A different perspective on sermons

Most of the time we see advocacy or defenses of sermons coming from pastors of traditional churches where the sermon is the focal point of the gathering. I read a post on sermons (and a follow-up post in response to a question about the original post) with interest because the author is part of, for lack of a more precise term, a house church group in the home of the college football team with the more wins than any other program, i.e. Ann Arbor, Michigan.. The author, Van Parunak, is a great guy and his wife is one of the nicest people I know.

Van starts off his post, In Defense of the Sermon, with this:

Traditionally, the sermon has been an important feature of the assemblies of God’s people. The sermon is so central to many groups that its delivery is one of the main duties of a professionally trained and salaried individual, the pastor.

The sermon is coming under attack in many quarters as ineffective and out of date. Yet the practice of delivering material through an extended, carefully prepared verbal presentation has strong biblical precedent. Before abandoning serious expository preaching, let’s think more carefully.

To be clear: what I mean by “sermon” is an extended lecture on a biblical text or theme, prepared in advance by one individual who delivers it orally to a group of people. Unlike a discussion, the presentation is asymmetric (primarily from the teacher to the congregation, though it may be interrupted by questions). Unlike a meditation, it develops its content with an argument that usually takes some time to present. Unlike an extemporaneous address, the teacher devotes effort to preparing it in advance.

I will cautiously say that this stance is something of an outlier among house/simple church folks. That doesn’t mean it is wrong of course just kind of unusual. Also note that in this group, as I understand it, questions are welcome and different brothers often deliver the sermon so it is not like a monologue delivered by the same guy to a mute audience of observers week after week. Again, I haven't had the chance to meet with this group but I do know several people who are part of Washtenaw Independent Bible Church.

I would like you to read both posts, first his post In Defense of the Sermon and then his follow-up to my question regarding Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, Peter’s Planned Presentation. Be warned, they are lengthy and detailed. Let me know what you think!

Thoughts on expository preaching

Eric Carpenter has apparently garnered the attention of one of the big guns of the Reformed world, Thabiti Anyabwile. Eric questioned something Thabiti had written in his book on What Is a Healthy Church Member regarding being an “expository listener” and apparently Thabiti read Eric review and responded with his post Who's Doing the Talking in our Church Gatherings?.

Here is the crux of his argument. According to Thabiti and most advocates of expository preaching, what is happening is not one guy talking to a bunch of other people from a platform and behind a pulpit. It is God speaking through His Word, God speaking to His people. According to Thabiti, the structure of the service (something I have railed against many a time) actually facilitates this dialogue between God and man…

The very structure reflects a running dialogue–not between the people gathered, though we “speak to one another in songs,” etc.–but fundamentally between God and His people. We come singing to our God, but He speaks the first word in the “call to worship.” We respond in song. Then God addresses us again by the reading of His word. We then speak to Him in prayer of confession. Following the confession, God speaks to us in the “assurance of pardon” taken from Scripture each week. Hearing His promise of pardon, we then respond in song. God speaks next in the sermon. God gets the bulk of the service to say what’s on His mind, disclosed in the word of God. Following God’s word to us, we respond in praise. We then receive the benediction or words of blessing from God, before sitting in silence (hopefully awe) before the God of the universe.

Here is my problem with that.

From a theological position, we affirm that God is speaking through His Word.

From a practical standpoint, what we get is one guy speaking on behalf of God.

That is a huge difference. Is God’s Word really God speaking to us all the time or only under special circumstances? Is this a dialogue between God and man or is it man telling us what and how to respond to what he has chosen to share from God? From the Scriptures read to the songs we sing to the prayers we listen to, all of it is selected by a few people and imposed on the rest. All of that is done in most churches with the very best of intentions but the reality is that the majority of believers are mute observers of the performance, even when we are permitted to sing along with the songs someone else chose (standing or sitting by their direction of course). In every church we have been involved with up to the gathering we met with in East Lansing, the entire church gathering was focused around one guy, i.e. the pastor, who does virtually all of the speaking. Is there something special, from a Scriptural standpoint, about when a pastor delivers a sermon versus when two brothers are opening the Word over a cup of coffee? Everything we are taught to understand, even the way the church service and building are structured, gives the impression that something special is happening in the pulpit but frankly I have been far more edified by informal conversations with brothers outside of church buildings than I ever have sitting in a pew.

