3. Biographical Preaching Requires a Prepared Preacher
3
BIOGRAPHICAL PREACHING REQUIRES A PREPARED PREACHER
Phillips Brooks’s familiar definition of preaching in his Lectures on Preaching as “the bringing of truth through personality” is especially applicable to biographical preaching. We can’t bring a sincere message if our inner person hasn’t connected in a deeper way with the inner person of the Bible character we are focusing on. It’s easier to grasp a subtle argument in one of Paul’s epistles than to identify with the Israelites at the Red Sea or with the apostles when the risen Christ suddenly appeared in a locked room. Beware the false confidence that arises in your heart when you say, “I know just how they felt!” Perhaps you do, or perhaps your imagination is a bit overheated. One reason why the Lord permits his servants to suffer is to help us better understand what other people really go through, and then be prepared to encourage them (2 Cor. 1:1–11). Listen again to Phillips Brooks: “To be a true minister to men is always to accept new happiness and new distress, both of them forever deepening and entering into closer and more inseparable union with each other the more profound and spiritual the ministry becomes. The man who gives himself to other men can never be a wholly sad man; but no more can he be a man of unclouded gladness.”[1] Ministry is a land of hills and valleys.
We study the men and women of the Bible, not the way an impatient husband observes people in a shopping mall as he waits for his wife but the way an oncologist examines cells under a microscope as he searches for cancer. The husband is an amused but uninvolved spectator; the doctor is an involved caregiver who is dealing with life and death. As we prepare to wield the sword of the Spirit, we must realize that the Word both hurts and heals, and we must strive to keep our ministry balanced.
The Biblical personalities we preach about have all been dead for centuries, yet they are part of God’s living Word, and we must be careful how we examine their lives and “operate” on their hearts. Let’s seek to treat these Bible characters the way the Lord treats us. The sins we see in others may be reflections of our own weaknesses and we must deal with them honestly. Biographical preaching requires the skill of the surgeon and the compassion of a mother, as well as the honesty of the scientist. If we want to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15), we must also study the truth in love. Our purpose is not to be sensational. The sword of the Spirit cuts only that the poison may be removed and the wound healed by God’s grace.
We must be honest with the Lord and with ourselves if we want to minister compassionately to our people; but honesty, humility, and compassion are essentials for every sermon that we preach. Perhaps this was one of Alexander Whyte’s secrets in biographical preaching: he first examined his own heart and dealt with his own sins, learned from the Bible character he was studying, and then turned the laser beam of truth on the congregation. In John Kelman’s tribute to Whyte, he said, “He preached nothing beyond the terrors and the glories among which his own heart had trembled or rejoiced…. He spoke no generalities, and was always thinking of living men and women. Apparently the simplest of men, he was yet also the shrewdest in his judgments, and you took your life in hand when you went to hear him preach.”[2]
In his sermon on “Paul, the Chief of Sinners,” Whyte told his congregation, “My true classics now are those masterly men who look into their own hearts and then write for my heart.”[3] The lower we are before God, the clearer we see both ourselves and the people in the Bible. “A real book is not one that’s read, but one that reads us,” wrote poet W. H. Auden, and the Bible certainly qualifies. Another gifted biographical preacher, F. W. Robertson, agrees with Whyte and Auden: “You cannot unveil the secrets of another heart without at the same time finding something to correspond with, and perchance explain, the mysteries of your own. Heart answers here to heart.”[4] Without honesty and humility, we step into the pulpit as judges and prosecuting attorneys, and not as Good Samaritans ready to share both the antiseptic wine and the soothing oil.
Like Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36–50), some of us are prone to classify people by their past deeds instead of by their deeper desires and their future potential. Taught to exercise discernment, most preachers want to classify people rather than leave all judgments to the Lord from whom nothing can be hidden. King Ahab was a sinner of sinners who “sold [himself] to do evil” (1 Kings 21:20, 25 NKJV), and yet the Lord postponed sending judgment because Ahab repented. Barnabas is called “a good man” (Acts 11:24) and yet he joined Peter in lapsing into legalism (Gal. 2:11–13). To be sure, it’s better to focus on the steady course of a person’s life than to camp on one unfortunate failure, but we have to face the fact that many Bible heroes failed even in their strengths. Abraham’s faith failed and he fled to Egypt, and there he failed again when he started to lie. Moses lost his meekness and then lost his temper. David abandoned his integrity and tried to cover up his sins. Peter’s courage failed and he denied his Lord three times.
However, knowing the failures of the great men and women of the Bible must not encourage us to aim lower. To believe the pernicious lie that the unconditional love of God moves him to wink at deliberate sin and refuse to discipline his children is to ignore the fact that his discipline is evidence of his love (Heb. 12:4–6). God’s love doesn’t change, but our enjoyment of that love does change if we deliberately rebel against him. He wants to be a Father to us and to share his love and his wealth, but there are conditions attached (2 Cor. 6:14–7:1). Wasn’t that what the prodigal son discovered in the far country (Luke 15:17–20)? Isn’t it the kindness of God, not the badness of sin, that brings people to repentance (Rom. 2:4)?
If you are going to preach the Bible, you must learn to deal with occasional ambiguity, especially in the lives of Bible characters. “There was a time when I used to be troubled a good deal about these Bible characters,” said evangelist D. L. Moody. “I used to think that, because they were saints, everything they did was right; and I could not understand just how it was that God would permit them to do such things and not be punished.”[5] Of course, Moody was a serious Bible student and knew that the record of the Old Testament believers was given to warn us to turn from sin (1 Cor. 10:1–13), to encourage us and give us hope (Rom. 15:1–6), and to increase our faith (Hebrews 11). God did discipline his people for the wrongs they committed (2 Samuel 12; Ps. 99:8), but God still continued to use most of them to accomplish his divine will.
God still says, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2; 1 Peter 1:15), and “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). He also provides the means by which we can avoid rebellion and deliberate disobedience. We have the interceding Son of God, the indwelling Spirit of God, the inspired Word of God, and our identification with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. If we lived under the law, we would ultimately give up on ourselves and everybody else, but since we live under God’s grace, we never give up on anybody! Having the right attitude toward the people to whom you preach is just as important as having the right approach to the people about whom you preach. Andrew W. Blackwood used to caution preachers, “The minister should look upon the people locally as an opportunity, not as a problem.”[6]
The seventeenth-century prelate Thomas Fuller summarizes this entire discussion in one pithy sentence: “Read not Books alone, but Man also, and chiefly Thyself.”