Difficult Passages of the Old Testament to a Congregation - Essay Example

What is the Value, if any, of preaching the difficult passages of the Old Testament to a Congregation Swarnambika S Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor's Name 22 July 2007 Outline The world may not recognize the value of the preacher and his preaching, yet God's Word says in Romans 10:15, "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things." What a privilege and honor it is to preach the glad tidings of good things, regardless of the notion of some. The human that has that heavenly, holy, and high calling would almost rather preach than eat. Yet the desire, the joy, and the call alone is not enough; there must be the prepared heart. Having some neatly prepared homiletic gem does not in itself constitute the vehicle for true preaching power. The preacher may have the ability to sermonize putting the thoughts down neatly on paper; yet the preacher may not be able to forcefully and powerfully deliver them to the listener's heart. The whole humankind must preach under the anointing of the Holy Spirit for the sermon to live. When a sermon really lives, the listening audience will crave for more of the same. The answer to many of the problems concerning empty church buildings could be conquered in the pulpit, even before the preacher enters it to preach. For this to happen, the preacher must take preaching seriously. In this paper, we would be discussing on the values, if any, of preaching the difficult passages of the Old Testament to a Congregation. We would be discussing on the Hermeneutics and Homiletics of preaching along with Old Testament Exegesis in the preaching of the Old Testament. Literature Review Young preachers are often told, 'You must preach Christ from the Old Testament.' But for example, having just finished preaching on Psalm 121, and realizing that we have said little or nothing about Jesus, we may be in great agitation, and search desperately for a magic formula which will help us to preach Christ from the Old Testament. It would be possible, of course, to provide a kind of formula, a kind of homiletical version of Thomas's five ways, such as: Point to Christ by showing: (1) the passage is a direct prophecy of him; or (2) the passage shows why Jesus is needed; or (3) the passage speaks about something that reminds us of Jesus; or (4) the passage speaks about something that could not be accomplished without Jesus; or (5) the passage shows us an individual/group unlike Jesus. The point here is not to comment on whether these five ways are helpful or not so much as the inherent danger in the approach. It is likely to produce preaching that is wooden and insensitive to the rich contours of biblical theology. Its artificiality would lie in our going through the motions of exegeting and expounding the Old Testament and then, remembering the formula, tidying our notes in order to align them with it. The net result over an extended period of time might be akin to that produced by children's sermons in which the intelligent child soon recognizes that the answer to the minister's questions will always be one of: 1. God; 2. Jesus; 3. Sin; 4. Bible; 5. Be Good. Of course we need to work with general principles as we develop as preachers; but it is a far greater desideratum that we develop an instinctive mindset and, corresponding to that, such a passion for Jesus Christ himself, that we will find our way to him in a natural and realistic way rather than a merely formulaic way. This is a much bigger issue than how we preach Christ from the Old Testament, for at least two reasons. First, because many sermons from the Gospels - where the focus is explicitly on the person of Jesus - never mind from the Old Testament is far from Christ-centred. How is this possible The preacher has looked into the text principally to find himself and his congregation, not to find Christ. The sermon is consequently about 'people in the Gospels' rather than about Jesus Christ who is the gospel. The real question the preacher has been interested in asking and answering, is not 'How do we find Christ in this Gospel' but 'Where am I in this story What have I got to do' Even although an entire series of such sermons on a Gospel is preached (as in the lectio continua method), we will not necessarily have communicated the basic life of Jesus. Instead we have been given an exploration of the human condition. So there is a confused mindset here that raises a deeper question than, 'Is there a formula that helps us to preach Christ from the Old Testament' The more fundamental issue is the question, 'What am I really looking for when I am preaching on any part of the Bible Am I really looking to tell people what they are like and what they must do - that is, am I really stressing the subjective and the imperative - or am I talking about Jesus Christ himself and the gospel Do I stress the objective and the indicative of the gospel in the light of which the subjective and imperative are to be considered After all it is not the subjective (my condition) or the imperative (respond) that saves or transforms people's lives, but the objective and the indicative of God's grace received subjectively in the light of the imperatives of the gospel. A second observation worth noting in this connection is that many (perhaps most) outstanding preachers of the Bible are so instinctively. If asked what their formula is, we would only draw a blank expression. The principles they use have been developed unconsciously, through a combination of native ability, gift and experience as listeners and preachers. Some men might struggle to give a series of lectures on how they go about preaching. Because what they have developed is an instinct; preaching biblically has become their native language. They are able to use the grammar of biblical theology, without reflecting on what part of speech they are using (McCurley, 1974; Gowan, 1980; Fuller, 1981 & Keck, 1978). That is why the best preachers are not necessarily the best instructors in homiletics, although they are, surely, the greatest inspirers of true