Preaching of God’s Word as a Means of Grace
Notes from a class at CCC
I. Preaching confronts people with the very Word of God – it is God speaking to people through a human messenger.
I Thessalonians 2:4 …”We speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. 13 And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.”
II Corinthians 5:18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
I Peter 4:10 Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. 11 If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God…
A. Implications for the preacher:
1. How does a preacher’s view of God affect the way he preaches?
- Does he believe God is light?
Carl Barth: It is simply a truism that there is nothing more important, more urgent, more helpful, more redemptive and more salutary, there is nothing, from the viewpoint of heaven and earth, more relevant to the real situation than the speaking and the hearing of the Word of God in the originative and regulative power of its truth, in its all-eradicating and all-reconciling earnestness, in the light that it casts not only upon time and time’s confusions but also beyond, towards the brightness of eternity, revealing time and eternity through each other and in each other – the Word, the Logos, of the Living God.
2. How does a preacher’s view of the Bible shape the way he preaches?
- Does he believe God has spoken? Does he believe God still speaks?
If we are content to make the statement “Scripture is God’s Word written” and to stop there, we would expose ourselves to the critical rejoinder that our God, if not dead, appears to be as good as dead. For we give the impression that he who spoke centuries ago is silent today: and that the only word we can hear from him comes out of a book, a faint echo from the distant past, smelling strongly of the mould of libraries. But no, this is not at all what we believe. Scripture is far more than a collection of ancient documents in which the words of God are preserved. It is not a kind of museum in which God’s Word is exhibited behind glass like a relic or fossil. On the contrary, it is a living word to living people from the living God, a contemporary message for the contemporary world (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, p.100).
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account (Hebrews 4:12-13).
Bonhoeffer: For the sake of the proclaimed word the world exists with all of its words. In the sermon the foundation for a new world is laid. Here the original word becomes audible. There is no evading or getting away from the spoken word of the sermon, nothing releases us from the necessity of its witness, not even cult [the way we worship – music, prayers, etc.] or liturgy…The preacher should be assured that Christ enters the congregation through those words which he proclaims from the Scripture.
3. How does a preacher’s view of preaching shape the way he preaches?
a. Our culture is resistant to authority. Many people prefer preaching that is more like giving advice than declaring truth!
b. In a climate of skepticism and doubt, believing that your message is true is culturally heretical!
c. We no longer live in a word-oriented culture. People are image-oriented. Preaching is out of date!
- In spite of the cultural climate of our generation, does he believe God has appointed preaching a primary means of speaking to His people?
We are living in an age which is querying everything, and among these things it is querying the place and the value and the purpose of preaching. In increasing numbers people seem to be depreciating the value of preaching, and they are turning more and more to singing of various types and kinds, accompanied with various kinds of instruments. They are going back to dramatic representations or recitals of the Scripture, and some are going back even to dancing and various other forms of external manifestations of the act of worship. All this is having the effect of depreciating the place and value of preaching….it is sad to observe that people who claim an unusual degree of spirituality should be trying to lead us back to that which the Reformers saw so clearly had been concealing the gospel and the Truth from the people….One’s view of preaching is ultimately not a matter of taste, but is an expression of one’s theological standpoint, and ultimately, indeed, one’s view of the gospel (Lloyd-Jones in The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors, p. 373).
Turning to Thomas Cartwright, Puritan and the real father of Presbyterianism in England, we find that he said that “the Word of God is vital in its operation only when applied to hearts and consciences of believers by way of consolation and rebuke.” To illustrate this point he said, “As fire stirred giveth more heat, so the Word, as it were, blown by preaching, flameth more in the hearts than when it is read.” That is, to me, a very striking and most valuable statement. It tells us, incidentally, something of the purpose of preaching. The real function of preaching is not to give information, it is to do what Cartwright says; it is to give it more heat, to give life to it, to give power to it, to bring it home to the hearers. The preacher is not in the pulpit merely to give knowledge and information to people. He is to inspire them, he is to enthuse them, he is to enliven them and send them out glorying in the Spirit (p. 376-377).