Expository preaching sounds so great. We open the Word of God, study it and then exposit what it is saying. What is not to like about that? Almost everyone I know grew up in a school setting where one person always spoke and the class listened. Many of us had a similar experience in college. That mode of learning is comfortable and familiar to us and that transfer to the church where we are also taught to expect to sit in a pew and listen to the guy in front. Something odd happened as we progressed in college to upper level classes. As I went from a big lecture hall for PoliSci 101 to senior level seminars that dug deeper, there was far less lecturing and far more interaction. Guess what? I needed some basics up front (not as much as the normal college frosh but I digress) but once I had the basics I was able to engage in conversation with my professors and fellow students, in dialogue and not in simply listening. My learning was far deeper and meaningful in those classes. We all know this to be true, but why do we never progress beyond “from the pulpit to the pew” edification?

When we restrict the conversation to talking about expository preaching within the context of our presupposition and culturally attuned preferences, everything is fine but when we take the time to dig into Scripture and ask: what is commanded and what do we see modeled through example, it just isn’t there. It is amazing the more I read through Scripture to find so little of what we take as absolute truth in the church is completely absent and that often the opposite is what we find.

I love a lot of what Thabiti writes and I deeply respect him as a brother in Christ. I just disagree, vehemently, with the idea that being a mute listener is a sign of a healthy Christian. That is a great quality to be desired in a mannequin but not in a fellow follower and disciple of Christ. Certainly there are times to be quiet and listen just as there are times to be active and involved but the determining factor is not whether a preacher gives you permission or not. It is high time that we release Christians from their pews, equip them and exhort them to minister to the world and see what happens!

Being word-centered doesn’t mean being sermon-centered

I am lifting a quote from a book I haven’t read, reproduced on someone else’s blog and I ain’t apologizing for it! It is such an excellent quote that it deserves to be widely reproduced and discussed. So with apologies to Alan Knox, here is the quote from “ Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community”.

All too often people equate being word-centered with being sermon-centered. People argue for sermons by arguing for the centrality of God’s word, assuming that the word and the sermon are synonymous in Christian practice. It assumes God’s word can only be taught through sermons. Or people assume that the alternative to sermons is anarchy or relativism with no place for the Spirit-gifted teacher of God’s word, as if Spirit-gifted teachers can only exercise their gift through forty-five-minute monologues.

But our concern is not to reject the sermon. Monologue continues to have its place as one of the ways in which the Bible can and should be taught. It stands alongside other complementary methods such as dialogue and discussion. Being word-centered is not less than being sermon-centered. Our contention is that being word-centered is so much more than being sermon-centered. (pg 114)

How excellent is that!?

I think there is a place for prepared, monologue teaching in the church. Sometimes it is the appropriate method, provided that the same person is not doing the monologue every week, that the monologue is not the only method of teaching utilized and that the entire body gets the chance to discuss what was taught. So I am not “anti-sermon” as much as I am “pro-every member priesthood”. I think the best two sentences from that quote are:

“Being word-centered is not less than being sermon-centered. Our contention is that being word-centered is so much more than being sermon-centered.”

This has been an area of real shift for me. I was a big advocate of more sermons and longer sermons (as long as they were expository sermons). My view now is that the week after week monologue by the same person week after week is unhealthy for the preacher and unhealthy for the congregation. An overemphasis on the sermon leads to pastoral burnout, pastoral pride, apathy in much of the local body and a view of the church that is focused on ritual instead of community. We need more teaching in the church, that is true, but we need not just more but better teaching and that means more people being involved in the teaching beyond listening and more teaching that puts action to the words.

How will they hear without a preacher? Who are "they"?

Albert Mohler posted an essay Thursday lamenting the lack of priority placed on preaching. The title is How will they hear without a preacher? and here is a key excerpt:

Indeed, preaching is the central act of Christian worship, but its great aim reaches far above merely changing the world. The preaching of the Word of God is the chief means by which God conforms Christians to the image of Christ. Rightly understood, true Christian preaching is not aimed only at this earthly life, but is the means whereby God prepares his people for eternity.

