THE PREACHER'S TECHNIQUE
comes to us through the fact of friendship, using the human relationship with its experiences of trust, forgiveness and loyalty to interpret and make luminous for us the very heart and nature of the eternal. Do you remember Jacob's grateful cry to his brother whom he had wronged, when Esau welcomed him back magnanimously after the long estrangement? "I have seen thy face as though I had seen the face of God." How memorably these moving words express the experience of encountering the divine in the human! Such a text, by its own force of impact and momentum, will break through many barriers and thrust deep into heart and conscience.
Or again, you may wish to stress the fact that the most important thing about any man is his final interpretation of life. What does life mean to him, on a total view of it? What is his ultimate verdict on its significance? Is it a fortuitous succession of events, without rhyme or reason, a sorry tale of injustice and frustration? Or is it a plan of God? You might well invite your congregation to approach this question by way of one of the greatest stories in the world. You might take for your text that simple-looking but immensely deep saying of Joseph in Egypt to the men who had enslaved him: "So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God." Set out from that, and your message will have a double reinforcement. For not only is there the dramatic power of the words themselves: there is also the fact that the whole setting of the text in Genesis sheds light upon your theme.
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