If I were asked to state the main difference between religion and Christianity, I would say that religion always puts its emphasis on what man does in his attempts to worship and to please and placate his God. That is what is found in all the so-called great religions of the world….Christianity on the other hand is primarily a listening to God. God is speaking! Religion is man searching for God; Christianity is God seeking man, manifesting Himself to him, drawing Himself unto him. This, I believe, is at the back of the Puritan idea of placing in the central position the exposition of the Word in preaching.
The Puritans also asserted that the sermon is more important than the sacraments or any ceremonies…the sacraments, they taught, seal the Word preached and are therefore subordinate to it….Likewise they said that preaching is much more important than liturgy and long liturgical services because preaching teaches the people how to pray for themselves….Furthermore, they argued that preaching is the biblical way of promoting holiness…(p. 379-380).
- Does he seem to understand the purpose of preaching in the way he preaches?
What is the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this. It is to give men and women a sense of God and His presence. As I have said already, during this last year I have been ill, and so have had the opportunity, and the privilege, of listening to others, instead of preaching myself. As I have listened in physical weakness this is the thing I have looked for and longed for and desired. I can forgive a man for a bad sermon, I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul, if he gives me the sense that, though he is inadequate himself, his is handling something which is very great and very glorious, if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Saviour, and the magnificence of the Gospel. If he does that I am his debtor, and I am profoundly grateful to him (Martyn Lloyd-Jones in Preaching and Preachers, p. 98).
James H. Thornwell, regarding preaching and about himself as a preacher:
It is a great matter to understand what it is to be a preacher, and how preaching should be done. Effective sermons are the offspring of study, of discipline, or prayer, and especially of the unction of the Holy Ghost. They are to combine the characteristic excellencies of every other species of composition intended for delivery, and ought to be pronounced not merely with the earnestness of faith but the constraining influence of Heaven-born charity. They should be seen to come from the heart, and from the heart as filled with the love of Christ and the love of souls. Depend upon it that there is but little preaching in the world, and it is a mystery of grace and of divine power that God’s cause is not ruined in the world when we consider the qualifications of many of its professed ministers to preach it. My own performance in this way fills me with disgust. I have never made, much less preached, a sermon in my life, and I am beginning to despair of ever being able to do it. May the Lord give you more knowledge and grace and singleness of purpose.
To this, Lloyd-Jones adds, “Any man who has had some glimpse of what it is to preach will inevitably feel that he has never preached. But he will go on trying, hoping that by the grace of God one day he may truly preach (p. 99).”
Thomas Goodwin, after he was truly converted, we’re told by his biographer, began to preach “from the fullness of his heart.” “He preached earnestly, for he preached a full and free salvation which had been the life and joy of his own soul. He preached experimentally, for he preached as he had felt and tasted and handled of the good word of life. His great desire was to convert sinners to Christ. He thought no more of the applause, reputation or honour which had been so precious to him. He desired to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. God gave testimony to the word of His grace.”….The supreme need of our day and generation is the declaration of the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. – Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans, p, 388-389).
Richard Baxter: “I preached like never to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.”
4. Is everything a preacher says what God says to us?
- Does he recognize his inadequacy for the task and rely on God’s Spirit to work through the Word of God or does he rely on the force of his own personality to convince people of what he is saying?
John Stott: It is my conviction that all true Christian preaching is expository preaching….
Exposition refers to the content of the sermon (biblical truth) not to the style of the sermon (a running commentary). To exposit Scripture is to bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view. The expositor prizes open what appears to be closed, makes plain what is obscure, unravels what is knotted and unfolds what is tightly packed....The size of the text is immaterial, so long as it is biblical. What matters is what we do with it. Whether it is long or short, our responsibility as expositors is to open it up in such a way that it speaks its message clearly, plainly, accurately, relevantly, without addition, subtraction or falsification (p. 126).