Man, that sounds great! A year or two ago, I would have posted this and said “Amen!”. Today I post it and wonder if it is terribly accurate at all.

My first question comes right from the title of the essay: How will they hear without a preacher? . This is a quote from Romans 10:14 and is often quoted to support the need for preaching in the church. I am not sure that the connection is correct. Here is Romans passage in its fullness:

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10: 8-17)

Boy, is there a more often quoted section of Scripture that this one (other than John 3:16)? I don’t think it is saying what we traditionally assume it does. What we are seeing here is not a call for a weekly expository sermon preached in the church. Paul’s point doesn’t seem to be “How will Christians get edified unless someone preaches at them?” This is dealing with the way people are saved, unregenerate people hear the Gospel preached by a Christian and in concert with the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit they come to faith and confess Jesus Christ as Lord. This is a passage about preaching the Gospel to the lost, not the method God uses to prepare His people for eternity or conforming them to Christ. The idea that “preaching is the central act of Christian worship” is similarly nice sounding rhetoric but lacking in Scriptural foundation.

I certainly understand where Dr. Mohler is coming from. He comes from a denomination (the Southern Baptist Convention) that values the monologue sermon. He is the President of an institution (Southern Seminary) that is in the business of training vocational preachers. Dr. Mohler is personally committed to and one of the leading proponents of expository preaching in evangelicalism today. Listen to the talks at Together for the Gospel and you will hear preaching put forth as the weakest link in the church on a regular basis.

What I will say is that while I am in favor of seeing less monologue preaching in the church, I am concerned that what is replacing the sermon in most cases is actually worse. It is easy to cast stones at preaching but when you look at the alternative it is rarely a more inclusive ministry of the entire Body. What is replacing the sermon is entertainment, pure and simple, a mere religious exercise that does even less to engage the Body than mutely listening to a sermon.

The answer is not more preaching. The answer is also not less preaching if that means an even less faithful gathering of the church. The answer is for the church to be the church instead of going to church. The answer is for all of us to minister to one another. Until that happens, all the preaching in the world isn’t going to change the state of spiritual infancy that plagues the church.

(Alan Knox clearly is reading my blog drafts and posted on this very topic on Friday)

One stop shopping

Is what should be going on "out there" going on "in here"?

I know that preaching is supposed to be the focal point of our church gathering based on our Protestant traditions. Especially expository preaching. But (and here I go again) is it Scriptural?

The question unfortunately often gets framed like this: either we have expository preaching or we have cutesy anecdotes and story time. As if there is no other option, as if you cannot have solid Biblical teaching and even exposition without a prepared 45 monologue sermon.

When I prepared a sermon, it was equal parts (more or less) declaring the Gospel and calling for repentance on the one hand and designed to impart teaching to believers on the other hand. I think that is true of most sermons on a given Sunday. If so, that implies that on any given Sunday either:

We are preaching the Gospel of repentance to those who have already been born again.

-OR-

We are teaching the things of God to people with unregenerate hearts to whom such teachings are meaningless.

That brings me back to my basic premise. Are preaching and teaching the same thing? If not, do we see preaching the Gospel as something that happens in the local gathering of the church? It seems that there was a great deal of teaching and edifying and encouraging going on when the church gathered but not preaching as we understand it. There was a lot of preaching going on in the New Testament, but it appears to be something happening toward groups that were clearly unbelievers (out in public, in the synagogues, in the temple, in the homes of unbelievers). I love good preaching but is what we know as preaching Biblical and appropriate in the local gathering of the church?

Prepared sermon or a participatory meeting?

A post at The Assembling of the Church, Sermon Central, got me thinking about sermons, sermon preparation and participation.

In recent years, I have made something of an idol of the sermon. The longer, the better. The more prep time, the better. Of course the more Reformed, the better. A twenty minute sermon was mailing it in, 45 minutes was adequate and an hour was better. I often stated quite confidently that the entire gathering should be prepping for the sermon. The most qualified man should give the sermon and everyone else should listen. I have long been a fan of expositional preaching. Open the Bible and preach the Bible from the Bible. I still think this is a great way to get into the Word. What I am wondering though is two-fold: should that be the focal point of the local assembly? Should that be something that is a passive monologue, one man preaches every week and the rest sit silently?