preaching. Most of us probably develop the instinct for biblical-theological and redemptive-historical preaching best by the osmosis involved in listening to those who do it well. It is always wise to listen to such preachers and their preaching as though we had two minds - one through which the preaching of the word nourishes us, the other through which, simultaneously or on later reflection, asks: 'Why did this exposition nourish me in that way What dynamics and principles were operative' Seeing how the hidden principles work out in practice is the best way to make those principles our own so that they become the grammar of our preaching. We want to develop an instinct to preach Christ. This is the general principle. But it can be broken down into at least four subordinate principles. The relationship between promise and fulfillment Genesis 3:15 is in a sense the most basic text in the whole Bible: God puts enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman; the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent, and the serpent will crush the heel of the woman's seed. Romans 16:20 and Revelation 12:9 both make crystal clear from the perspective of Christ's completed work that Genesis 3:15 promises the ultimate cosmic conflict between our Lord Jesus Christ and Satan and the powers of darkness. Of course Satan is not mentioned by name in Genesis 3 - a point of some hermeneutical interest in itself - but when Paul writes that 'the God of peace will bruise Satan under your head shortly' (Romans 16:20), and John sees in Revelation 12:9 that the serpent has grown into a dragon, it is clear that the New Testament writers thought of Genesis 3:15 as a reference to the coming Messiah, and to his conflict with Satan. The war about which the book of Revelation speaks then merely climaxes an antithesis and antagonism that has run through the whole of Scripture. It is a Library of Military History, with Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12:9-20:10 as the bookcase. Not only so, but it follows that the whole of Old Testament Scripture traces the outworking of this promise of God until it is consummated in Jesus Christ, and finally publicized throughout the universe in his triumphant return. Jesus' programmatic statement, 'I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it' (Matthew 16:18) speaks of this cosmic-conflict context, represents its high point and promises victory in it. Everything between Genesis 3:15 and Matthew 16:18 can, in one way or another, be tied to the fulfillment of that promise; every twist and turn in redemptive history following Matthew 16:18 expresses that conflict, flows onward to its denouement and to that extent can be pinpointed on the map of redemptive revelation. This is the story of the building of the kingdom of God in all its various stages, over against the kingdom of this world. The promise that the kingdom/reign of God/heaven will come/is near/has arrived is therefore a structural key to redemptive history. From Genesis 3:15 to the end the Bible is the story of God the Warrior coming to the aid of his people in order to deliver them from the kingdom of darkness and to establish his reign among, in and through them. This is what gives weight to the words of John the Baptist that 'the kingdom of heaven is near' (Matthew 3:2). Breaking the prophetic silence of the centuries his message was of God's impending eschatological war-triumph. Judgment-wrath represented by the judgment axe was, for John, the inevitable implication on the dark side; forgiveness and the reign and kingdom-blessing of God was the good news for all who repented. This kingdom-conflict-conquest-victory theme can be traced in all kinds of narrative perspectives and dimensions of Old Testament revelation. The central point is to see the Old Testament as intimately (although of course not exclusively) connected to this fundamental idea that there is a radical antithesis driving through the whole of redemptive history, between the building of the kingdom of God by his king, and the efforts of the powers of darkness to destroy that kingdom. Recognize this and much of Old Testament Scripture can readily be understood in terms of its position in the central nervous system of the Old Testament. It should be possible to move from all of these different points to this backbone promise that runs through the Old Testament Scripture to Jesus Christ. This is an essential hermeneutical tool with which to relate historical developments in the Old Testament back to the promise of God and forward to the coming of Christ. At the same time we are able to treat these incidents (and the people involved in them) as real in their own right. For one of the dangers inherent in biblical-theological preaching is to minimize historical actuality in our anxiety to preach Christocentrically (Armstrong, 2000). The result can be as damaging to the integrity of our handling of the text as was patristic allegorizing. Sensitivity to the war in the heavenly realms being played out in history enables us to expound the concrete-historical and individual experiences of God's people, yet simultaneously to interpret and place them within the big picture, the meta-narrative of the whole Bible. The historical is thus taken seriously for its own sake, while at the same time it is preached as part of the story of the all-conquering Christ. From a certain point of view, the child of God needs no instruction in Hermeneutics. If Hermeneutics is the science of biblical interpretation, it follows from the very nature of Scripture itself that no formal instruction is necessary for a regenerated saint to be able to understand what God is saying in His Word. Countless saints over the centuries have read the Word of God without ever knowing the first thing about Hermeneutics, without even having heard the word. They have read Scripture, understood what God was saying to them with stark clarity, and have taken that Word into their hearts. All Hermeneutics really does is crystallize, systematize, and articulate principles which are intuitive to every child of God. When a child of