PREACHING THE TANAKH

by C. Philip Slate

For more than two decades I taught an “Expository Preaching” class at Harding School of Theology. One routine term assignment was to develop a proposal for a series of sermons on both an Old Testament and a New Testament book. Early in the history of that course I heard students say often, “I feel comfortable doing the New Testament proposal, but I find the Old Testament project hard to do. I lack familiarity with the Old Testament.”

Convinced that unfamiliarity with the content and appropriate uses of the Old Testament materials was a huge handicap for a preacher, I decided to develop a course on “Preaching from the Old Testament,” which some Jews refer to as the Tanakh (acronym for law, prophets, writings). After all, it was the “Bible” of Jesus, was often referred to by New Testament writers (one verse out of every 22.5 in the New Testament consists of a formal Old Testament reference), is the first half of “our” (Christian) story, and contains much revealed information that is simply assumed by New Testament writers. Given the responsibility of preachers and teachers to shape a Christian worldview about reality, it is imperative that the Old Testament materials be both taught in classes and preached. One happy outcome of that course was that many students reported that “It doubled my Bible,” “It enriched my preaching,” and “It gave me facility with a broader ranger of subject matter that people need to hear.”

The first book I used as a “textbook,” which really was not a suitable text for a preaching class, was John Bright’s The Authority of the Old Testament (1975); but it was helpful in showing how one should and ought to use the Old Testament “authoritatively.” In other words, it is one thing to say the Sinaitic covenant was abolished, but quite another to say that the 39 books were abolished. A. A. Van Ruler’s The Christian Church and the Old Testament (1971) was helpful in showing the various views people have held about the Christian’s use of the Old Testament. Gowan’s Reclaiming the Old Testament for the Christian Pulpit (1984) was very helpful. Of course, the various chapters about the literary types in Old Testament literature were helpfully presented in Fee and Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.

My purpose here is not to give the various bibliographies I used, including both books and articles by E. Achtemeier, S. Greidanus, and others. Rather, this little article is to say that were I to teach that course today I would use, perhaps along with others, Christopher J. H. Wright’s How to Preach & Teach the Old Testament for All Its Worth (Zondervan, 2016). Wright is the author of better known The Mission of God and The Mission of God’s People. He has an earned PhD, is theologically conservative, and has an interest in ministry. His work deals with the “authority” issues but is suggestive for subjects that have good preaching/teaching value. He provides little in the way of homiletical directions, viz. the various ways in which one may structure sermons from the Old Testament. Thus, for the preacher who is either struggling with the matter of preaching the Tanakh so that its authority makes a legitimate claim on Christian belief, or the ones who worked through that long ago and want a refresher, I recommend Wright’s helpful work (283 pages plus two Appendices and a brief Bibliography).