Exell - The Biblical Illustrator - Jonah

What if Charles Spurgeon helped you prepare next Sundays sermon?

Or what if you could talk over your preaching with Joseph Parker, Richard Baxter, Henry Ward Beecher and H. P. Liddon. Do you think it would make a difference to get the input of some of the greatest preachers who ever lived?

Thats precisely what Joseph Exell had in mind when he put together the massive series of volumes called The Biblical Illustrator. In what can only be called a Herculean feat, he spent years gathering preaching notes and sermon outlines from the very best preachers of his day (in the late 1800s and early 1900s), and he did it covering every book of the Bible.

Following the tradition of the time, he gave the series a flowery subtitle, describing it as anecdotes, similes, emblems, illustrations, expository, scientific, geographic, historical and homiletic, gathered from a wide range of home and foreign literature, on the verses of the Bible. He means that in these volumes you have everything you need in order to preach a sermon, teach a Bible class, or study a text on your own.

And it is amazingly comprehensive. Exell approached his task by taking every verse in the Bible and seeking to discover how it has been preached in the past. Though there is plenty of exegetical material here, this is not primarily a commentary.

This series is for preachers, teachers and Bible students.

Besides obviously being an omnivorous reader, he had a gift for amazing diligence. The Biblical Illustrator was published in 66 volumes. To give you a sense of how comprehensive it is, volume 49 contains 588 pages on Galatians. And the type in the original version was very small, with narrow margins so you almost had to have a magnifying glass to read it. But Joseph Exell had something in mind other than publishing a stylish book. He wanted to give preachers a book so complete that you could give it to someone and say, Go preach Galatians, and they could do it.

No one could ever use all the sermon outlines in the Biblical Illustrator. But thats not the point. We all agree that the best preacher starts with your study of the biblical text. But at some point you need to know what others have seen in the same text you are studying.

What did Spurgeon see?
What did Parker see?
What did Alexander MacLaren see?

Maybe you will see the same thing they did. Probably you will see something similar. But its entirely possible that Spurgeon (who has a flair for memorable phrasing) captured the thought of the text in a way that never occurred to you.

And there are times when the preacher needs some help in priming the pump. We all know what its like to be stuck in some passage of the Bible. You know what it says, you have studied the words, you have read a few commentaries, but somehow the message isnt jelling in your mind. Thats where the Biblical Illustrator is likely to be most helpful to you. If you are preaching on, say, Hebrews 10:19-25, you can find real help in the Biblical Illustrator. There is an expanded sermon outline by J. Colwell that almost anyone could expand into a profitable message. There is a lengthy and intricate outline by the Puritan pastor Thomas Boston and a moving exposition of Christ our high priest by Adolph Saphir.

Thats just one tiny example of one text. And Joseph Exell does that for every text in the Bible.

Its a phenomenal piece of work, and one that stands up very well more than a century later. I know of no comparable collection that has been done since then. I doubt if anyone would have the time or energy to attempt such a massive project today.

I bought my first copy of the Biblical Illustrator almost 20 years. Back then it came in six or seven massive volumes, printed on oversized pages with type so tiny I could hardly read it. About 10 years ago I purchased a CD with the Biblical Illustrator in PDF format. That was a huge improvement. But with the advent of ebook technology, we at last have the Biblical Illustrator in its most useful format. Because it is indexed to each section of the book, you can quickly find the passage you are looking for. And you can enlarge the text as much as you like.

As you can tell, Im big fan of the Biblical Illustrator because it preserves the wisdom of an earlier age. I would fully agree that you must start with your own study of the text, and we definitely need the fruit of recent biblical commentaries. But alongside your own study and the reading of current commentaries, there is a large place for reading the Biblical Illustrator.

Joseph Exell wanted to help preachers, teachers, and everyday Bible students. He succeeded admirably in his task. The fruit of his labors is now available for the first time in ebook format, making it more usable today than when it was first published.

For those who want to study the Bible and then teach it to others, the Biblical Illustrator will help you on every single text in the Bible. For over a century preachers and teachers have turned to it and found what they needed. I gladly say that it has often helped me, and I am glad to commend this series to you.

Dr. Ray Pritchard

President, Keep Believing Ministries

April 2012

Dallas, TX

IT is very interesting and very instructive to scrutinise the faces in a great gallery of portraits. The man who does so has before him materials which should help him to gain a wide knowledge of human character. Here is a countenance noble and winsome. The spectator is certain that it was a tender and brave and faithful heart which beat beneath an exterior so fair. Features like these could not cover any littleness of soul. Perhaps it is a soldier in his coat of mail, whose likeness the artist has drawn, or it may be a womans face that looks out from the canvas; but whoever it be, the onlooker is glad that he has seen the picture. But a painting of a different kind attracts him next that of one who has evidently had many fierce battles with temptation, and who has not come out of them all scathless. This much the spectator learns from the sad expression which rests on the features; and yet, as he examines them more carefully, he sees that dissatisfaction and sorrow are not their most prominent characteristics. There is peace stamped on the face as well as trouble peace which seems in the end to have gained the mastery over the trouble. There are no portraits like those which have been painted for us in the pages of the Bible. They have been drawn by the hand of a Master, and they are very varied in the types of character which they represent. In the goodly fellowship of the prophets to think meanwhile of no others what differences of natural disposition, and of spiritual attainments, there are I Some, like Joel, and Amos, and Hosea, are without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Beside them we see our own shortcomings, and know what manner of men our Lord would have us to be. And others, like Jonah, are far from faultless. They are genuine servants of God, but servants who sin and fall, whose loyalty is not steadfast and immovable, who carry to this day dark blots on their fair name. We are encouraged ourselves to make trial of His compassion and His grace. That Jonah, after his wilful disobedience and foolish querulousness, was healed of all the diseases of his spirit that, like many a wayward child, he learned to sorrow over his self-will, and came home with a penitent and reproachful heart to his Fathers house who of us can doubt? I take it that he was himself the author of the book which bears his name, though some have thought of it as the embalming by a subsequent writer of an ancient and venerable tradition. I can see no reason for doubting that the prophet penned with his own hand these four short chapters. Before his life closed he sat down to recount for the generations that should follow the story of his memorable journey to Nineveh. And how does he tell the story? Very humbly, we shall admit, and very impartially. They are bitter things which he writes in it against himself. He extenuates nothing. He unveils all his hardness of heart, all his Jewish exclusiveness, all his murmuring against the Lord. He is relentless in his self-condemnation, whilst over against the confession of his lack of obedience and of charity he places the record of Gods loving-kindness and tender mercy. The book exalts God, indeed, and rebukes and punishes Jonah. It is a book of Confessions which Jonah has written, not an