This is a hard one for me. I know both from experience and from reading the New Testament that there is not much justification for a “one man show” style of teaching in the Bible. I always look for command and example, is there a command for something or is there an example of something? I don’t see either when it comes to monologue preaching to believers. To unbelievers, sure. But not to the church. Still, I like the predictability of it. You show up and you get a 40 minute sermon like clockwork every week. Nice and tidy. I absolutely am convinced that we need to get into the Bible a lot more than we do currently. At least with lengthy expository sermons people are getting the Word. I am less convinced that it is healthy and Biblical in spite of my own personal bias in favor of lengthy, in-depth expository monologue sermons. I have to wonder if it is healthy, healthy for one man to do all of the preaching and for the rest of the people to be passive observers. It is little wonder that so many Christians have become spiritually atrophied and so many pastors are burned out.

The other thing that I started thinking about was not just that the sermon is the focal part of the weekly service, but how much time and effort is invested into that sermon in the week leading up to the Sunday service. One of the most unquestionable features of the contemporary church is the professional, vocational paid pastor who spends a sizable chunk of their week in sermon preparation.

Ligon Duncan, in an article for 9 Marks, came to the number of eight hours per sermon in prep time being appropriate. If a “full-time” pastor preaches two unique sermons on Sunday, that would mean that adequate prep time is 16 hours per week. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was not and am not an eight hours of preparation per sermon kind of guy. I normally would read over the text several times during the week, jot down notes as they came to me and assemble the final product on Saturday night. I spent even less prep time on Sunday evening sermons, usually just a rough outline of the text. Oddly (or perhaps not) I think that the Sunday evening sermons were “better” than the Sunday morning sermons I spent more prep time on. I was working a full-time job when I was also a bi-vocational pastor, so I often jotted notes during the day and worked on ideas on my laptop at lunch. I often thought it would be wonderful to be like my “full-time” brothers who had so much more time available to prepare a sermon each week.

Again, at the risk of further alienating my fellow Reformed believers, is it the most appropriate use of funds to pay a pastor to spend 2 or more days a week sequestered in their office preparing for a 45 minute monologue sermon on Sunday morning? To be a pastor in many churches means having a seminary degree with classes on preaching, owning lots of commentaries, reading books on preaching, attending seminars on preaching. There is a ton of focus on sermons because sermons are the focus of the gathering of the church. It sounds great to the ears, a firm commitment to verse by verse expository preaching by a man with seminary training. I don’t think it is as faithful to the Scriptures unfortunately.

So what is the alternative? I fancy myself to be a pretty good teacher and one of the things I really strive to do is draw people into conversation when I teach. Make them think, encourage them to participate. The best Sunday school classes I have taught were the ones where I spoke the least, where my role was to draw people into the conversation. The least effective were the lectures where I did all of the talking. I liked the lessons where I spoke the most because the focus was on me, but I also know that people learned more when they participated more. In spite of that, I then turned around and gave a monologue sermon because that was just what I was supposed to do. Why? Just because that is what pastors do, they preach in the second half of the service. I daresay I am far more effective in teaching when I am leading a group that is all participating than standing up front and talking for 45 minutes.

Last Sunday, as we gathered for the Lord's Supper, we met in the room around the table of bread and wine as we do every week. No one has a liturgy or even a program. No one is leading. Every man in the room is welcome to share as he is led, whether in prayer, or requesting a hymn or opening up the Word. It is unscripted and open, just a room of redeemed sheep edifying, praying, uplifting one another. Sometimes there is silence for several minutes, quiet reflection and prayer. Gasp! It is uncomfortable for me, I want something to fill in the silence. I crave that order and predictability. Participatory meetings are not orderly in the sense we think of in the contemporary church structure. They are not disorderly per se, but when we think of “orderly” we are thinking programmed, scheduled, regimented, regulative, liturgical, “order of worship”. I think Paul’s concern was less that we had a bulletin to follow and more that meetings not be chaotic.

