Bible Methods of Illustration

MUCH may be learned by the preacher of the art of illustration from the example of the Bible writers. The Orientals in all ages have been passionate lovers of stories and poetry, and their religious teachers have made large use of stories as vehicles of religious instruction and inspiration. He who “knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust” chose men to receive the revelations of His character and His will who were specially fitted to present those revelations in the forms that would commend them to the people of their times.

The writers of the Old Testament especially were intensely impressionable men, of a vivid imagination, and much of their teaching is given in imaginative forms—that is, in the way of illustration. The Hebrew language peculiarly lends itself to the illustrative method. It is a language that loves the concrete rather than the abstract, a language of highly- coloured picture words. Read any Psalm, any chapter of Proverbs, the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, or any of the prophets, and you will find that illustrations are as plentiful as blackberries on bramble bushes in October.

Hosea, in his twelfth chapter, represents Yahweh as saying, “I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets.” The visions and similitudes were pictures internally seen, and striking analogies, by which the prophets illustrated the revelations communi- cated to them. The preacher with imagination will find hundreds of short similitudes and thousands of picture-words that at once suggest illustrations. Take, for instance, Psalm lxxxv.

What a dramatic picture of the New Testament gospel, already existing in germ in the Old Testament, we have in the figures-” Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven “! The Old Testament illustrations are often similitudes beginning with an illustration and concluding with the truth illustrated. As examples of such illustrations we have these:- “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God” (Ps. xlii.

1). “He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us “ (Ps. ciii. 10—12). In verses 15 to 17 of Psalm ciii. we have an illustration in which the similitude emphasises a contrast:- “As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children.”

The “As-so’s” of the Old Testament will furnish the preacher with a very pleasant and profitable study of the art of illustration by similitudes. Amos, in chapters vii. and viii., gives a sequence of four illustrations, designed to impress on apostate and profligate Israel that it had worn out the patience even of long-suffering Yahweh, and that it was ripe, and rotten ripe, for chastisement. There is the invasion of the grasshoppers that devour the aftermath, the fire that licks up the waters of the great deep, the picture of Yahweh standing on a wall with a plumb-line measur- ing the wall for destruction, and the basket of summer fruit that typifies that the time of the ingathering of the ripened harvest of the “fruits of the flesh “ has arrived.

Amos, Micah and Hosea are particularly worth studying for the realism of their illustrations drawn from common life. They were men of the people and they use the language of the people and illustrations that appeal to the common man. It is very interesting to notice how Amos the herdsman and cultivator of sycamores uses illustrations that are racy of the soil, drawn from his intimate knowledge of agricultural and shepherd life. He makes Yahweh say, “Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves.”

And surely we have a vivid reminiscence in the picture, “Thus saith Yahweh: As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear; so shall the children of Israel be taken out that dwell in Samaria in the corner of a bed, and in Damascus in a couch.” So to-day the farm labourer local preacher will use illustrations that smack of the good brown earth and have in them the perfume of the hay field, and the fisherman preacher will ozonise his sermons with illustrations of experiences on sea and shore.

The Old Testament sometimes gives us illustrations in the shape of fables or parables. In Judges ix. 7-15 Jotham rebukes Abimelech and his followers with a notable fable. “The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, ‘Reign thou over us.’ But the olive tree said unto them, ‘Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?’ And the trees said to the fig tree, ‘Come thou and reign over us.’ But the fig tree said unto them, ‘Should I forsake my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?’ Then said the trees unto the vine, ‘Come thou and reign over us.’ And the vine said unto them, ‘Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?’ Then said all the trees unto the bramble, ‘Come thou and reign over us.’ And the bramble said unto the trees, ‘If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.”” Nathan the prophet brought David’s sin home to him in 2 Samuel xii.

1-4 by a parable. It is worth noting that Nathan left David himself to make the application, and that the point was sharp and pierced him to the heart is shown by the statement that “David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man.” The major prophets-Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel— are very rich in exquisitely beautiful illustrations, and illustrations of wonderful force and aptness in driving home their teaching. When Isaiah, for instance, had to deliver a crushing rebuke to Judah for its forgetfulness of God, and to prophesy the punishment which that forgetfulness was destined to bring upon Yahweh’s favoured but faithless people, he used an illustration that is unsurpassed in the Old Testament for beauty and point, the