Three Steps to Application: Practically Applying Old Testament Narrative Texts
I am currently preaching through Genesis on Sunday mornings. I was talking with someone the other day about the difficulty of preaching through Old Testament narrative texts and the process of applying the text came up. Many, it seems, struggle with applying such sections.
In making my way through the text, I’ve found that it’s helpful to ask three questions, which then become “three steps” towards applying the ancient text to the modern reader. Granted, there are other aspects to consider, but these three steps seem to provide a good starting point.
- What does the event/revelation teach the original participants?
- What does the event/revelation teach the author and his contemporary audience?
- What does the event/revelation teach the modern reader?
Quite often, the answers to these questions may overlap, but the process of working through them will often help find the thematic elements of the passage in question. For example, as Genesis 15 opens, Abraham and his men have just defeated a coalition of kings to rescue his nephew Lot. Apparently fearing retribution, God appears to Abram in a vision with the powerful words (15:1): “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”
The meaning for Abraham was quite clear: he was not to fear because God was for him, therefore, who could be against him (Romans 8:31). Just as God had given him a victory over a seemingly overwhelming foe, God would continue to be faithful to Himself (1 Corinthians 10:13) and protect His chosen servant. Of course this must be taken in the context of God reiterating His covenant blessings and cutting the covenant with Abraham, but these simply underscore and strengthen the already developed theme: God is faithful and will care for His people.
Taking a step back, we ask what the text was teaching the author and his contemporary audience. Most agree that Moses wrote Genesis sometime near the end of his life. The Israelites would have been poised to enter the Promised Land in the conquest and Moses knew that he would not be joining them. As they peered into cities they did not build full of things they did not fill (Deuteronomy 6:10-12), surely they felt a bit of trepidation and even fear as they prepared to face established armies and cities.
The text was teaching them what God had taught Abram so many years prior: He was faithful and to be trusted and obeyed. God had sworn this land to Abraham and his descendents and He would deliver it if the Israelites simply followed in faithful obedience. God’s faithfulness shines through both “planes,” both for Abram and Moses.
Taking the final step in applying the text requires that we take the developing theme and filter it through Christ. Obviously, the theme of God’s faithfulness is going to remain, but it is going to be centralized in the supreme manifestation of God’s faithfulness: Christ. Christ stands, not simply as the apex of God’s faithfulness, but as the interpretive key to all of Scripture.
Christ is the fulfillment of God “passing through the pieces” in the covenant ceremony with Abraham. Christ is the law fulfilled. Christ is the supreme revelation of God’s faithfulness, therefore, we too, ought not fear, because God is faithful. There is much more that could be said, but I think I’ll stop here for today and invite your comments/feedback.
- Read Preaching and Biblical Theology by Edmund Clowney
- Read Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching by Graeme Goldsworthy
- Read Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments by Geerhardus Vos
- Read The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology by Charles H.H. Scobie
I like that; starting with those first two questions before you proceed to the third. I’ve heard pastors completely disregard the first two questions, seeming to presume that #3 is where it’s at, for the sake of “relevancy”. And man, were those guys willing to do anything to make it happen. For example, my last Sunday at my previous church was when the emphasis of the sermon was finding your own personal “Uzziah that needs to die in your life”, since the text starts with, “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.”
How sad that such a glorious passage was obscured in the name of “relevancy”!
This really is a great tool for looking at some of the more difficult (or any for that matter) Old Testament stories. Nice insight!
Oh, great books! I love Clowney and Goldsworthy. Have you read Dennis Johnson’s brand new book “Him We Proclaim”? I’m sure it’ll become a CLASSIC preaching text.
I’ve not had a chance to read that one yet. I’ve got his commentary on Acts which I really like for its redemptive historical perspective.
This kind of rolls back (in a sideways sort of way) to the Don Miller/propositional truth thing, but I wonder if the emphasis you put on ‘teaching,’ isn’t exactly the best word, and that maybe we should be asking how the text affects us (or should be affecting us).
I say that because I think the OT (especially) is rich in narrative, but we’re quick to reduce it to didactic point. If we let the story truly affect us (the way God intends), we very well may learn more than if we look for ‘the lesson.’
Of course, allowing the narrative to affect us is substantially more difficult (especially for those of us that have grown up hearing the same stories over and over), especially, if we’re going to roll serious scholastic study/examination of the story into it.
I’m not really disagreeing with you–I just think rethinking how we come at these things has a lot of possibility.