2. Biographical Preaching Is Serious
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BIOGRAPHICAL PREACHING IS SERIOUS
Since we represent a holy God and preach from a holy book, and since the consequences involve life and death, all preaching is serious. But preaching Bible biography is especially so and, to quote the traditional marriage ceremony, “must not be entered into lightly or carelessly, but soberly and in the fear of God.” The analogy is an instructive one, for in preparing a biographical sermon, we “marry” our minds and hearts to what we know about the minds and hearts of Bible personalities, and we “live with them” as we learn from them. The people we preach about may be strangers to the congregation, but they had better not be strangers to us. If our preparation is careless and hurried, we may end up committing one of two sins: bearing false witness against one of the Lord’s servants by teaching error, or teaching truth in a manner that makes us act superior to the person about whom we’re preaching.
I once heard a high-profile preacher say to a large congregation, “You’ll recognize Peter when you get to heaven. He’s the fellow with the foot-shaped mouth.” The people around me laughed, but my heart was heavy. There isn’t a preacher alive who is worthy to carry Peter’s sandals let alone ridicule him in public. Let’s try to practice the Golden Rule as we preach. Let’s speak about Bible personalities the way we would want them to speak about us, which means, let’s be loving and let’s be fair. The people we preach about are real people, created in the image of God. We’re dealing with flesh and blood, not paper and ink.
Biographical preaching is serious because we’re dealing with that elusive thing called character. We don’t fully understand our own hearts let alone the hearts of people who walked this earth millenniums ago. We boastfully say, “Well, if I know my own heart”—but we don’t know our own hearts! After all, Jeremiah 17:9 is still in the Bible: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Phillips Brooks said that the purpose of life is the shaping of character by truth, a process that is not easy. “The conversion of a soul is the miracle of a moment,” wrote Alan Redpath, “the manufacture of a saint is the task of a lifetime.”[1] The understanding of a human being may also be the task of a lifetime. “We are always sowing our future; we are always reaping our past,” wrote W. R. Inge, the “gloomy dean” of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and only God knows the condition of the soil and the promise of the harvest.[2]
When it comes to human nature, the world’s thinkers and leaders are either very optimistic or very pessimistic. The year I was born, people were singing, “So always look for the silver lining / And try to find the sunny side of life”; but that same year the Crash occurred and brought the near economic ruin of the nation. The esteemed historian Barbara Tuchman told Bill Moyers in a television interview, “Revolutions produce other men, not new men. Halfway between truth and endless error, the mold of the species is permanent. That is earth’s burden.”[3] But Christians are realists. While they have little or no faith in human nature alone, they do believe that God can implant new life in people’s hearts and empower them to help change the lives of others. The Bible tells stories of men and women who were utterly transformed by the grace of God, and these stories need to be told again and again. Abram became Abraham, Sarai became Sarah, Jacob became Israel, Saul of Tarsus became Paul the apostle, and Simon became Peter. Christian realists are pessimistic about human nature but optimistic about the power and grace of the Lord.
God’s goal for his people is that they become more and more like Jesus Christ, what Paul called “conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). “For we are God’s workmanship” (Eph. 2:10), which suggests that God has to work in us before he can work through us. Spirit-empowered preaching is one of his most important tools. Preach about how God worked in frightened Gideon and made him a mighty man of valor and you will encourage many believers who are closet cowards. It’s serious work to build character and seek to make people more like Jesus, but it’s also joyful work that lasts for eternity. In short, biographical preaching is worth the effort expended in the study, the prayer closet, and the pulpit.