Although an obvious recital of redemptive history, David functions here as a leader exemplar for all future leaders. After David's reign, every other king in his dynasty would be judged by this Davidic standard. Surely then, it is legitimate for the Christian preacher to look to the life of David as an example (both positive and negative) for leaders of God's people.
Old Testament narrative is filled with such clues within the text itself. Indeed, Jewish scholars like Robert Alter have alerted us to pay closer attention to such details in order to find exactly what the biblical author is prescribing in his use of descriptive details.10
III. Human-Centered or God-Centered?
Finally, what of Greidanus' criticism that biographical preaching is human-centered rather than God-centered? Undoubtedly, much preaching today has become reduced to good advice instead of good news.11 However, to claim that the Bible is only God-centered misses half of the biblical equation. The Bible is not simply about God as God, but it is about God as creator and redeemer of His creation. In other words, the Bible is about God in relation to humanity. This is why the Bible is not concerned with metaphysical statements of God's being, but instead with the historical progress of redemption that culminates in Jesus.
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Thus, rather than choosing between a false disjunction of either preaching God-centered or human-centered sermons, the nature of the Bible itself suggests that we preach of God's relation to humanity. Approached from this perspective, the Old Testament stories become paradigmatic for how God deals with humanity.12 Readers have long noticed this within the Old Testament canon itself.
For instance, the original exodus from Egypt becomes a paradigm for subsequent generations so that during the exile, the Israelites envisioned their return to the land as being a "new exodus."13 Thus, the modern preacher does not have to choose between a God-centered and a human-centered approach to preaching.
Can the Old Testament biographical sermon be salvaged in light of more recent criticisms of this genre? If we hold to Paul's conviction that the Old Testament was written to give us "examples," our answer must be yes. Despite a checkered history of spiritualizing, allegorizing, and moralizing, the very nature of Old Testament narrative demands biographical preaching.14
Such preaching must be sensitive to the complexities of Old Testament narrative, keen to the placement of the biblical story in the unfolding of God's redemptive plan, and disciplined in the treatment of the text. However, with these caveats stated, biographical preaching will always find a place in genuinely Christian preaching of the Bible.
1A. Blackwood, Preaching from the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1941).
2S. Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988); and more recently S. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).
3Greidanus, The Modern Preaching and the Ancient Text, pp. 162-63.
4Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, pp. 35-36.
5Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text, p. 163; and Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, p. 36.
6J. P. Louw and E. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York, NY: United Bible Societies, 1989), CD Rom, 8.56; 6.96; 58.58; 58.59; 58.63; 58.25; and 90.28.
7Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon on the. New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 58.60.
8Many commentators suggest that the genre of Hebrews is best understood as early Christian preaching, thus making the listing of characters in chapter 11 an actual example of biographical preaching. See W. L. Lane, Hebrews 1-8 (Word Biblical Commentary 47A; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1991), pp. lxx-lxxiv.
9P. H. Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 519.
10R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (San Francisco, CA: Basic Books, 1988).
11I am indebted to Dr. Darrell Johnson, senior minister of Glendale Presbyterian Church, for this insight.
12This point is made particularly clear by R. J. Allen and J. C. Holbert, Holy Root, Holy Branches: Christian Preaching from the Old Testament (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1995), pp. 32-38.
13F. F. Bruce, New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), pp. 32-36
14For conclusions similar to mine, see D. L. Larsen, Telling the Old, Old Story (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995), pp. 194-96.
