"Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He [Jesus] interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures" (Luke 24:27).

There are probably many reasons for the lack of preaching Christ from the Old Testament, ranging from the difficulty of doing so to a lack of interest. We shall analyze three sets of possible reasons: (1) the temptation of human-centered preaching, (2) the concern about forced interpretation, and (3) the separation of the Old Testament from the New.

The Temptation of Human-Centered Preaching

A textbook on preaching states unequivocally: "The first and most vivid value of the Old Testament for the preacher may be in the figures it portrays."1 The colorful characters roaming the Old Testament are a powerful attraction for preachers. Especially for busy pastors, the temptation is great simply to retell the story of one of these characters and relate it to the lives of their parishioners.

William Willimon asserts, "Most of the preaching I hear and too much that I do attempts to build upon 'common human experience.' 'Are you depressed? Everyone has been depressed at one time or another. Down in the dumps? There is a story of someone who was down in the dumps, in the pit, so to speak. His name was Joseph. He was thrown into a pit ....'"2 The result of such biblical character preaching is tragic: "Unable to preach Christ and Him crucified, we preach humanity and it improved."3

Biographical Preaching

Much of human-centered preaching is promoted by what is called "biographical preaching" or "character preaching." Since I have dealt extensively with this topic elsewhere,4 we shall here examine only a recent text entitled Guide to Biographical Preaching (1988).

In this book, Roy De Brand advocates preaching biographical sermons not only because they are "easy to prepare and preach" but especially "because they have tremendous preaching value." He promotes the value of biographical sermons as follows: "They carry the automatic bonus of example .... We learn from others. Sometimes the lessons are positive and we emulate them. Other times we learn what not to do, think, or say from the example of others.

"Often both positive and negative lessons can be learned from the same Bible character. For example, we could benefit by learning from King David's noble deeds, high aspirations, and deep worship of God. We can also learn much about what to avoid from the examples of his terrible sins against Uriah and Bathsheba Hold forth the virtues to be imitated and expose the vices to be eliminated by preaching the tremendous examples found in lives of Bible characters."5

De Brand continues by illustrating his method. Suppose one preaches on Genesis 32:22-32. A typical biographical sermon might look like this:

Title: "When Jacob Wrestled with the Angel."

Main points:

1. Jacob struggled (32:22-25).

2. Jacob was changed (32:26-28).

3. Jacob was blessed (32:29-32).

De Brand rightly senses that this development leaves the message in the past. In order to relate the message to the present hearers, he suggests the following improvement: