It's All in How You Tell It: Preaching First-Person Expository Messages

It’s All in

How You Tell It

Preaching First-Person Expository Messages

Haddon W. Robinson

Torrey W. Robinson

© 2003 by Haddon W. Robinson and Torrey W. Robinson

Published by Baker Books

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakerbooks.com

E-book edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-5855-8464-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Unless otherwise indicated Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture marked NASB is taken from the New American Standard Bible ®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

To Carey and Carl:

Almost a hundred and fifty years ago, in Northern Ireland, your great-great-grandfather staggered home drunk past a church where they were singing an old hymn:

There is life for a look at the crucified one.

There is life at this moment for thee.

Look sinner look unto him and be saved,

Unto him who died on the tree.

Look, look, look and live

To him who died on the tree.

Hearing the words of that hymn, your great-great-grandpa surrendered his life to Christ and became a lay preacher. All his children became Christians. By God’s grace, that story, that faith was passed on to your great-grandfather, to your grandfather, and then to your father. Now that story has become your story.

It is our prayer that your children and your grandchildren may know the truth of that story as they see it lived out in you.

Contents

Key Terms

1. From Egg Rolls to Stealth Bombers

Witnesses to the power of first-person preaching

2. Preaching As Listeners Like It

What is an expository first-person sermon? What makes first-person sermons effective?

3. Study! Study! Study!

How do I determine a text to preach? And how do I exegete that text for a first-person sermon?

4. O Say Can You See?

How do I determine which character to portray and how to portray the character?

5. Bones and Flesh

How do I structure the sermon? Where do my exegetical and historical details fit into the sermon?

6. It’s All in How You Tell It

What about staging and delivery?

7. Curing First-Person Headaches

How do I deal with the unique challenges of first-person preaching?

Introduction to the Appendices

Appendix 1: An Ordinary Hero (The Book of Ruth) by Steve Mathewson

Appendix 2: The Profile of a Leader (1 Samuel 16–17) by Kent Edwards

Appendix 3: The Story of Anna McLeash (Proverbs 4:23) by Sid Buzzel

Appendix 4: Setting the Record Straight (Matthew 2:1–18) by Haddon Robinson

Appendix 5: Simon Said (Luke 12:15–21) by Alice Mathews

Appendix 6: No Reason to Cry (John 20:1–18) by Torrey Robinson

Appendix 7: God’s Good News (Galatians 1:1–2:10) by Torrey Robinson

Appendix 8: Bibliography of Resources for the First-Person Preacher

Notes

Key Terms

The following terms are important to the discussion of first-person preaching and will be employed in this book:

Anachronisms: Jargon or references that are out of their proper historical time. For example, Joseph wore sandals, not shoes. He was a slave, not an employee, in Potiphar’s house.

Blocking: Assigning a location on the stage to the character or characters in each scene.

Characterization: The way the author or narrator describes, contrasts, parallels, and depicts the words and actions of the characters in the narrative.

Chronological Development: A story constructed chronologically, that is, one event following another as it happened in time.

Deduction: Reasoning from the general to the specific. Most sermons of the last fifty years in the Western world have tended to follow a deductive pattern. They usually start with a summary point and move from this general assertion to the specific details or subpoints of the sermon.

Dramatic Monologue: A sermon preached from the viewpoint of an eyewitness to an event.

Exposition: Preaching which confronts the hearers with an accurate interpretation of the biblical revelation and its present meaning for their lives.[1]

First-Person Sermon: (same as dramatic monologue)

First-Person Expository Sermon: An expository sermon preached from a first-person perspective. In other words, this preaching form is based on an accurate interpretation of the Scripture and applies its meaning to the hearers. It does this through the retelling of the scriptural account from the vantage point of a character who was part of the story.

Flashback: An interruption in the continuity of a story that relays an earlier episode.

Genre: In reference to literature, it is the specific type or classification of the literary work such as prose, poetry, or narrative.

Hermeneutically Inconsequential: In a few biblical texts (such as the parables of Jesus), the historicity and identity of the characters are not essential to the interpretation and preaching of the narrative.

Hermeneutically Indispensable: In most narrative biblical texts, the historicity and identity of the character or characters were assumed by the biblical writer and are essential to the interpretation and preaching of the narrative.

Historical Narrative: A nonfiction story.

Homiletics: The preparation and delivery of sermons.

Induction: Reasoning from the specific to the general. Stories are inductive, moving from specific actions and events to a general moral or lesson.

Narrative: A story, either fiction or nonfiction.

Narrative Literature: The literary genre also known as story.

Psychological Development: A narrative constructed or relayed by a thought sequence rather than chronologically. The unfolding of the story is not based on a steady progression in time. Instead, the story develops logically or according to another expected flow of thought.

Stance: In first-person preaching, stance describes the perspective of the character in relation to the twenty-first-century audience. For example, does the character know the audience? Is the character familiar with his or her culture? Is the audience listening to the character on the ancient scene, or is the character imaginatively transported into the twenty-first century?

Third-Person Narrative: A story communicated by a narrator who is not part of the story being told. For example, in his Gospel, Luke gives a third-person narrative account of the life of Jesus.

