Customer Reviews

The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative

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Preachings Book of the Year

Several weeks ago in PreachingNow (our weekly e-mail newsletter), we ran a survey asking preachers what they are reading these days. The list was long, but I was surprised to see a particular book show up frequently. When we went back to take a look, we werent surprised any more.

In a year when many outstanding titles have been published in preaching, one book jumped to the top of the list as our Preaching Magazine Book of the Year for 2002: The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative, written by Steven D. Mathewson and published by Baker Academic.

This is a book by a well-trained pastor who preaches in his own local church Sunday after Sunday. (The author is senior pastor of Dry Creek Bible Church in Belgrade, Montana, as well as an instructor in preaching and Old Testament at Montana Bible College.) In contrast to some books which seem better suited to the classroom than the pulpit, this volume combines outstanding scholarship with a passionate and practical heart for ministry.

The book has three major sections. In the first, Mathewson takes you through the hermeneutical task of understanding Old Testament narratives. The second part deals with the homiletical task of moving from exegesis to a sermon that bristles with accuracy, clarity, interest and relevance. The final section offers model sermons from Haddon Robison, Paul Sunukjian, the author and others.

In the foreward, Robinson calls Mathewson a thoughtful guide to help us get a handle on the great stories of the Bible. William Willimon calls the book a great resource for biblical preaching from some of the most challenging and revealing parts of Scripture. Tony Evans describes the book as an awesome guide on how to communicate the truth from the Old Testament to our contemporary generation.

We are proud to recognize The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative by Steven D. Mathewson as our Preaching Book of the Year.

Michael Duduit, Editor
Preaching Magazine...

I've owned and read this book for years. While much of it is good, ultimately the book fails because it misinforms the reader concerning how to understand the point of OT Narratives. This is because the author confuses the story's plot line with it's main point.

We can see this in our everyday lives with movies (which are visual narratives). In the recent movie version of Pride and Prejudice, the plot line (loosely) is that Lizzy Bennett grows to hate Darcy, only to realize she loves him, especially after Darcy proves his love. The point of the movie, however, according to the director in the audio commentary, is that it is hard to fall in love.

If Pride and Prejudice were a Biblical Narrative, Matthewson would suggest that the point of the movie would be set up as follows: How do you get a girl to marry you when she mistakenly thinks you are a jerk? You win her over by clearing up misconceptions about you and sacrificially proving your love. This is all well and nice, but it's not the point of the movie.

Biblical narratives are about God, not about teaching how God will respond to you if you do the same things that the characters in the Bible story do. This is the interpretation error of inappropriate universalizing.

Readers will do themselves and their congregation well by purchasing instead Sidney Greidanus' Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text, the recognized book on how to accurately interpret and faithfully apply Biblical narratives.

There really isn't anything in this book that hasn't been said in the past by giants in the field of homiletics. But Steven Mathewson does a great job of explaining in clear language how to put together a sermon from an Old Testament story. He discusses the importance of finding what the main thing that a story is teaching about God, and the fallen condition focus of humanity (following Bryan Chappell's lead).

He also says that you can't preach an OT narrative verse by verse, you often have to summarizes paragraphs in one or two action packed sentences.

He discusses watershed texts such as Genesis 13, Genesis 22, 1 Samuel 17, and 2 Samuel 11-12. The last part of the book is most helpful, for it contains manuscripts of Old Testament narrative sermons by some of the best homileticians on the planet: Paul Borden, Don Sunukjian, Alice Mathews, and Haddon Robinson.

I should say that I didn't always agree with how certain texts were handled. For example, making Genesis 22 into a sermon about how fathers should worship God rather than their children is not the direction I would have gone. This approach ignores the main point of the text, Abraham's faith that God would provide the lamb. It would be better to trace this theme of God's provision through the rest of scripture.

Similarly, the discussion of the David and Goliath story ignored the main point of how David had faith in God's promise to drive the enemy from the land. The passage is about how faith in God's holy promises gives us the courage to face the challenges God places before us. I wished again that there was more of a connection with the promises of Exodus 3 and Deuteronomy 6 and Joshua 1 and other texts which promises that God would drive out the enemy and how this ties in with David's faith.

I also think that understanding the theology of each book or section of the OT should shed light on the meaning and purpose of a particular passage. Mathewson does a great job of giving us the tools to expound the text and the examples to practice with, but he does not deal so much with the theology of each book, which helps us to identify the big idea of a given passage.

But on the whole, this is one of the better books on preaching that I have read. In spite of my reservations regarding the lack of theological reflection, I still think that this is a five star book.

This book was a great help in preparing for my narrative messages class. It was an easy read, and I learned from the many examples throughout the book. It was also full of practical tips and advice. A great book for any preacher concerned with preaching the OT.