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 The Old Testament is full of clues about Christ. Image of “The Risen Lord” by He Qi, courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library. |
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Old Testament Sermons: The case for preaching the whole Bible
Paul said that all Scripture is God-breathed. Still, when did you last hear a sermon on the Old Testament? Ellen Davis says we can’t truly understand our relationship with God till we dive into the wondrous depths of the Hebrew Scriptures.
When Ellen Davis was growing up in the Episcopal Church, the standard lectionary readings were from the epistles, gospels, and psalms—hardly ever from elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.
“In some churches, on principle, the Old Testament isn’t read. I rarely hear anyone preach on it. I learned the Old Testament stories as an adult, by teaching them,” says Davis, professor of Bible and practical theology at Duke Divinity School. Her books include Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament and Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament.
The Old Testament sets up the categories for how we see Jesus. It shows how God calls us to live in our religious, economic, and political realities.
“If the Old Testament was preached more often, the preaching of the New Testament would be deeper—because it presupposes, refers, defers, and alludes to the Old Testament. Ignoring the Old Testament is like reading the last 4 chapters of a 16-chapter novel and thinking you got the whole story,” Davis says.
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Overlooking the Old Testament
Preaching the whole Bible begins with truly treating it as God’s Word.
When church members fight about worship styles, leaders often say, “Worship is about God, not us.” In Wondrous Depth, Davis reminds herself and other preachers, “Remember the inspiration is in the text, not in you, so step aside and let it speak.”
She’s not on a church staff but often preaches, so she understands the pressure preachers feel “to ‘find an illustration,’ on which the success of the sermon is often supposed to depend.” But looking on the Old Testament as simply a (sparse) source of sermon illustrations misses its purpose.
Davis says seminaries have helped “perpetuate the neglect of Old Testament preaching from generation to generation.” Most Old Testament scholars focus on historical or historical/critical aspects instead of theological readings of the text. When Davis chose her specialty—how to preach the Old Testament and theologically understand its agrarian economy—her PhD advisor warned her she might be relegated to academic backwaters.
Nevertheless, Wondrous Depth woos preachers to see the Old Testament “as an indispensable source of knowledge about the things of God…to work deeply with the challenge found in a prophetic passage, or perhaps a narrative, expecting to find in the text itself some guidance for meeting that challenge…to discover in the instructions and prayers of the Old Testament a substantial measure of ‘the peace of God, which passeth all understanding’ (Philippians 4:7)…”
 Ellen Davis preached a sermon based on Exodus 16 at the Calvin Symposium on Worship. |
Doing the easy sermons
Davis knows that “seriously reckoning” with the Hebrew Bible isn’t easy. “It’s very sophisticated literature. It’s gangly, huge, extremely varied in style. A lot of it is hard to know what to do with, which is why I wrote Getting Involved with God.
“We’re more comfortable with New Testament literary style. It, too, has lots—Jesus’ focus on the poor, violence in Revelation—to give offense. We’ve found ways (not exegetically or theologically satisfactory ones) to read around those parts.
“In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the more he read the Old Testament, the more he came to feel Christians move too quickly to Jesus and the New Testament. He said that anyone who moves too quickly is no Christian—because he was concerned how Christians live in political settings. He objected to highly personalized and egocentric interpretations of Scripture,” Davis says.
Though she doesn’t think the New Testament holds up to “privatistic reading,” she says it’s easier to read that way if you don’t know the Old Testament well.
Delving into the Old Testament can be risky. When asked to preach on Exodus 16 for a recent Calvin Symposium on Worship, Davis says her heart sank. “I knew that preaching about what’s in the text—and its implications for our enmeshment in the global economy—might go over like a lead balloon.
“Then I realized it might be the first time some listeners would be confronted by what happens when God shows up in glory. Everyone has enough to eat. Everyone can worship God without distraction.”
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Missing Christ’s full promise
Truly knowing Jesus depends on understanding how he fulfils what Scott Hoezee calls “the unified Word of God. As the Book of Hebrews makes clear, the Old Testament contains shadows, prefigurements, predictions, and promises that came true in Christ.” Hoezee directs the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary.
He understands why preachers neglect the prophets. It takes effort to understand a prophet and to explain how the book fits within the Hebrew Bible and the big story of God at work in the world. Preachers don’t want to be lumped with those who use prophecy as a “weird codebook for predicting the future.”
Also, as his colleague Michael J. Williams explains in The Prophet and His Message: Reading Old Testament Prophecy Today and in lectures, calling worshipers to other-centered lives is uncomfortable. Most churches prefer to avoid discomforting people, Williams says. (Both the verb and noun meanings of “discomforting” apply.)
The result? Hoezee cautions, “People who never hear sermons on the prophets miss out on key themes and promises in Scripture, especially justice. The prophets forth tell truth about life right now. They reveal the heart of God and who God is.
