Proclaiming God’s Stories: How to Preach Old Testament Historical Narrative
Overview
From Genesis and Exodus through Job, Jonah, and Daniel, the Old Testament contains major portions of historical narrative. Developing a sermon from these lengthy, sometimes complicated stories can be daunting. A preacher may be tempted to simplify the story to three abstract points or use it as a springboard for a more appealing topic. Proclaiming God’s Stories is designed to give you confidence in preaching Old Testament narratives. Joe Linares shows the significance, structure, and sermon potential of the Bible’s historical narrative sections.
Linares outlines the literary elements of Scripture and their role in handling narrative passages properly. He gives practical advice for preserving the arc of a narrative and describes how to incorporate the point of view in homiletics; how to transpose the plot into the sermon; and how to handle characters, setting, and dialogue. Four models of sermonic structure—inductive-deductive, conflict-resolution, inductive-narrative, and propositional—provide a framework for preaching narratives with confidence.
In applying the prepositional method to Genesis 3, Linares demonstrates how to separate the narrative into scenes, identify the characters, and plumb the depths of the passage through careful analysis of the action and dialogue. The resulting sermon, rich with high-interest exposition and heart-probing application, demonstrates the eternal value of preaching Old Testament narrative.
In the Logos edition, all Scripture passages in Proclaiming God’s Stories are tagged, appear on mouseover, and link to your favorite Bible translation in your library. With Logos’ advanced features, you can perform powerful searches by topic or Scripture reference—finding, for example, everything said about a particular passage of Scripture.
Key Features
- Provides an in-depth introduction
- Offers helpful tools for preparing a sermon
- Includes bibliographical references
Top Highlights
“Three of the most prevalent types of conflict found in the biblical narratives are conflict in the moral/spiritual realm (an individual struggling with the Lord and His word), conflict between characters, and conflict against physical adversity.” (Page 46)
“The tragic plot is one in which the protagonist, a good character at first, begins in an exalted or honorable position but by way of some wrong decision ends up in disgrace and loss.” (Page 49)
“The comic plot is a U-shaped story that begins in prosperity, descends into tragedy, and ascends again to finish with a happy ending (e.g., Joseph, Ruth, Job).” (Page 49)
“An epic is a heroic story on a grand scale, encompassing many episodes and characters. An epic often has a nationalistic theme and describes the whole epoch of a nation as it progresses to achieve some important quest (e.g., the Exodus, Joshua, David).” (Pages 49–50)
“The first is the psychological dimension, where ‘the narrator provides ‘inside’ information as to the thoughts and feelings of the characters’ (156).” (Page 41)
Product Details
- Title: Proclaiming God’s Stories: How to Preach Old Testament Historical Narrative
- Author: Joe Linares
- Publisher: BJU Press
- Publication Date: 2009
- Pages: 192