4. Biographical Preaching Demands Thorough Preparation
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BIOGRAPHICAL PREACHING DEMANDS THOROUGH PREPARATION[1]
In Joseph Heller’s novel Good As Gold, a White House staff member makes the statement, “We’re going to tell the truth, even if we have to lie about it.” But Christian preachers don’t do evil that good may come from it. We study, meditate, pray, and dig into the texts until we’ve reached that vein of truth that we can mine and mint for our people. (For this metaphor, see Proverbs 2:1–9, and take it to heart!) In conference workshops, I’ve told pastors to remember the “T POT” rule—“Take Plenty of Time.” There are no exceptions to this rule. Trust me.
On March 25, 1842, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal, “Great persons are not soon learned, not even their outhnes, but they change like the mountains on the horizon as we ride along.” If you’re preaching about Joseph, Moses, or Paul, you may gather more material than you need, even if you plan to do a series. You still must take time to narrow things down and focus on the approach for each message, because each message in a series must be able to stand alone. However, if you’re preaching about Paul’s nephew (Acts 23:11ff) or Simon the Zealot, you’ll have to dig for material and will need extra time to probe deeper. It’s embarrassing to preach on a Bible character and after the service have one of your listeners point out an important text you completely overlooked. It cannot be emphasized too much: take time to research the individual and gather the important factual data. T POT—Take Plenty of Time.
Gathering Material
What kind of information should we gather for the biographical sermon? Everything that’s available and useful to our purpose, the kind of information we’d need for writing a biography. This would include family background, vocation, education and training (there is a difference), early influences, important people in his or her life, crisis experiences, important decisions, evidences of change, and maturity. Be sure to include the New Testament texts that deal with Old Testament characters. Your complete concordance will assist you here. I like to take notes on 3 x 4 pieces of paper. I write a topical heading on each note and the text to which it applies. If it’s a quotation, I add the documentation. When my search for data is ended, I can arrange the notes topically (birth, family, name, etc.) and have an easier time seeing what I have to work with. Some of the notes will end up in the wastebasket or perhaps be filed away for a future message.
Start with a chronology of the character’s life and a listing of contemporaries, and then start asking yourself questions. If you’re dealing with a person from the Gospels, be sure to have your harmony of the Gospels handy. When I did a series on John the Baptist, my preparation included making a photocopy of every passage in the Gospels that related to him and putting the sheets into a binder. What a time-saver that proved to be!
This is the kind of material you’re searching for:
Anything unique in the person’s birth or death? Check any available genealogies. Remember that some names are repeated often in Scripture, so don’t confuse the Herods, Marys, and Zechariahs.
Is the person’s name significant? Was the name ever changed? Any nicknames?
What did the person most enjoy? trust? do? fail in? succeed in? Can you find high points and low points?
How did the person respond to God’s Word? to other people? to danger? to failure? to success? to God’s will?
How did the person influence other people, for good or for ill? What were his or her lasting achievements? What are the person’s influences today?
If the person spoke or wrote anything that is recorded in Scripture, what do the words reveal about his or her life? We can learn a great deal about Simon Peter from his two epistles. Several Old Testament persons are named in the Psalms and some in the Prophets.
What geographical information is important?
How would this person fit into society today? Into the church? Would I want him or her as a friend? a neighbor? a co-laborer for Christ?
What part did this person play in the salvation history recorded in the Bible?
Do I know anybody who is like this person? In what ways am I like him or her?
What great truth, if any, does this life illustrate? What familiar metaphor or proverb would fit this person?
You need not include every piece of information in your sermon, but learn all you can about your subject and carefully weigh each facet of his or her personality. Don’t try to be a sanctified amateur psychiatrist, but do try to enter into the person’s heart, mind, and circumstances. Otherwise, your message will be only the story of a person’s life, a biographical lecture without any interpretation, insight, or application. This doesn’t mean that we turn the life into an allegory, although we must identify the Old Testament types of Jesus Christ (e.g., Jonah, David, Joseph, etc.). The key question is, How did God work in and through this person to accomplish his will and glorify his name? (See John 17:4.)
Whether you have a great deal of data or very little, beware of an overactive imagination that “fills in the gaps” with extrabiblical ideas. There is a right way and a wrong way to fill in the gaps, and two examples from Charles Spurgeon will illustrate them. The first one is taken from Matthew 9:9 and shows a right way to do it.
Matthew wrote this verse about himself. I can fancy him, with his pen in his hand, writing all the rest of this Gospel; but I can imagine that, when he came to this very personal passage, he laid the pen down a minute, and wiped his eyes.[2]
What Spurgeon described could have happened—it’s true to human nature—and it may have happened, but he was careful not to say that it did happen. It happened only in the preacher’s imagination and touched his heart, so he passed it along to his congregation and no doubt touched the hearts of many of them. But, like many of us, Mr. Spurgeon sometimes let his imagination get out of hand. The text is Matthew 27:19, the message Pilate received from his wife during the trial of Jesus.
In her dream Pilate’s wife may have seen her husband brought forth to judgment, himself a prisoner to be tried by the Just One, who had earlier been accused before him. She may have awoke, startled at the shriek of her husband as he fell back into the pit that knows no bottom.[3]
There was a time when this kind of pulpit oratory was expected and appreciated, but fortunately that era ended long ago, except in small pockets of the church where oratory is protected by tradition. Spurgeon didn’t know the contents of the woman’s dream or why it made her suffer. Human speculation is no substitute for divine revelation.
