Preaching from the Old Testament
Here’s a question I was asked recently: Is it OK to preach a sermon which is wholly or substantially based on verses and passages from the Old Testament? Today’s blog is my response. Sneak preview: the answer is yes, and no!
All of Scripture is the Word of God for Christians, both Old and New Testaments, so there should be no reason in principle not to preach from it. The challenge comes from the fact that it is much more difficult to do so—or at least, to do it well. There are several pitfalls to avoid.
We first need to remember that the Old Testament is for the most part taking place within the context of the story of Israel as the people of God. It reflects an ongoing conversation over many centuries within a covenant context that, post-Exodus, is framed by Torah—the covenant charter given by God through Moses. Thus, what the Old Testament writers and their audiences have in mind in what they say and why they say it comes from the Torah-shaped context of Israel’s story. The Old Testament conversation was not with all people everywhere. The nations—in other words, the gentiles: most of us reading this—were at that time excluded.
When Ecclesiastes 12:13 tells us, “Fear God and keep his commandments,” the writer has in mind the 613 commandments that God gave his people through Moses as a comprehensive framework for how to live as the people of God in the promised land. If we propose to apply that verse to Christians today, the first question we would need to ask ourselves is which commandments, exactly? It’s certainly not the 613 of Torah. I suppose someone might say, “You know—the ones that apply to us,” but that’s a subject all on its own. It’s certainly not so “obvious” as to require no comment. The same would be true of Deuteronomy 6:2: “Fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.”
Hopefully, any speaker referencing such verses would be aware (and, explain) that “fear” in this context does not mean being petrified of God; it’s not fear in the sense of terror. Rather, it means a deep respect—an honoring and a sense of awe—not treating God as our “mate,” or presumptuously calling him “Daddy” (which comes from a commonplace evangelical misunderstanding of the meaning of Abba in first-century Aramaic). The importance of an appropriate reverence toward God is an excellent point, that from time to time certainly needs reminding. But it’s hardly necessary to use Old Testament verses to make it.
The next thing to be aware of is that not every truth statement we encounter in the Bible is a timeless truth; some are timebound truths—true for that situation, in that context, at that time. This is especially so when it comes to the Old Testament (it will more often be the case). We therefore need to be theologically aware when we’re engaging with the Old Testament. If we’re not equipped to do that by training, then we should at least run our ideas past someone who is. We can’t simply “copy and paste” verses from an Old Testament-shaped faith context into our New Testament-shaped faith context as if everything is the same.
Israel’s relationship with God prior to the coming of Jesus was unquestionably valid, but their understanding of who God was and what God was like was significantly under-developed compared to how we now understand him in the light of Jesus (see e.g., Colossians 1:15 and Hebrews 1:1-3). Inevitably, therefore, things we read in the Old Testament will not always be reflecting that new and better understanding.
One of the reasons that printed New Testaments often include the Psalms is because they have proven to be a valuable source for songs and hymns that reflect not simply an Old Testament understanding of God and his ways but a Christian understanding as well. However, we must remember that songwriters borrow from the Psalms selectively. So, too, we need to be selective in borrowing from the Old Testament.
Though valid, the nature and praxis of relationship with God prior to the coming of Jesus was very different; its points of reference were different. The Old Testament writers’ understanding reflected those differences; so, too, the understanding of those for whom they were writing. This does not mean that there is no compatibility whatsoever for us today, but it does mean there is not complete consistency. Theological awareness is therefore required to navigate where equivalences do (and don’t) exist.
Although it’s a risk that’s present with all Scripture, it’s particularly important that preaching from the Old Testament avoids the number one basic error of “reading in” meaning that is not there in a verse or passage (we call that eisegesis), rather than, as we should be doing, “reading out” meaning that is there (we call that exegesis).
How can we avoid eisegesis? It begins with recognizing the risk and grasping the difference! Exegesis starts with understanding what a verse or passage would have been “saying”—what its meaning would have been; what it was “talking about,” and why—in the eyes of the original author and audience, in that context, at that time. This requires scholarly awareness. We absolutely must not simply read the English words on the page of our Bible and make assumptions based on what they appear to be saying to us, in our world, today.
Once we’ve grasped that original meaning, as best we can—by reference to scholars and theologians who do understand it—then we can ask ourselves about its potential relevance to us today, within the framework of the new covenant in Jesus which is the basis of our relationship with God. That relevance may be the same, something similar based on the same underlying principle, or potentially, nothing at all.
We need to be careful about taking words and ideas from the Old Testament and applying them without proper regard to how those words and ideas (a) were understood and approached in their original contexts, and (b) are transformed in and through Jesus. Examples would include consecration, cleansing, purity, and holiness. Here’s a clue: typically those involved ritual practices and were perceived to relate to places and things as much as to people (we tend to assume it was always and only the latter).
When preachers seek to use an Old Testament story as the vehicle for “teaching” a supposedly Christian truth, they often do so by means of analogy. Analogy says, “that” is like “this.” Is that a valid approach? It depends. An Old Testament story may indeed offer a “picture” of something helpful for us today, but it’s not without its hazards. The obvious one is eisegesis, as we’ve discussed already: the risk of “reading in” to the story things that, from the perspective of the original author and audience, would not have been there. The Christian analogy that the speaker is proposing may have little if anything to do with the story in its original context. We should be very careful in describing our analogies as “biblical teaching” (and even more so, as “the meaning” of the passage).
Something a preacher wants to say may be true for Christian life today, but it may well not be a truth deriving from that Old Testament story. If so, we cannot validly say, “What this story is teaching us is . . .” We may be able to say that we see a Christian truth that this story illustrates—something that the story helps to remind us of—but if so, it would need to be a truth that’s taught throughout Scripture. We cannot call an analogy we’re attributing to one story alone a “biblical truth.”
When God says through the prophet Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6), he is not undermining (still less, is he cancelling) the sacrificial system that was a central component in Israel’s worship. That would make God schizophrenic, having given Israel that sacrificial system in the first place, as part of Torah. What Hosea is saying is that they’re missing the point of worship, which requires the engagement of the heart. It’s the same complaint we see in Amos 5:21-24, in even more attention-grabbing language (read the whole chapter for more context to his complaint):
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
By analogy, I would venture that this reflects a truth for our worship today, just as much as for theirs at the time. Namely, if we’re not interested in mercy, justice, and righteousness (doing what’s right toward others), then God is not interested in our worship.
What then of allegorical interpretations? An allegory purports to be finding a deeper, hidden meaning in a verse or passage; where it seems to be about one thing on the surface, but is really about something else below the surface, some supposedly deeper, “spiritual” truth. Needless to say, allegorical interpretation offers enormous scope for speculative ideas claimed to be “revealed” by the Holy Spirit.
The problem with attributing our ideas to the Holy Spirit in that “God showed me” kind of way is that it circumvents the standard principles of biblical interpretation while giving the Holy Spirit the credit (or the blame, depending on how you look at it). The hazards here are hopefully so obvious as to not need me to spell them out. The New Testament principles of “testing” supposed prophetic words (1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 John 4:1) should be similarly applied when it comes to supposed prophetic (aka, “creative”) interpretations of Scripture. That testing centres on being able to show that any “truth” purporting to be brought out is supported as truth elsewhere in Scripture when exegeted in ways that do “follow the rules.” Otherwise, we have no safeguards against false teaching.