From 1st to 21st
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Preaching is hard. This post isn’t about all the challenges of preaching, but take some time to think of just a few. A preacher must “come up” with sermons and lessons nearly every week, and must try to do his best to avoid “retreading” the same verses and topics over and over.
However, one of the hardest challenges is taking a book from the First Century (and earlier) and making it applicable in the 21st. While God’s Word is always relevant, it is sometimes difficult to help listeners see the relevance of certain texts or topics. John R.W. Stott would say that the preacher must have one foot in the Biblical world and another in the modern world (this is part of the thesis of his book Between Two Worlds).
The more I study God’s Word, though, the more I am impressed with how one passage can illustrate another. Please notice: I am not saying that you should never use a news item, story, or other illustration!!! What I am saying is that we need to get back to letting the Bible interpret itself, and we also need to do better about letting the Bible illustrate itself.
Are you preaching on lust, for example? It’s perfectly fine to bring in modern statistics and some (tasteful) illustrations from our sexually-saturated society. However, many (if not most) of your listeners already know that this is a sin that pervades our society. What, sadly, a lot of the listeners do not know is that this sin is spoken of nearly from cover-t0-cover in the Bible. You’ve got David and Bathsheba. There are dozens of verses in Proverbs. Both Jesus and Paul warned about lust multiple times.
In my preaching, I am trying to preach a text or topic, then do my best to illustrate with some of the well-known (and not-so-well-known) accounts found in the pages of Scripture. When we use these examples, most of our listeners can see what we are trying to illustrate, and they can also see that God did not “shy away” from that subject or topic.
Use newspapers and magazines. Search online. Quote from songs and other media. That’s wonderful, and it helps to bring the message into our modern day. But if you are going to preach that God’s Word is always relevant, why not use it, too? Let’s dig a little deeper into Scripture. We’ll find a treasure trove of illustrations.
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What are your thoughts? What are some of your favorite Scriptural illustrations that have stuck with you?
5 Comments
Rachel
In my opinion, the illustrations that stick with listeners are the one’s that take a specific idea or general message from scripture, and then compare them to a modern story. My Bible professor told us a story last semester about a time when he(a professional runner) ran a difficult marathon with his son (age 14). The whole race was a struggle for his son, but his dad coached him through the whole thing, even when he “hit the wall.” This was a very moving story that was used to illustrate a major biblical principle. Jesus came to earth, and ran a perfect race, but he chooses to run our race with us (broken and wounded people). Our Father will coach us (through scripture!!!) throughout our race, even when we think we can’t go on.
This is an illustration I won’t soon forget.
Jim Faughn
Since Jesus referred to flowers, birds, etc. as well as pointing people to the scriptures, I think you’re right on target.
Paula
Two recent ones that impacted our 9 year old. One mentioned American Idol. The other, the piranhas swimming around the Opry Mills Hotel. After the last one, our youngest mentioned both and said, “I really like it when preachers talk about stuff I can understand.”
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Amber
Two different, recent connections I “found” that I really liked:
One was tying together James 1 where it tells us plainly that God does not tempt us, thus implying that temptation comes from the devil with 1 Corinthians 10:13 where it tells us God provides a way of escape. Clearly telling us that we have a choice. THEN tying that with Deuteronomy 30 where Moses says very plainly that God’s children have 2 choices and begs them to choose life. I also think you can use this to show that God ALWAYS (Old Testament, New Testament, now) gives us a choice and that the right choice gives us life.
Maybe everybody else already had that figured out, but I liked it.