This is not to demean preaching. I love preaching, I love to listen to preaching and I love to preach! Preaching is eminently Biblical. Teaching is eminently Biblical. A monologue sermon preceded by days of preparation? Not so much. What is becoming clear to me is that often the brother who works a regular job, has no theological training and is just praying or opening the Word has far more meaningful things to say than the famous preacher who spends his week preparing for a sermon. Singing a song extemporaneously is more meaningful than singing a battery of songs selected beforehand or watching a choir performing on stage. Prayer from different men as they are led is often more meaningful than one guy praying on behalf of the rest of the room. We need to examine our church practices from Scripture and ask ourselves if they are truly fulfilling the spirit and letter of what we see in the Word or if they are merely manmade inventions designed to replace what Scripture commands and describes. As I try to do that, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of realizing that I have been wrong about the gathering of God’s people for a very long time.

Evangelism in a natural fashion

The series at the RBS blog on lay evangelism and ministry has really got me thinking about evangelism in general. I found a quote on Bob Gonzalez’s post that was very interesting. The quote comes from Kenneth Scott Latourette, a historian at Yale in his book A History of the Expansion of Christianity.

The chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession or a major part of their occupation, but men and women who earned their livelihood in some purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those whom they met in this natural fashion.

That is a very interesting idea. I love that phrase, speaking about the Gospel in a natural fashion. The Gospel is life changing not just Sunday morning changing. The chief agents of Gospel propagation are not the names we know in history, it is the unknown and unheralded Christian witness. For every Spurgeon, Whitefield and Edwards there are thousands of regular Christians living their lives and sharing the Gospel. We might pay lip service to the “little guy” but the reality is that we engage in hero worship in the church that is little different than what the world does. Football has Tom Brady, basketball has LeBron James, baseball has Albert Pujols. The church has John MacArthur, Max Lucado and John Piper. Many of these leaders do great work for the Gospel but where the rubber hits the road is locally by people you will likely never meet this side of eternity. The history of the Church and the Scriptures themselves bear out this truth.

After the martyring of Stephen in the book of Acts we see something interesting take place that supports this idea. In Acts 8:4 we read “Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.” Who was it that was out preaching the Gospel? The apostles or professional evangelists? Just the opposite. In Acts 8:1 we see who these people were “…And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” (emphasis added). So the church except the apostles was scattered and those Christians were all over the place preaching the Word. Do you suppose they waited until a duly authorized apostle showed up? There is no indication that a special class of men preached the Gospel. It seems like a more reasonable and natural interpretation that the scattered Christians settled into their new homes, found employment and where God placed them they preached to the lost. I can’t see where one would assume that only “ordained” or “authorized” men did this work unless you approach the text with the professional clergy firmly in mind and then read that back into the text (see also Acts 11:19-21). So rather than the apostles driving evangelism throughout the civilized world, we see the work being carried out by regular Christian men. Again, for every Paul and Stephen and Peter there are hundreds of unnamed believers throughout the region, scattered by persecution but used by God as regular people where they were to preach Christ. Thank God that these men didn’t wait until they had a seminary sheepskin, or were properly ordained or received an appointment from a missionary board to declare the Good News of Jesus Christ to a lost world!

How is the Gospel normally presented in the church in evangelism? In many places it is a formula, in others it is a very formal declaration. What could be more unnatural than hearing something presented to a group by a guy in a suit standing on a podium? Which is more meaningful, that formal presentation we see in church buildings as part of a sermon or someone sitting over coffee with a friend or co-worker and talking about Christ?