God hears, perhaps for the first time, what the principles of Hermeneutics are, his response ought to be, "I knew that all the time." It makes clear and brings to consciousness that which has all along been assumed. Hermeneutics has nothing new to say, no new thing to communicate, and no new insights to give information to a man who has been a serious student of Holy Scripture. Since the Old Testament is the Word of God, since Christ and the apostles preached from it, since the New Testament is truncated without it, and since Christians are impoverished in their understanding of God without the Old Testament, preachers have every reason to give themselves with diligence to continued study on how to preach from the Old Testament. Its message about God, his word and work, is needed by the church and by an unbelieving world. The Bible is not about good people for us to copy, but about bad people to whom God was good. For example, the story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the garden (Genesis 2:4-3:24) had the overarching purpose of establishing why the image of God suffers pain and futility. Our first parents' violation cast the human race into sin and death. Moses composed this story to explain the origins of suffering and trouble. Within this larger purpose, Adam and Eve served as negative models for the audience. When the first humans violated the Law of God, consequences were severe; the same would be true for the people of Moses' audience who violated God's requirements. A second question is how to proceed exegetically in order to discern the message of a given text. Achtemeier (1973) merely alludes to the steps. McCurley (1974) is the most explicit. In the second half of his book he describes and then illustrates his seven-step method in nine historical and prophetic texts. This is the most helpful part of the book. His method, including the useful textual, literary, word study and historical context matters, emphasizes the "criticisms": form, source, redaction and tradition. He concentrates on source and redaction research and thereby seeks to show that many texts have several "levels" at which they could be preached. In the Old Testament, the story of Jacob's wrestling (Gen. 32:22-32) shows how God blesses through personal encounter. However, on another level, in its present setting, the story shows how God changes people. In answer to the question, "Why preach from the Old Testament" it is the Old Testament that shows that our relationship with God is "embedded in and expressed through social practices and political institutions," but preachers should not leap directly from social and political issues in the Old Testament to draw conclusions for our own time. The listeners should not feel that they have been pushed from behind - even hammered over the head - rather than beckoned forward. The listeners should be given a moral vision rather than taught a moral lesson. How is this to be achieved There is a rich tradition of dwelling on the words of Scripture that characterized pre-modern exegesis and preaching. The examples could be from the Anglican tradition. One such example would be David's lament for Absalom: it might be taken as another instance of David's fateful indulgence of his children - or it might be an anticipation of Christ's forgiving of his enemies and God's forgiving of us, rebellious children that we are. Another example would be the loss of images and drama after the Reformation by the creation of verbal images (e.g., Blackwood, 1941; Whitesell, 1950). What are the criteria by which our own interpretations are to be judged They will be judged to have permanent value to the extent that they keep us and our hearers aware of the "wondrous depth" of Scripture. An example would be, how the story of Hagar has echoes of Israel's slavery in Egypt, only this time Sarah, the mother of Israel, is the oppressor. Another example would be Isa 5: God exalted in judgment (e.g., Blackwood, 1941; Whitesell, 1950). The last illustration would be from Ps 22 that reflects on the significance of the change of mood halfway through the psalm. It is essential to remember that we preachers can begin with the assumption that our hearers are interested in the text on which we are going to preach. The challenge is to build on that interest. We shall not be able to do that unless we ourselves discover astonishing things in the text. It would not make sense to reject historical-critical study or literary readings as possible sources of inspiration, and a danger is sensed if a preacher were to follow pre-critical models too enthusiastically. To conclude, preaching from the Old Testament in the post modern world will be effective only if we adopt a new paradigm. We must return to the study of rhetoric to learn how religious meaning can form in contemporary consciousness (Buttrick, 1995). Communal modes of thought will replace personalism for effective communicators. We will image the biblical message in new language that offers theological concepts both within and outside the garb of biblical metaphors. We will know that we have spoken for God to God's people and God's world when our listeners are liberated to experience God both personally and communally, rationally and affectively. References Achtemeier, Elizabeth. 1973. The Old Testament and the Proclamation of the Gospel. Westminster, pp.223. Blackwood, Andrew. 1941. Preaching from the Bible. Abingdon, 1941; reprinted by Baker, 1974. Buttrick, David. 1995. "Speaking Between Times: Homiletics in a Postmodern World." Unpublished paper, p.3. Fuller, Reginald H. 1981. The Use of the Bible in Preaching. Fortress. Gowan, Donald E. 1980. Reclaiming the Old Testament for the Christian Pulpit. John Knox, pp.163. Armstrong, Karen. 2000. The Battle of God, Ballantine, pp. 95, 140. Keck, Leander E. 1978. The Bible in the Pulpit. Abingdon. McCurley, Foster R. 1974. Proclaiming the Promise: Christian Preaching from the Old Testament. Fortress, pp.160. Toombs, Lawrence E. 1961.The Old Testament in Christian Preaching. Westminster. Whitesell, Faris D. 1950.The Art of Biblical Preaching. Zondervan. Read More