Verse-by-verse exposition of obscure Old Testament texts has been, hands down, the most fruitful evangelism I’ve done in the last six months. Come with me as I marvel at that fact and try to draw some lessons from it.
Back in February, the Miller and Martin report into the sexual, spiritual and financial abuse of Ravi Zacharias was released. In response to the shocking evil uncovered, I reached for an Old Testament passage to try to shed light on the contemporary crisis.
The rape of Tamar
2 Samuel 13 tells the story of the rape of Tamar, but the lesson is not simply about the wickedness of the rapist, Amnon, but about Jonadab, Absalom and David too. It takes an entire household – an entire fallen kingdom of David – to plot, perpetrate and then cover up the atrocity. In my video I delved into the Hebrew meaning of each name, and worked my way methodically through each verse, culminating in a look at Isaiah 9 and the true house of David established by the Prince of Peace. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a response to a video. People have told me they’ve learnt to trust Jesus for the first time. Others have said they’ve learnt to trust Jesus or His people again after excruciating betrayal. And all from a verse-by-verse exposition of an obscure Old Testament passage.
Genesis
More recently I’ve been preaching for a church in Brighton which is going through Genesis. First I preached on Genesis 14. Do you remember the ‘Four Kings versus the Five Kings’? Do you remember which side were the goodies? (That’s right, neither). Lot gets carried off by the four kings and Abram rescues him with his makeshift militia. A month later I preached on Genesis 19: the destruction of Sodom. On both occasions people made professions of faith. In the latter case about ten people indicated they wanted to follow Jesus – poetic, since in Lot’s day, ten believers in Sodom would have saved the city (Gen.18:32). And let me remind you that the sermons were verse-by-verse expositions of obscure (and/or ‘difficult’) Old Testament texts. What do we learn?
The Spirit blows where He pleases (John 3:8)! We look for strategies and silver bullets, the Spirit breathes new life when and where He so chooses. We scatter seed in one place and ‘wild growth’ takes hold somewhere else entirely. This is God’s thing.
The weird is wonderful.
The temptation in evangelism is to go simple and shallow. We’re like tour guides outside the cathedral, handing out thumbnail sketches of the building. ‘Keep it simple,’ we think, ‘don’t confuse them.’ Really, we should be yanking them by the hand into the building, immersing them in the complexity. They don’t have to ‘get it’. It needs to get them. Plunge them into the weird. Soon they’ll see it’s also wonderful.
Difficult texts connect with a difficult world. Sex, abuse, deceit, revenge, war, temptation, judgment – the Bible is full of these intrigues. As is our world. We fear that ‘going deep’ means estranging ourselves from our hearers. It turns out that going deep is the way to connect. What might seem, at first sight, to be an unfamiliar world – the world of the Bible – turns out to reveal a pattern, and that pattern explains our world. Amnons, Jonadabs, Absaloms and Davids are everywhere (2 Sam.13). The kings are always at war, and it’s the tent-dwelling household of faith that has the answer (Gen.14). The city of man is seductive and addictive, but God’s mercy is an intervention (Gen.19). When you press into the strangeness, there is profound familiarity on the far side.
The person of Christ
We need more than patterns, we need the person of Christ. It can be tempting to view the Old Testament as proclaiming a pattern which is only later fulfilled in Christ. If we preach that way then our hearers might have some ‘Aha!’ moments but they won’t meet Jesus. We need the conviction that the Old Testament is already Christian Scripture, already offering Christ. But once we share that conviction we can join in, opening up to any part of our Bibles and proclaiming ‘Behold the Lamb!’
Coffee, cardboard boxes and the Kingdom of God
“Not everyone will see your children clearly. But then – some do. They show up, not out of duty, but …