More importantly though, how is the Gospel presented in the New Testament? Do we see sermons being used as an evangelism tool? Well sure, you can point to the day of Pentecost but I think that almost everyone would agree that Pentecost was atypical. More typical was evangelism that was personal and relational in nature or preaching that was spontaneous in public places. I don’t think we see a place where the local church gathered and the Gospel was declared to lost people in the audience. Paul taught in the synagogues and in the school of Tyrannus, not as a preacher but as a visitor I would assume. I would go so far as to question whether we see anything that resembles the monologue, me-speak, you-listen style sermon in the NT. Paul reasoned with people in the synagogues and the hall of Tyrannus, which would imply interaction and still it was evangelistic in nature. What about Acts 20 where Paul spoke all night (leading to the funny story of Eutychus nodding off and falling out of a window)? Isn’t that an example of a single man preaching a sermon? I am not an expert at Greek, but when I look at the way the words are translated into English I have my doubts that this was a monologue sermon. We read that Paul “Paul talked with them” (Acts 20: 7) and that he “he conversed with them a long while” (Acts 20: 11, emphasis added). Just because Paul was long winded doesn’t mean it was a monologue, in fact given that they were in the “upper room” would indicate that they were in a home and that along with eating they were talking and conversing into the wee hours. Certainly Paul would be leading the discussion but it would seem to me to be more of a discussion rather than a sermon. Christians in those days would have questions about doctrine, about the Christian life, about the church which would perhaps be addressed. Oddly, Christians today have those same questions! Even the apostles seemed more likely to be preaching the Gospel in smaller, informal settings. We read that “And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.” (Acts 5: 42) Certainly Peter and James were not called on as “pulpit supply” in the Jewish temple telling people that Jesus Christ was the true temple!

This raises another question, namely what (if any) is the difference between “preaching” and “teaching”? Is it safe to generalize that “preaching” is declaring Christ to the lost and “teaching” is instruction among believers? If we accept that, then that raises another question: Which is normative for the local assembly? In other words should we be “preaching” the Gospel to believers? Or should we be “teaching” believers? Also, where do the responsibilities lie? Is preaching reserved for ordained ministers? Is preaching open to all Christians but teaching is reserved for clergy? Are preaching and teaching something to be done by all Christians regardless of education and ordination? Is what we think of as "preaching" in the modern context at all what we see as preaching in the Bible? See, when you start asking questions and getting past the traditional mindset and terminology, it just leads to all sorts of other questions!

The quandary of modern church services is that the sermon is designed to do two things simultaneously, preaching and teaching. The audience is assumed to be a mixed bag of believers and unbelievers, so the goal of a sermon is to call the lost to repent and to instruct the believer in the things of the Lord. Speaking from experience, that is a tall order and I think it often fails for precisely that reason.

In my mind, we preach the Gospel to unbelievers. We teach one another. Neither activity is reserved to a small group of Christians, although certainly some Christians have a special talent for one or the other, or both (think men like John Piper). Events like Together for the Gospel are not designed for evangelism, they are Christians sitting at the feet of other Christians to learn from them. No one expects a mass conversion to take place at T4G although there are certainly unsaved people in an audience that large. Together for the Gospel is also not a local church assembly so the style that works there rarely works in local church gatherings, nor should it. I am not dogmatically saying that we cannot or should not preach to the believer and unbeliever alike. What I am asking is if we have misinterpreted the role of teaching in the local assembly and turned it into an evangelism tool where we have no mandate from the Word to do so. Have we blurred the distinction between preaching and teaching, or is there not a distinction in the first place?

The Gospel is not something that is reserved for Sunday morning. We all would agree with that in theory but in practice we treat it like it should be. How can we who are born again, new creatures with new lives, compartmentalize the Gospel by which we were saved to a few hours on Sunday morning led by “professionals”?

The smell of death

I was reading an article by Phillip Jensen that my friend James gave me (I am way behind on the stuff he sends me!) and I came across an interesting quote:

But if the aim is to glorify God by preaching his gospel, I know that it will be a sweet smell of salvation for some, but a stench of death in the nostrils of others.

As I read this it got me thinking. When people hear the Gospel, as a Calvinist I know some will reject it (perhaps most). They will not reject it because it is presented in a boring, culturally irrelevant fashion. They reject it because the foolishness of preaching is just that to the unregenerate, foolish but to God's elect when they hear His Word in His time, it is the voice of the Good Shepherd that they follow. But plenty of stuff is foolish, and people just snicker and walk away. When an unsaved person hears the pure Gospel, it often causes a visceral, angry reaction. It is not just a foolish message to the unregenerate, it is the "smell of death". The unregenerate hears the message and hears their own condemnation proclaimed in it. Despite the clear warning and the smell of death, they still will not turn. Not because of any reason other than their own inability to do so, an inability that is caused by their stony heart. The unregenerate stands on the train tracks, shaking his fist in defiance at the oncoming freight train of God's judgment and won't move. It isn't that they are tied helplessly to the tracks, but it is their stubborn, unrepentant, rebellious heart that keeps them on the tracks. No amount of pleading or persuading or altar calls will change that fact. If the stench of death won't make them repent, why do you think your clever preaching illustrations will? Stick to preaching the Word and let God use your weak effort to enact a great change. Then, and only then, will God alone have the glory.

