives should be easier to interpret and preach.  After all, this is now church history, not ancient Israel history.  But there is a challenge:

The challenge of “normativeness” – how are we to understand and apply descriptions of a unique season in history – the founding of the church?  Three comments on this:

1. Acts is not “mere history” – Don’t make the mistake of saying we shouldn’t preach from Acts because it is merely a historical account.  It is inspired theological Scripture.  It is as much theology as the epistles!  Acts is history, and it is more than that.  However,

2. Acts is not “all history” – some elements of the Acts story are unique and we shouldn’t presume that it is all normative for where we stand in that same history.  Possible examples include the following.  Should we be concerned that the apostles have died?  Should we be looking for qualified replacements?  Some sing that we need another Pentecost, but what are we suggesting about the work of the Spirit in the Church?  Should we expect Ananias and Sapphira-type church discipline to occur every time there is sin in the church today, or should we be learning from a unique event?  What about the “Gentile tongues” at conversion that are presented as a sign to the apostles at a key transition moment in the progress of the gospel?  Acts is not totally typical of all church history.

3. Acts is “all applicable” – Just because some of the events may not occur again, this doesn’t mean that the text is irrelevant (think about the crucifixion of Jesus, for instance).  All Scripture is useful, applicable, but the challenge is having the wisdom to discern how to apply it.  We need to consider Acts in light of the clear teaching of the epistles, as well as the progress seen within the epistles (consider the different emphasis in 1Corinthians as compared to the later Pastoral Epistles – both concerned with health in the local church, but a different emphasis).  Let’s be careful not to automatically use “Acts” labels for contemporary experiences that may or may not be the same thing as what occurred back then.

Acts is rich and fertile soil for study and preaching, but whatever your theology, I trust you’ll agree that it is not without its challenges!

The Challenge of Narratives 3: Gospels – Part II

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Note – Peter has extended comments related to this post, see previous in the series here

Last time we looked at the interpretational challenge of more than one “author.”  Now, let’s see another challenge:

2. More than one “account” of the event. What are we to do when we find the same story told in two, three, or even all four gospels?  Perhaps like me you were taught the analogy of the car accident?  A solution to the “problem” of multiple, but not identical accounts, this explanation goes like this:

The Car Accident. A car is involved in a crash, so the Police come to the scene and take eye-witness accounts of what occurred.  The person standing at the traffic light saw it one way, but the person coming out of the shop saw it differently.  Same event, different accounts.  Hence we have four gospels, problem solved.

But as with all such analogies, this one falls short.  It doesn’t take into account that each “eye-witness” statement was written under inspiration and with theological intent.  The gospels were not transcripts of history intended to give chronological exhaustive accuracy.  Rather, they are historically accurate, but they are primarily theological writing skillfully arranged to convey four specific and distinct messages.

So what do we do?

1. We should compare multiple accounts of the same event in order to check for accuracy in our understanding of what transpired (you wouldn’t want to preach factual error because you didn’t read Mark’s account).

2. We should compare multiple accounts in order to recognize the emphasis given in the particular text you are studying (i.e. what is John emphasizing here?)

3. We should resist the temptation to preach a composite harmonization of the event itelf, but rather preach the text.  The text is inspired, not the event.  So study them all, but if your text is in John, preach John.  If your text is in Mark, preach Mark.

eg. The feeding of the 5000 has different emphasis in each gospel, so don’t preach a composite of John’s “bread of life” theology with Mark’s “kingdom feast has come” theology.

eg. The stilling of the storm in Matthew 8:23-27 is in a sequence of three miracles emphasizing Jesus’ authority.  In Mark 4:35-41 it stands as a lesson to the disciples after teaching on the unstoppable nature of the kingdom, and begins a series of four stories emphasizing the fear/faith theme.

The Challenge of Narratives 2: Gospels – Part I

/ Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Peter has extended comments on this post.

When we come to interpreting the narratives in the Gospels, we are faced with a couple of potential difficulties.  I’ll call it the double challenge of more than one:

1. More than one “author” of the parables. Our goal in interpretation is to grasp the author’s intended meaning.  But which one?  There’s Jesus telling the story in the first place, around AD30, in Aramaic, somewhere in Galilee or Judea.  What did Jesus intend for those original hearers to grasp and learn?  But then there’s Luke, for example, retelling the story, around thirty or more years later, in Greek, to a reader somewhere in the Greek speaking world.  Primarily our concern is with what Jesus intended, but we’d be naïve to think that Luke’s intent was unimportant.  Luke did not struggle to focus, and thereby put together a random gospel.  No, he sequences his material with precision and skill.  We see this when different gospel writers frame the same content in a different sequence of material.  But that is another challenge again.

Next time I’ll give the other half of the challenge, the other “more than one!”

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!

Don’t Undermine Trust

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

NOTE – Peter has replied to helpful comment on this post.

Different versions translate some things in slightly different ways.  One version says “healed” where another says “saved.”  Sometimes a footnote points out an alternative reading to the one in the text, but other versions choose the alternative reading.  What do we do when we are preaching a text with a textual variant in it?

1. Recognize that the listeners may be using different versions. This means that it might be worth a brief passing comment that “your version may have it this way…”  Generally it is probably better to affirm both as possible, or express a preference for one over the other in a gracious manner that does not tear down the alternative.

2. Recognize that your listeners are not experts in textual criticism. (Incidentally, be honest with yourself too.  Just because you can pronounce a Greek word in a dictionary does not mean you are a Greek scholar.)  So we should be very hesitant to overwhelm people with textual critical issues.  In reality, most of the time this will achieve a double goal.  First it may show how much work you’ve done, what skill you have or perhaps add confidence in your understanding of the passage.  More importantly, second of all it almost certainly will undermine their trust in their own Bibles.  People don’t understand how their version came to exist, they don’t grasp the process from inspiration to translation, and so your textual critical observation may very well cause them to distrust their Bible.  “If my version is wrong in this verse, why should I trust it anywhere else?”

3. Do your work in preparation, but think carefully what you say while preaching. The last thing we want to do is inadvertently undermine peoples’ trust in the Bible sitting open in their lap!

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.