1. The Tale of Two Preachers
The Tale of Two Preachers
Delivering God’s message is serious business. In fact, it could be a matter of life or death. Consider with me two men who used two different approaches in communicating their messages and in doing so witnessed two different results. The message from the first speaker was rejected, and he went out and committed suicide. The message from the second speaker was accepted, and he helped to suppress a rebellion and save the life of a king.
This fascinating story is found in 2 Samuel 17. King David had been forced out of Jerusalem by his son Absalom who now possessed his father’s throne, his father’s wives, and the leadership of all of his father’s army. But in the wake of all this unbridled success, Absalom had a serious problem: what should he do about his father who had fled into the wilderness to escape?
He turned for help to his trusted counselor Ahithophel, whose reply was:
I would choose twelve thousand men and set out tonight in pursuit of David. I would attack him while he is weary and weak. I would strike him with terror, and then all the people with him will flee. I would strike down only the king and bring all the people back to you. The death of the man you seek will mean the return of all; all the people will be unharmed (2 Sam. 17:1-3).
Absalom and his advisers liked the plan and, had they followed it, they probably would have routed David and his forces and put down all opposition. But Absalom wanted to hear Hushai’s counsel as well. Hushai, of course, was on David’s side; and David had prayed that God would turn Ahithophel’s counsel into foolishness (15:31). This is what Hushai said.
The advice Ahithophel has given is not good this time. You know your father and his men; they are fighters, and as fierce as a wild bear robbed of her cubs. Besides, your father is an experienced fighter; he will not spend the night with the troops. Even now, he is hidden in a cave or some other place. If he should attack your troops first, whoever hears about it will say, “There has been a slaughter among the troops who follow Absalom.” Then even the bravest soldier, whose heart is like the heart of a lion, will melt with fear, for all Israel knows that your father is a fighter and that those with him are brave.
So I advise you: Let all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba—as numerous as the sand on the seashore—be gathered to you, with you yourself leading them into battle. Then we will attack him wherever he may be found, and we will fall on him as dew settles on the ground. Neither he nor any of his men will be left alive. If he withdraws into a city, then all Israel will bring ropes to that city, and we will drag it down to the valley until not even a piece of it can be found (2 Sam. 17:7-13).
After hearing Hushai’s plan, Absalom and the elders changed their minds; and humanly speaking, this is what saved David’s life. To be sure, it was the Lord who changed Absalom’s mind (v. 14; Prov. 21:1). But the same God who ordains the end also ordains the means to the end. In this case, the means to the end—convincing Absalom not to accept Ahithophel’s plan—was the speech that Hushai made.
Read the two speeches again and notice the two different approaches. Apart from the fact that Hushai’s speech is three times longer than Ahithophel’s (and for a good reason), the contrast between the two approaches is obvious. In modern terms, Ahithophel used a cerebral “left brain” approach and Hushai, a visceral “right brain” approach. Absalom heard what Ahithophel was saying, but he saw and felt what Hushai was saying. Ahithophel’s counsel was wise, but it was rejected, and this led to his humiliation and death. Hushai’s counsel was weak in military strategy, but it was accepted and led to Absalom’s defeat.
“If we have learned anything else,” wrote Norman Cousins in his book Human Options, “it is that the ideas of the poets and artists penetrate where everything else has failed.”[1] The movers and shakers in history have usually been people like Hushai who can turn people’s ears into eyes so that they see and feel the message and respond positively to it. In the United States in the ’60s, the folk songs of the “flower people” probably did more to influence government policy about Vietnam and civil rights than did all the speeches given in Congress. Why? Because, like Hushai’s speech, these songs painted pictures and stirred the imagination. Songs such as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” affected more people in a deeper way than did press releases from the White House.
I realize that “right brain” and “left brain” are popular terms used to describe a phenomenon that isn’t totally accepted by everybody in the scientific community. Nevertheless, using these terms is helpful in discussing recognized human approaches and behaviors. Physiologists and psychologists tell us that, generally speaking, each half of the brain performs specific functions, although these functions are not monopolized by that half of the brain. The “right brain” specializes in things creative, such as artistic patterns and shapes, the writing of poetry and the painting of pictures; while the “left brain” deals with things cognitive and logical, such as language and numbers and scientific concepts. Musicians and artists would especially use their right brain, while scientists and architects would lean heavily on the left brain.[2]
Read Ahithophel’s speech again and notice the “left-brain” flavor. Four times he says “I would” and focuses attention on himself as an authority figure. He presents a logical plan for killing the king and capturing the people, a plan that probably would have worked. But listening to his plan is like reading the road map when you’d rather be looking at the scenery. Like some of our preaching today, Ahithophel’s speech has authority, precision, logic, and wisdom, but it doesn’t have what it takes to make people see and feel the message and want to obey it.