The difference between expository and topical preaching

There seems to be a great deal of confusion between what is and what is not expository preaching. A lot of preachers make a great show of proclaiming their dedication to expository preaching and then get up wee after week and preach a message that is anything but. I cam across a great quote from David Wells in The Courage to be Protestant that really gets to the heart of the difference...

About preaching, I think I discern two rather clear and distinctive viewpoints. On one side are those who have become convinced that it is the Biblical text that must be preached. Perhaps they come to this opinion through reading older sermons, or by understanding the emptiness of topical preaching, or as a reaction to the older liberalism. But they hold a conviction that the Word of God, in the hand of God, is sufficient for the people of God. The form this conviction most often takes is expository sermon, in which the text or passage provides both the structure and content of the sermon.

On the other hand are those who have become acutely aware of how postmoderns think. These are the preachers who want to meet their audiences on their own turf in a way that they think addresses their world and needs. Sermons here, most commonly, begin not with a text but with something in the postmodern experience. Perhaps a movie, a sitcom, an excursion into the mall that yielded an amusing anecdote. If the intent is to be biblical at all in these sermons, the preacher will try to find his or her way back from the opening story to some aspect of biblical truth.

(David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant, pp. 230-231)

That is precisely right. Topical preaching may have it's place, but in my humble opinion the first and foremost mode of preaching should be expository preaching, preaching the whole counsel of God. There needs to be application, exposition is not just a running commentary on a text (which I have been guilty of before). But the focus of worship services should be on the preaching and the focus of the preaching should be on Christ and the best way to focus on Christ is to preach the text. Period. I would rather head a mediocre expository sermon than a hear wrenching topical sermon any day of the week.

“Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.”

Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Preaching

Came across a great article linked from Monergism about Dr. Lloyd-Jones on the authority of preaching, written by Iain H. Murray. The quotes are from Dr. Murray, but they really capture what Dr. Lloyd-Jones believed about how preaching should be done.

Sermons will not be marked by authority and power unless they are marked by truth that the Holy Spirit can honour. The word of God is to be exegeted and explained. That has to be the heart of the sermon. There is a real danger that we become over concerned about such things as delivery, while the New Testament is insistent on the content: "let him speak as the oracles of God." The authority of the preaching comes from the text of Scripture. It is God- given power which honours his own word.

I especially like one definition from Dr. Murray. This is such a great definition of what preaching, true Bible preaching not the theatrics we see so often today, really is: “Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire.” What better definition can there be! Standing up and delivering a moralistic or self-help message is not preaching. A lecture on the fine points of theology is valuable, but it is not preaching. Being full of "fahr" and hollerin' and thumpin’ your Bible with a message devoid of content, all heat and no light, is not preaching. Preaching is the declaration of the oracles of God, God Himself revealing Himself to man, through His Word, accompanied by His Holy Spirit by a man who is on fire for God. A man of God is one who, like the words of Jeremiah describe, “If I say, "I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name," there is in my heart as it were a burning shut up in my, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. ” (Jer 20:9)

More from Murray...

“The men most used of God in their pulpits are those who know they had fallen far short of the wonder that should characterise the preaching.”

Humility is a precious commodity for the preacher, and yet is a hard one. In a society that embraces the culture of celebrity, far too often it is easy to get caught up in the office and forget the purpose. It is easy, believe me, to start to crave adulation and congratulations and post-sermon praise. Despite talk to the contrary, it is far too easy to start to attribute a powerful sermon to one's own education or intellect or natural speaking prowess and forget that any good sermon is a product of the Word and the Holy Spirit. That is not to diminish the role of preparation and prayer leading up to the sermon, but all the prep work in the world will not make a sermon devoid of the Word contain any power to impact lives.

That does not mean that preaching should include false humility or a forced attitude of being soft. Paul was not some nancy boy who whined and simpered for people to let Christ save them. Paul was self deprecating about himself, humbled by his own sin and humbled by his own inability but he was bold as a lion about the God who saved him, the God he served. Most preachers are defeated before they stand in the pulpit by their own lack of resolve and their own lack of recognition of the authority of the Word of God. One final quote...

“DMLJ's faith came out in what he preached, that man was under the wrath of God, depraved and lost. He preached this with absolute conviction, and he followed it up with the cross, week by week. ”

That is what it really comes down to. Any sermon that preaches salvation without preaching sin, that preaches the empty tomb without also preaching the expulsion from Eden, any sermon that proclaims garments as white as snow without also telling of rivers of blood in the temple, is not God honoring preaching. The total depravity of man and the ultimate grace of the cross. Those are the bookends of Bible preaching. If you lack those two factors, any and every sermon will fall down.

A famine in the land

"Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land-- not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD." Amos 8:11 ESV

I love this verse and hate it. I love it because it is so true, I hate it because it is so true. It is not the Word that is at fault though, but the church. It is the church that has been established and ordained as the dispenser of the Word, and it is the church that has sought to replace the Word of God with anything else, anything but the Word.

Dr. Steve Lawson is one of my favorite preachers. I heard him in person in the Spring of 2007 at the Toledo Reformed Theological Conference, and his sermons on John 10 and the Good Shepherd were absolutely dynamite. Though Steven Lawson sounds, and kinda looks, like the elder President Bush, he is a powerful preacher and a prophetic voice in our day. I came across a sermon he gave on Amos 8:1-11, and it struck a chord. You don't hear a ton of preaching like this today, and we are poorer as a people for it.

His message is pretty simple, as is true of all good sermons. All is not well. The modern church gives off an image of successful evangelicalism, but it is at it's heart rotten to the core. Churches not only don't transform lives, they hardly even raise eyebrows. The simple proclamation of the Word, Thus sayeth the Lord, has been replaced by slick marketing campaigns. I am all for slick marketing campaigns in the business world. In fact I often benefit quite handsomely from them. But these aren't balance sheets and stock prices we are talking about. These are the eternal souls of sinners standing condemned before a just and holy God.

Our mooring point is not in the infallible Word of God, but in our programs, in our outward success, in our influence over the political process. Our churches measure their faithfulness not in the making of disciples, but in the number of bodies in the pews, the size of the budget, the number of paid staff or the magnificence of their audio-visual system. We ought to grade churches based on their fidelity to the Word of God, and yet that is in many cases the last concern. Far more important is the music style, or the personality of the preacher, or the size of the youth program or what translation of the Bible is used (not whether or not it is a faithful translation, but whether or not it is the right faithful translation.)

The people cry out to be fed, and spend more time and money on "Christian" books and music than ever before, but those same people are being slowly starved to death, starved in the hearing of the Word of the Lord. We starve to death in a land of plenty. Worse yet, it is the church, established and ordered by God, that is withholding the feeding. People come, and what they hear is anything but the Word in so many churches. There is little wonder that so many people are so ambiguous about church, because there is no power when the Word is absent. A church that neglects the Word becomes nothing but a social club or a self-help therapy session. Once people get over their hang up du jour, they move along.

Another of my favorite passages is found in Ezekiel 3, and Dr. Lawson rightly brings it up...

And he said to me, "Son of man, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel." So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat. And he said to me, "Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it." Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. And he said to me, "Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them. Ezekiel 3: 1-4 ESV

What value is the Word of God if it is relegated to dusty tomes sitting unused and unopened in the racks on the back of pews? There is nothing magical about the cover and the paper, about the ink on the pages. The power of the Word of God comes from reading it and devouring it. Why should God send forth the Word when people reject it? This sermon from Dr. Lawson and these ancient words from the prophet Amos are required hearing and reading for the church today. May we weep, as I have and I do, for how we have failed in carrying out the mandate of God to declare His Word.