“To understand the Jesus that Luke presents, you need a good sense of who Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah were. An overriding concern about rich and poor animated the Old Testament prophets, whom Jesus knew really well.”
The story continues ... Experience the Old Testament
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Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig
Don’t miss the bonus story, “Using the Old Testament in Worship.”
Listen to brief audio interview excerpts of Scott Hoezee on:
- The decline of Old Testament preaching (3:53, 4.6 MB, MP3)
- Why to preach more on the prophets (4:59, 3.6 MB, MP3)
Read about how Ellen Davis helped set up an Old Testament languages program at a Sudanese seminary. Discuss—and review for your church blog or newsletter—several books by Ellen Davis.
- Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament deals with rage, lament, and other difficult Old Testament issues.
- Who Are You, My Daughter?: Reading Ruth through Text and Image works well in church education and retreats.
- Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament shows how to let Old Testament texts astonish you so you can preach them well. It includes classic sermons on the Old Testament, including one by John Donne that’s especially apropos among people who doubt or feel indifferent to God. This book is great for preachers, yet accessible to anyone.
Listen to an Ellen Davis sermon, "God's House," with texts from 2 Samuel and Hebrews, in the CEP archive (search by speaker); direct MP3 link.
On the Center for Excellence in Preaching (CPE) website, Scott Hoezee has gathered a wealth of help for preaching the Old Testament, including resources for preaching Genesis and Exodus (scroll down). The sermon starters for all 52 Lord’s Days of the Heidelberg Catechism include ideas based on Old Testament texts. You can research cultural trends, books that inform and inspire preachers, and essays on whether to cite references in sermons and how or when to use “theological talk.”
Of the CPE annotated list of OT commentaries, Hoezee says, “Anything by Walter Brueggemann is gold. Terence Fretheim and Daniel Block are great on Exodus. I also recommend Ellen Davis, Sidney Greidanus, and Robert Alter on the Pentateuch, biblical narrative, and biblical poetry.”
Search for sermons by chapter and verse. Sign up for sermon podcasts. Read or listen to sermons about the psalms. Get ideas from the Psalms for a Lenten Journey worship service series planned with help from Carl Bosma.
Other practical, easy-to-read books about adding Old Testament content to worship include
- Carol Bechtel’s Kerygma series
- The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship: A Brief Introduction and Guide to Resources by John D. Witvliet
- The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
- The Prophet and His Message: Reading Old Testament Prophecy Today by Michael J. Williams
- With One Voice: Discovering Christ's Song in Our Worship by Reggie M. Kidd
Gather seminarian or preacher friends to dive into these worthwhile academic books:
- Preaching Christ from the Old Testament by Sidney Greidanus is a classic highly recommended by Scott Hoezee.
- Psalms and Practice: Worship, Virtue, and Authority edited by Stephen Breck Reid shows how to use psalms in public prayer, liturgy, and preaching.
- Punishment and Forgiveness in Israel's Migratory Campaign by Won Lee clarifies the overarching theology of Numbers.
Browse related stories about how to choose Bible commentaries, justice themes in worship music, moving from text to sermon, sermon helps, understanding the Bible’s full evangelical message, and voicing God’s psalms.
Feel free to print and distribute these stories at your staff, council, worship, or education committee meeting. These questions will get members talking about renewing your connection with the Old Testament.
- What, if anything, in this set of stories makes you feel uncomfortable?
- In an average year at your church, how much Old Testament content do worshipers receive through sermons, readings, songs, prayers, or other worship elements? What does your church’s ratio of Old Testament-to-New Testament content teach people about the relative value of these sections of God’s Word?
- What do you think about the idea that Christians who neglect the Old Testament risk missing out on the full gospel and deceive themselves about how close they are to God?
- Christians often vehemently disagree about how God calls us to live within contemporary social, economic, political, and religious settings. Can you think of any core principles that Christians can unite around? Use the whole Bible to back up what you say.
What is the best way you’ve found to add more Old Testament content to sermons and worship services? Please write to us so we can identify trends and share your great ideas. Whether you do these or any other things, we’d love to learn what works for you:
- Did you develop a record keeping system to analyze the ratio of Old and New Testament content in your worship? If so, how long did you keep records and what changes did you make as a result?
- Did you create a sermon or education series to help people learn more about a certain prophet? The prophets often used strong visuals or lifestyle behaviors to get their point across. Which such examples worked best for as you as you preached or taught on the prophets?
- If you decided to use more psalms in worship, what worked best? Did you add spoken or sung lectionary psalms, come up with an effective way to marry psalms and multimedia, pray lament psalms together and tie that to an action outside church, plan entire services around a single psalm…?
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This article was first published by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/.