Exposition gives us confidence to preach. If we were expatiating upon our own views or those of some fallible fellow human being, we would be bound to do so diffidently. But if we are expounding God’s Word with integrity and honesty, we can be very bold. Whoever speaks, wrote Peter, should do so “as one who utters oracles of God” (I Peter 4:11). This is not because we presume to regard our own words as an oracular utterance, but because like the ancient Jews we have been “entrusted with the oracles of God” (Romans 3:2) and because our overriding concern is to handle them with such scrupulous fidelity that they themselves are heard to speak, or rather that God speaks through them.
Professor Gustaf Wingren expresses this admirably when he writes:
The expositor is only to provide mouth and lips for the passage itself, so that the Word may advance…The really great preachers…are, in fact, only the servants of the Scriptures. When they have spoken for a time…the Word…gleams within the passage itself and is listened to: the voice makes itself heard…The passage itself is the voice, the speech of God; the preacher is the mouth and the lips, and the congregation…the ear in which the voice sounds…Only in order that the Word MAY advance – may go out into the world, and force its way through enemy walls to the prisoners within – is preaching necessary (Stott, p. 132).
Writing to a friend who was being ordained as a pastor, Charles Simeon (1700’s) said:
My dearest friend, I most sincerely congratulate you not on a permission to receive 40 or 50 (pounds) a year, nor on the title of Reverend, but on your accession to the most valuable, most honourable, most important, and most glorious office in the world – to that of an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is certainly how he viewed his own ministry. He once expounded the text containing Jesus’ injunction “Take heed therefore how ye hear” (Luke 8:18) in such a way as to give “Directions How to Hear Sermons.” One of the reasons why Jesus gave this caution, he argued, was “because God Himself speaks to us by the preacher”. He went on:
Ministers are ambassadors for God, and speak in Christ’s stead. If they preach what is founded on the Scriptures, their word, as far as it is agreeable to the mind of God, is to be considered as God’s. This is asserted by our Lord and his apostles. We ought therefore to receive the preacher’s word as the word of God Himself. With what humility, then, ought we to attend to it! What judgments may we not expect, if we slight it! (p. 34).
Lloyd-Jones, (The Puritans):
It is always a bad sign when men read a text and then shut the Bible and put it on one side, and proceed to preach their prepared sermon. From the beginning to the end what the preacher says should be coming out of the Word. What matters is not the man or his ideas: it should always be this Word, for it alone is the source of the preacher’s authority (p. 382).
- For a sermon to be “exegetical,” does it have to be a verse-by-verse analysis of a passage?
Have you ever thought of how the early Christians preached – how the apostles and the early preachers preached? We can be quite certain that it was not what has become traditional among us. The reports in the Book of Acts of Paul’s sermons indicate that he had, as it were, the whole of the Old Testament in his mind, and delivered this to the people in a manner showing how it leads up to what had happened in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is seen clearly in his sermon on Mars Hill in Athens, and his sermon in Antioch in Pisidia. We have so tended to forget this and have become so tied to exegesis and exposition, pure and simple, that we think that when we have expounded a verse or a passage then we have truly preached. But true preaching always emphasizes a message, and such a message is not always directly upon some particular piece of exegesis (Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans, p. 387).
B. Implications for the listeners:
- What responsibilities are put on the people when it comes to listening to the preaching of God’s Word?
It is clear from this brief rehearsal of the Old Testament story that God consistently hinged the welfare of His people on their listening to His voice, believing His promises and obeying His commands….It is made plain throughout [the Old Testament] that the health of God’s people depends on their attentiveness to His Word (Stott, p. 113).
QUESTIONS:
What concerns or objections does Stott’s view of preaching raise for you? Is there a subtle danger in this high view of preaching?
On the other hand, if Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Stott are right about the nature of preaching, what does this mean for the way you listen to a sermon?
Describe what it means for God to draw near to you in worship. What does it mean for God to draw near to you in the preaching of His Word? In other words, in a typical worship service, what gives you a sense of being in God’s presence?
Can you give an example of a time when you felt God was addressing you in a sermon?
If you truly believed God was speaking to you through the words of a sermon, how would it change the way you think about worship?
How does YOUR view of preaching affect what you DO with what you’ve heard?
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