Steven D. Mathewson - The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative

2002 by Steven D. Mathewson

Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 495166287
bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2012

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ISBN 978-1-5855-8844-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

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To my wife,
Priscilla,
whose love for Jesus has stirred my own devotion to him
and whose love for me still fills up my senses

And to my parents,
Maynard and Ruth Mathewson,
whose insistence that God is still good
during their respective struggles with cancer
has strengthened my trust in him

C ONTENTS

F IGURES AND T ABLES

F OREWORD

M y grandmother lived in Northern Ireland, and I visited her once when I was a lad about eight years old. When I met her, she was wrinkled, had snowy white hair, and stooped a bit under the weight of her years. I felt I knew my grandmother. She was that thin old lady who gave me cookies and told me how much I resembled my grandfather who had died many years ago.

Recently, I visited Ireland again and talked with cousins who knew my grandmother far better than I. They pulled out faded yellow photographs of grandma when she was a girl and later when she was first married. They shared their memories based on knowing her much longer than I did. I came away from that second visit wondering if I ever really knew my grandmother at all.

For many modern readers, the Old Testament narratives resemble my memories of my grandmother. We know them, but then again we hardly know them at all. Some of us grew up hearing these stories, and they form part of our memory bank. We listened to them at home curled up in a parents lap, or we saw them pasted on flannelgraph boards in Sunday school, our short legs dangling from the big chairs. We identified with David, the brash teenager with slingshot in hand, taking on Goliath, who resembled the bully at our grade school. We smirked at the neighbors who mocked Noah and his boys for building a boat miles from the nearest lake because we knew how the story came out, and we decided the moral was not to laugh at someone doing something strange because you might need them later on if you were drowning in a flood. We pictured Moses and Aaron battling Pharaoh much like the Lone Ranger and Tonto standing up against the bad guys, or we admired Daniel taming the lions in their den at the zoo. We knew these stories well, but we may not have known them at all! Because we thought of them as simple little stories, we missed how thick they were with meaning.

In recent years, many literary critics, both Christian and Jewish, have also read the stories again for the first time. Instead of regarding the narratives as cadavers to be dissected and demythologized, they began to approach them for what they weresophisticated literature of great significance and splendid power.

Because narrative makes up the dominant genre of the Old Testament, biblical preachers need to revisit those narratives. As adults, we can look at the stories with fresh eyes, and we can develop an appreciation for the skill of the authors who composed them. They were not only corking good storytellers, but they were also brilliant theologians who taught their readers about God through stories. We can read these old, old stories in a new way and sense how much they speak to the condition of modern hearers. More than that, we can see God through them.

One of the strongest reasons for a serious and fresh study of Old Testament narratives is reflected in the sad history of what happens when we misread them, read them poorly, or read them to prove a point outside the purpose of the biblical storyteller. In fact, the more committed we are to the authority of Scripture, the more dangerous it is to read the narratives incorrectly. There is no greater abuse of the Bible than to proclaim in Gods name what God is not saying. God commands us not to bear false witness.

In this book, Steve Mathewson helps us to read Old Testament narratives perceptively. As you study them, you will realize they are not quaint tales crafted to teach children simple moral lessons. They are great literature, every bit as powerful as Homer, Milton, Shakespeare, or Hemingway. And as God-breathed literature, they speak to the entire person. I commend Steve Mathewson as a thoughtful guide to help us get a handle on the great stories of the Bible. I also commend him as a preacher who provides some very workable leads on how to effectively communicate these stories to modern listeners.

Haddon W. Robinson

P REFACE

I remember my fledgling attempt to preach through an Old Testament narrative book. In 1988, my second year of pastoral ministry, I decided to take my congregation (read: victims) through 1 and 2 Samuel. Coincidentally, I was reading John Steinbecks novel East of Eden . A scene in East of Eden forced me to admit my ineptness at preaching the stories of the Old Testament. Three men are sitting at a table and discussing the Cain-Abel story in Genesis 4. Lee, Adam Trasks pig-tailed Chinese cook, pinpoints the genius of Hebrew narrative during the exchange with Adam and a neighbor, Samuel Hamilton. Lee argues, No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.

I thought about the sermon I preached the previous Sunday from 1 Samuel 7. Did people leave with a sense that the story was about them? I had to admit they probably did not. A lady approached me after the worship service and asked for point number three. She didnt get it all written down when she took notes. Uh, point number three was The Resulting Prosperity of Gods People from verses twelve through seventeen, I said.

I had preached a sermon chock-full of exegetical insights and laced with historical-cultural data. I even pressed it into a neat analytical outline. But my sermon did not do justice to the purpose of Old Testament stories: to lure people into real-life dramas where they run smack into Gods agenda and his assessment of their lives.

This experience triggered the quest to raise my level of preaching in Old Testament narrative texts. At this point in my quest I want to assist others. In this volume, my purpose is to help preachers excel at preaching Old Testament narrative texts. Its time for preachers to raise the bar and clear a higher standard when they preach stories from Genesis or 1 Samuel. For preachers whose preaching diet does not yet include Old Testament stories, this volume may encourage them to take a leap of faith over the bar.