1

From Egg Rolls to Stealth Bombers

The pastor slumped down in his seat opposite me in the restaurant and played with his water glass. Then he made a comment that sounded like a confession: I am bored, very bored, with my own preaching. He was an effective leader of the largest church in a half-gallon town in the Midwest. He administered a staff of seven that oversaw a variety of ministries within the congregation and the community. But when it came to preaching, he gave himself low marks. He summed up his pulpit work in the words of a member of his church who described his sermons as a tad or two above average.

What surprised me, though, was how he put it. He wasn’t saying, I am afraid that I am boring my congregation. He was admitting something even more deadening: I am boring myself with my own preaching.

He wasn’t talking about the grinding regularity of producing a new sermon each week. He carved out at least twelve hours a week from his demanding schedule for sermon preparation, and he enjoyed working in the biblical text. He studied, and he had something important to say. He wasn’t bored with the Bible; he was bored with himself. His problem wasn’t content; it was creativity. No matter where he was in the Scriptures, no matter what genre of literature he was preaching, one size fit all. He was sick of it.

His sermons resembled rows and rows of Chinese egg rolls. They were nourishing enough, but they all looked the same. He had used the same mold for over twenty years with little variety except for the subject matter. His sermons from the Psalms differed little from those out of Revelation. It was this unrelenting sameness that prompted him to say, I am bored, very bored, with my own preaching.

He had good reason to be concerned. Boredom is like anthrax. It can kill. More people have been bored out of the Christian faith than have been reasoned out of it. Dull, insipid sermons not only cause drooping eyes and nodding heads, they destroy life and hope. What greater damage can we do to people’s faith than to make them feel like God and Jesus Christ and the Bible are as boring as the want ads in the Sunday paper? Boredom can dull the life of the listener in the pew, but in this case it had infected the preacher.

He had learned how to hammer sermons together in seminary. The form he had been taught served him well in organizing his thoughts, but it was the only form he knew. Find a key word, arrange the points around that word, if possible alliterate them, review the points at the conclusion, toss in some application, and pray. The only variety was the central word he used to hold his sermons together. He had done this forty-five weeks a year for twenty years. Egg rolls every Sunday. No wonder he was bored.

He needed to understand that there are other ways to preach. There is no such entity as the best sermon form. Sermons can take various forms, but no preaching form came down from heaven. The most common form sermons have taken through the centuries came from the Greeks and Romans. Many early preachers were educated as public speakers in the Roman schools. In their schooling, rhetoric was as important as writing. Educated people learned the communication theories of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, and they studied the speeches of gifted orators. Brilliant speakers were celebrities in ancient culture as much as actors and musicians are in ours, and students were encouraged to imitate them. So it isn’t at all surprising that early church leaders injected secular theory about speechmaking into the Christian faith.

Basically, the method was deductive. It presented, defended, and won approval for a proposition. This classical approach had some strength. It probably led to the three-point sermon. The ancient orators asked and answered three questions: What is it? Why would I want it? and How do I get it? Later these questions were flattened to the formula tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. The pastor had learned a modern variation of this form, and it was all he knew. Somehow he felt preaching in this form was the only way to be faithful to the Bible. Although it aided clarity, it stifled suspense. The method does have a venerable past, but it isn’t eternal. It wasn’t carried to earth by the angels.

The Scriptures provide no single form that Christian sermons must take. Indeed, the biblical authors used a myriad of different methods. They told stories and parables, composed psalms and recounted visions, reported history and wrote letters—all forms borrowed from their cultures and used to communicate what they had to say. No single sermon form has God’s stamp of approval on it saying Accept no substitutes. There are many different ways to communicate God’s truth. Any minister reluctant to acknowledge this fact will speak with boring predictability.

Sermons can take various forms in the service of the Word. Many effective preachers today use an inductive development. This approach recognizes that the place of the preacher in our society has changed. In the recent past, ministers were regarded as authorities. In some communities the minister was the most educated person in town. He went into his study during the week to search the Bible for a message and would appear on Sunday to tell his congregation what he had discovered. The people listened because they believed the preacher was fully qualified to tell them what to think and how to live. That kind of influence has gone the way of running boards on automobiles. Today’s culture rarely grants them authority, except perhaps what it grants to a justice of the peace to officiate at weddings.

Preachers have only the authority they can win for their message. If preachers understand that they occupy an office with only a sliver of respect, they will more often develop sermons inductively. In the first century the apostles weren’t held in high regard by their antagonistic society, and that explains why the sermons reported in Acts were usually developed in an inductive manner. Inductive sermons, like inductive Bible studies, are structured so that the hearers discover the message for themselves. For those who believe that the Bible is self-authenticating and possesses its own power, this form can have great advantages today. The dynamic for the sermon lies less with the preacher and more with the Scriptures themselves. The preacher still studies, of course, but the message unfolds a part at a time so that listeners arrive at the conclusion with the pastor. Inductive sermons resemble a lively conversation more than a lecture.

One particular form of the inductive method is to tell a story. Stories have solid scriptural warrant. The writers of the Bible relied on stories to communicate their messages. The authors of many Old Testament books were accomplished storytellers, and they were also theologians. They used their stories to point people to God. The narratives in the Bible are not simply tales to tell children before they get tucked into bed at night; they are superbly crafted theology. Yet, in spite of the biblical witness to the power of stories, ministers sometimes feel they are dumbing down the truth if they use a narrative approach in their preaching. They simply won’t believe that a story—even a biblical story—can carry the load.

When Jesus preached, he told stories. Perhaps