Preaching from the Old Testament:
Preliminary Considerations

By Brent Strawn

The Old Testament always seems at a disadvantage. The New Testament is widely regarded as easier, more familiar, more...well, happy. The Old Testament, or so it seems to many, is much darker—filled with unfamiliar persons, places, things. Perhaps most tragically of all, Yahweh, the God of Israel (and the Father of Jesus Christ), is often thought to be one of those “unfamiliars.”

This is the unfortunate situation one faces when preaching the Old Testament. And the issue is still worse: never mind the congregation for a moment, many preachers themselves feel ill-disposed toward the Old Testament! Some fixate on the New Testament, trying to recreate “the New Testament church” or produce “New Testament Christians.” Preachers who would never want to go that far may nevertheless still fall prey to similar defaults. Note the preference to preach the New Testament lesson even in those churches that follow the lectionary.

The predilection of so many—preachers and church-folk—for the New Testament while understandable in some ways, is problematic in others. The Old Testament is, after all, part of the Bible, and as such comprises a large portion, indeed the major portion (approximately 77%), of the canon of Scripture. This alone dictates it ought to be—better: must be—preached. But the issue is as functional as it is theological: If we say the Old Testament is canon, is Scripture, and yet never hear from it nor preach from it, what does our statement really mean? Probably very little. One of my preaching professors put it this way: “What is not preached has ceased to function canonically in the church.” It is small wonder so many Christians use published editions of the New Testament without the Old.

There are other important reasons to preach the Old Testament. Recall the second-century heretic Marcion who sought to sever the New Testament from the Old Testament. In his opinion, these didn’t go together, so “out with the Old, in with the New”! Marcion thought that the God of the New Testament wasn’t the same as the God of the Old Testament, whom he rejected. But the early church rejected him, decreeing him a heretic. Marcion’s move was unacceptable for many reasons, not the least of which was that it drove a wedge between the work of God in the world and in Israel, as expressed in the Old Testament, and from God’s work in Jesus Christ and in the church, as expressed in the New. Such a division was erroneous, even heretical. It makes one wonder what the early church would have thought of “New Testament-only” Bibles, not to mention New Testament-only sermons!

So, what to do? One idea would be to alternate sermons on the testaments: Old, New, Old, New. But the issue isn’t only whether the Old Testament is present in the pulpit, but how it is present. It may be that the Old Testament is heard frequently in certain churches but only to provide a negative, counter-example for something “happy” in the New. Such use doesn’t help to fix the problem and probably makes it worse.

Some would argue that a better way is to give the Old Testament its full due in the pulpit—to treat it as authoritative and canonical in its own right regardless of possible connections (or lack thereof) to the NT. There is much to commend such an approach. There are a number of factors that could well lead a preacher to—dare one say?—actually favor the Old Testament. Consider, for instance, its length. That means that there is more material to work with in the Old Testament—more literature, to be sure, but also different types (genres) of literature. Most notable of the latter is the extensive poetry one finds in the Old Testament, but which is largely missing in the New. (Note that the “New Testament-only” Bibles often feel compelled to have the Psalms. You’ve got to have the Psalms!) Another implication of the Old Testament’s length is that there is simply more to educate people about, more material with which they are unfamiliar. That unfamiliarity, as stated above, is part of the problem. Perhaps greater familiarity is part of the solution.

In the final analysis, however, preachers should be careful not to pit the Old Testament against the New in a game of favoritism. That is the same, though reversed, mistake made by those who favor the New over the Old. What may be most helpful for our sermons and our churches is to approach these texts as part and parcel of the Christian Bible, which, while comprising two testaments, nevertheless offers singular witness to God’s way with the world. Old and New, New and Old belong together in this regard, in continuity with each other, equally important and significant—so the structure of the canon would indicate, and the early church would affirm.

As important as preliminary considerations such as these are, they do not begin to address the difficult questions of specifically how one ought to preach the Old Testament, especially in the ways I am suggesting. That is a task for another time. But, as important as specific models and suggestions for preaching the Old Testament are, it should be stressed that they are invariably built on prior presuppositions about the Old Testament and its relationship to the New Testament and, more broadly, to God’s ways in the world (and in Scripture). The preliminaries are, then, quite literally foundational for our preaching of the Old Testament.

Finally, issues like these are significant to consider in Advent. The Gospel, after all, is called, even in the New Testament, the Gospel of God (Rom 1:1, 15:16; 1 Thess 2:2, 8, 9; 1 Peter 4:17), not only the Gospel of God’s son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And that means that the Gospel begins already in the Old Testament and is as much about God as it is about Jesus Christ. Or, to put it in light of what I have said here, it is about both. That, to be sure, is what Advent saints like Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-25, 41-45, 67-79), Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:25-38) knew. We preachers would do well to know the same.

Brent Strawn is an ordained elder in the Church of the Nazarene. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Candler School of Theology, Emory University.