Now consider Hushai’s speech. To begin with, the emphasis is on the listener, not the speaker. Hushai spoke to Absalom personally and wasn’t afraid to say “you” or “your.” At the close of his speech, he used the pronoun “we” so that Absalom got the feeling that “all Israel” was behind him. Hushai enabled Absalom to picture himself at the head of the victorious army. “Let all Israel . . . be gathered to you, with you yourself leading them into battle.” What did Absalom know about leading an army? Probably very little. But Hushai convinced him he could do it and, in his imagination, Absalom had already won the victory.
Hushai used words to paint pictures. Look at the similes and metaphors he used: “as fierce as a wild bear robbed of her cubs”; “whose heart is like the heart of a lion”; “melt with fear”; “as numerous as the sand on the seashore”; “as dew settles on the ground.” These are expressions that turned Absalom’s ears into eyes so that he could see what Hushai was saying. I especially like the images of the sand (v. 11) and the dew (v. 12). When Absalom imagined the sand on the seashore, it gave him a false sense of security, and the image of the falling dew made the whole enterprise look easy.
Hushai’s coup de grace was his description of Absalom supervising the destruction of David’s city of refuge, dragging every stone into the valley. By the time Hushai had finished his speech, Absalom had turned his left brain off and his right brain to “high” and had already crowned himself the conquering hero.
I mentioned earlier that there was a good reason why Hushai’s speech was longer than Ahithophel’s. Remember Sgt. Joe Friday of the popular “Dragnet” radio and TV series? Remember his famous saying, “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts”? Well, Ahithophel followed that line of thinking: “Here’s the plan. It’s logical. It will work. Now, get with it!” In police work, I suppose, Sgt. Friday’s approach is the best; but it isn’t the best way to prepare and deliver a sermon.[3]
It takes time to paint pictures. It takes time for our listeners to see those pictures and in their imagination place themselves in the scene. I can’t prove it from the text, but I get the impression that Hushai spoke deliberately, pausing to let each simile sink in. When he got to that last sentence, he saw Absalom smile and nod his head as the usurper visualized himself leading the army of Israel and defeating Israel’s greatest soldier.
I fear that too many of us who speak professionally—and this includes schoolteachers, politicians, and university lecturers as well as preachers—have the wrong idea of what it means to deliver a message. Too often we are guilty of unconsciously accepting what Michael J. Reddy calls “the conduit metaphor.” We envision ourselves as fountains of knowledge and our listeners as empty receptacles ready to receive what we know. As we speak, our words are supposed to build an invisible conduit between us and our listeners, so the information we have automatically moves from one mind to the other, and communication is successful. To “conduit speakers,” thoughts are “things” that are “contained” in “words” and transferred to “minds” by the spoken word. Dr. Reddy summarizes this viewpoint by saying that “language functions like a conduit, transferring thoughts bodily from one person to another.”[4]
This approach to preaching is more prevalent than most of us realize. You accepted “the conduit metaphor” the last time you said to a congregation or a class, “I hope this doesn’t go over your head!” Statements such as “I trust this idea is coming across” or “Let me drop this thought into your mind” are also wedded to the “conduit” approach to communication, the approach that Ahithophel used to his own destruction.
If you don’t respond to the picture of a sermon as a “conduit,” try seeing your sermons as “conveyor belts.” You study hard all week, do your exegesis, apply all the rules of hermeneutics, and come up with a lot of helpful biblical material that you want your congregation to know. You organize it on your homiletical “conveyor belt” and, as soon as the choir finishes its anthem, you throw the switch and start the belt moving. All of this marvelous material passes from the pulpit to the pew and the worshipers are supposed to pick it up and make it their own. But it just doesn’t work that way.
During a question-and-answer session at a pastors’ conference, one of the pastors suddenly stood to his feet, marched down the center aisle of the auditorium, arrived at the microphone, took a deep breath, and said: “My preaching sounds like a commentary! I’m dull! I have all the biblical facts but there’s no life! What should I do?” It was the “conduit/conveyor” error all over again. My distraught preacher friend needed to discover that an outhne is no more a message than a menu is a meal or a road map is a journey.
What did Hushai know that we need to know? That is what we will look at next.
“A theologian takes God seriously. . . . A poet takes words seriously. . . . . A pastor takes actual persons seriously. . . .”
“Do you know what makes man the most suffering of all creatures? It is that he has one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, and that he is torn between two worlds.”