Look for a Key
“All persons are puzzles until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson; “straightway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.”[4] This is not likely to be some unusual thing but something common to humanity in general. “The men of the Bible Gallery are photographed because they are universal men,” said George Matheson.[5] An understanding of human nature begins with an understanding of our own hearts, an experience that can be painful.
I’ve long thought that Psalm 78:70–72 provides one key to David’s life: David the shepherd, the man with integrity in his heart and skill in his hands. Psalm 78 describes the sins and failures of the people of Israel and how God dealt with them; but the solution to the nation’s problems was a new leader, a shepherd who was a man after God’s own heart. David saw himself as the shepherd of the people and he sought to protect them (2 Sam. 24:17). Frequently when you find King Saul in Scripture, his spear is mentioned, the proud emblem of his authority. But in his hand David had a sling, a sword, a harp, a cup of cold water (2 Sam. 23:13–17), and a pen (2 Sam. 11:12–17). He had nothing in his hand when he confessed his sins (Ps. 51:16–17). Another image of Saul is that of the king standing head and shoulders above everybody else at the beginning of his career (1 Sam. 10:23) and then at the end falling on his face (1 Sam. 28:14) and on his sword (1 Sam. 31:1–4). “How the mighty have fallen!” lamented David when he heard the news (2 Sam. 1:25, 27). Saul’s pride led him into sin, so Proverbs 16:18 would also apply.
One key to the life of Mary of Bethany is that Scripture pictures her at the feet of Jesus (Luke 10:38–42; John 11:32; 12:1–8). Andrew the apostle is introduced as a man who brought people to Jesus (John 1:35–42; 6:1–9; 12:20–22). Nicodemus is identified with the night (John 3:1–2; 19:38–42), but he came out of the darkness and into the light. Judas, on the other hand, went out into the night (John 13:30). In John’s writings, darkness symbolizes sin, Satan, and spiritual ignorance. Nicodemus illustrates John 3:19–21.
Surely John 3:30 is a key to the life and ministry of John the Baptist: “He must become greater; I must become less.” Jesus was the bridegroom and John was only the best man (John 3:29). Jesus is the Word, but John was only a voice (John 1:23). Jesus is the light (John 8:12), but John was only a lamp (John 5:35). John was filled with the Spirit before birth and therefore rejoiced in Jesus and glorified Jesus.
The Greek biographer Plutarch (c. AD 46–119), whose Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans is still read today, made an astute observation that can help us in our biographical studies. “And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue and vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.”[6]
Package the Material Creatively
The easiest approach to the biographical sermon is chronological, but it isn’t terribly interesting, unless you do a dramatic monologue. Merely discussing the stages in a person’s life doesn’t convey spiritual truth forcefully unless your development of each point is meaningful. For example:
Judas the disciple (Luke 6:12–13a)
Judas the apostle (Luke 6:13b–16)
Judas the devil (John 6:68–71)
Judas the thief (John 12:6)
Judas the defiled (John 13:10–11)
Judas the traitor (John 13:21–30; Acts 1:16)
Judas the suicide (Matt. 27:3–10)
Judas the son of destruction (John 17:12)
Judas the man who was better off unborn (Matt. 26:24)
Before he was chosen to become an apostle, Judas was in the large crowd of disciples that followed Jesus (Matt. 5:25), but why was he following the Lord? Was he hoping for the restoration of the Jewish kingdom? Was he fascinated by the miracles? You can be in the crowd and not be in God’s family! Then he was called to be an apostle. You can be a member of the inner circle and be a devil! How did Judas respond when he heard the Sermon on the Mount, especially Matthew 7:21–27? You can be at the table with the Lord and still surrender to the devil! Judas is certainly a warning to every religious person who masquerades as a child of God. At this point you may want to study the parable of the tares (Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43).
The title “the one doomed to destruction” (John 17:12) could be one key to Judas’s tragic life, for the word apoleia (destruction) is translated “waste” in Matthew 26:8 and Mark 14:4, where Judas and the other disciples ask, “Why this waste?” Judas was “the son of the wasteness.” He certainly wasted a glorious opportunity to be saved and to know and serve Jesus. He wasted a good name—Judah, which means “praise.” His life ended in waste and he left a cemetery behind. To be sure, Judas is one of the most enigmatic of all the personalities in the Bible, yet we must try to make something out of his life and death. Jesus gave Judas power to do miracles and the responsibility to preach sermons (Luke 9:1–6), and he was apparently successful, for the other disciples never once questioned his right to be among them. They did not know there was a traitor among them until the very end. These are certainly deep waters.
Instead of merely tracing a person’s life, we might focus on the crises in his or her life or the lessons learned from the Lord. Jonah learned the lesson of God’s presence (chap. 1), God’s pardon (chap. 2), God’s power (chap. 3), and God’s pity (chap. 4). We aren’t told how the story ended, but we certainly discover that you can’t run away from the Lord, that the Lord does forgive us and deigns to use us, and that his heart is broken by the sins of the people who need to hear our message. But our own sin keeps us from telling the message!
Each biographical sermon must be controlled by both the text(s) and a compelling purpose. We must know what the message is supposed to accomplish in the lives of the hearers. According to 2 Timothy 3:1, the Word of God should teach us doctrine, reprove sin, correct our lives, and show us how to keep our lives in God’s will; merely recounting a person’s life may not be enough. Yes, the Spirit can use the story to speak to hearts, but the Spirit was given to glorify the Son of God (John 16:14), so don’t leave Jesus out of the message. I have heard sermons by capable preachers in which Jesus was never mentioned, and this, I think, is a mistake.