Of Tent Pegs and Nails

Though he didn’t intend it to be a book on preaching, Michael Horton’s Christless Christianity has made an impact on the way I put a sermon together. Horton drew my attention to how so much American Christianity is little more than moralism devoid of the gospel: Do this. Don’t do that. Keep the rules. Smile a lot. Buck up. Be a good boy. Be a nice girl. He also bemoaned the state of preaching in such churches: “Four Steps to a Happy Marriage,” “How to Live Debt Free,” “Three Keys to Happiness,” “How to Climb Out of Depression.” Nothing wrong with any of that really, except that there’s no gospel in it, no Jesus in it. It would probably work just fine on the self-help rack at the bookstore. Any of us can work on being nice, keeping the rules, and applying a sermon’s “steps” whether we have Jesus or not.

Honestly, other than in the area of marriage and family, I’ve never done much of this kind of preaching anyway. But I haven’t always moved my sermons to Jesus and the gospel. Have I left people with the impression the Christian life is more law than grace, that Jesus is more crutch than life-support? Have I inadvertently communicated that we can do this Christian life thing on our own, leaning on Jesus only when we get in a tight spot? Thank you, Michael Horton; I think you’ve helped make me a better preacher of the gospel whether you intended to or not.

But what in the world do I do with Jael and the tent peg? Do you know the story? Jael was the Kenite tentwife who got Israel’s enemy and oppressor Sisera to take refuge in her tent. He was on the run from an Israel rout of his armies. Sisera believed Jael to be a friend, and bone tired from the fight and the flight, Sisera took Jael up on her offer. She treated him with much kindness—gave him a skin of warm milk, tucked him in nice and cozy, and told him to sleep well. But the woman was a sneak and a sly one at that. Once Sisera was happily snoring away, Jael took a tent peg in one hand, a hammer in the other, slipped back into the tent, tip-toed to Sisera who was sleeping on his side, lined up the peg with his temple, pulled the hammer back, and drove that peg right through his temples and into the ground. No more Sisera—he was dead at a tent peg. She murdered a sleeping man who trusted her. And through the act of a woman, not even an Israelite woman, Israel was delivered from Sisera and 20 years of Canaanite tyranny. Though a bit gruesome, it’s a good story.

But how do I get to Jesus and the gospel from there? I preached that story on Sunday and I never quite figured out a way? I did get it part way to gospel, I think, by reminding the congregation that this really isn’t a Jael story; it’s a God-story—that it’s more about God and His actions than about us and our actions. A noble try, I hope.

But as I continued to reflect upon that story through the day, another idea came to mind. And while it didn’t involve a tent peg, it involved some nails—as in the nails Roman soldiers drove through the hands and feet of Jesus. The story comparison is hardly apples to apples. In Jael’s story the good girl kills the bad guy, and Israel is delivered from the oppression of Canaan. In Jesus’ story, the bad guys kill the good guy, and people who believe from every nation, tribe, and tongue are delivered from the oppression of sin and death and the grave. Jael’s story is a temporary deliverance; Jesus’ story is an eternal deliverance. And while the one Jael murdered with a tent peg stayed dead; the one the Romans murdered with some nails did not—on the third day Jesus rose from the dead.

I don’t know if I’m on to something here or not. I don’t know if I’ve made a leap from Jael to Jesus that doesn’t follow. Maybe in doing so, I’m breaking some important rules of interpretation. I just don’t know.

But I do know this: the leap from Jael to Jesus gets my eyes on Jesus. That’s a good thing, right? The leap from Jael to Jesus gets me thinking of my own sin and of Jesus’ grace, of my own need and Jesus’ provision. That’s gospel, isn’t it? And this leap does something else: instead of hearing Jael’s story with the challenge to go and be as brave and cunning as Jael in dealing with my enemies, I’m reminded once again that, in the cross, Jesus decisively dealt with my worst enemies like sin and pride and self-sufficiency by doing for me what I could never do for myself. That take on the story doesn’t make me bow up; it makes me bow down. It doesn’t make me think I can deal with my enemies on my own; it drives me even deeper into dependency on Jesus and the power of His Spirit in my life. Hmm, I don’t know if making this leap is technically and hermeneutically correct, but it sure smells like gospel, and it seems to leave the fragrance of Christ over a story as brutal as Jael’s.

I wonder, isn’t that what separates Christianity from moralism? Isn’t that why the Bible isn’t just another book in the self-help rack at B. Dalton?

My One Sermon

I need your help—especially if you’re familiar with my preaching. Last week a pastor-friend and I engaged in an email dialogue around an article on preaching my friend had read and forwarded to me. Growing out of our dialogue was a discussion over something I had read in Eugene Peterson’s book, Pastor: A Memoir. Peterson wrote that his minister-son once told him, "Dad, you only have one sermon." For the longest time that troubled Peterson. He thought about his hours of preparation, the variety of biblical texts he employed, his openness to the text and the Spirit, his applications to the local congregation. In Peterson’s judgment, it sure seemed like he had a lot more than one sermon in his almost three-decade repertoire. But some years later, it struck him what his son meant—essentially this: most preachers who preach their own sermons have one dominating theme no matter the text. It might be grace or the cross or judgment or moral codes or something else, but there's something inside us pastors, created by life-experience and our relationship with Christ and the Bible, that seems to find its way in content or tone or spirit into our sermon pretty much every time we preach. I think I buy that. 

 And it got me to thinking about what my “one sermon” might be. My one sermon is probably, “Give more money!” With all the building campaigns I’ve endured in thirty years of pastoring, it sometimes feels like it. But, no, that's not it. It's something else. As I was pondering this “one sermon” thing, a past conversation came to mind. In one of my last Sundays at First Baptist Church of Greenwood, Missouri, a church I served for more than thirteen years, one of the leaders of our congregation approached me after the service. “I’m really going to miss your preaching,” he said. “I’ve been listening to you preach for years, and no matter what your text or topic, no matter whether you challenge us or comfort us, you always leave us with hope.” Someone listening in to the conversation was quick to agree: “Yes, you always leave us with hope.” I think he meant that before I put the amen on my sermon, I try to leave people with hope in Christ, hope that God is bigger and better than we know, hope that God loves us and God is for us and God is with us, hope that God isn’t finished with us yet, hope that past sins and failures don’t define our lives forever, hope for a new beginning and a fresh start, and even the hope of heaven when we take that last breath on earth. The more I reflect on my preaching, I think he’s right. And I’m okay with that. 

 So, here’s where I need your help: if you’re familiar with my preaching, what do you think is my one sermon? Did the guy in Greenwood get it right, or do you hear some other more prominent theme underneath my preaching? I’ve never used my blog to get evaluation, but what the heck. I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. I’m interested in your thoughts. You can make your comments either in the “comment section” on the blog site or on the Facebook link. Fire away, my friends, and thanks in advance for your investment in my ministry. Who knows? Your feedback might even make me a better preacher. And pretty much everybody who’s heard me preach would agree that that would be a good thing.