Yesterday we began a new series of posts on listening to the word of God as it’s preached. With these posts, I pray the Lord would help us to listen well so that we might be sanctified in the truth and mature into Christ’s likeness. I love the way the 9Marks slogan puts it: “We will look like Him as we listen to Him.”
If that’s so, then listening is a fundamental spiritual discipline and skill. Our souls prosper as our ears prosper. As we embrace Christ in His word, we find ourselves embraced by Him. Spiritual life and communion come to us at the speed of sound. So, we need proper listening filters to let the word through and to catch the spiritual dust and debris that so often hinders our hearing well.
Today, I want to suggest another filter for listening well.
“Where Did He Get That From?”
The preacher is to proclaim the truth, using all the tools of knowledge available to him. A solid pastor will be well-rounded in education, experience, and interests. He’ll be conversant with the themes of his day and a few of the thinkers contemporary and historical.
But a faithful pastor must be mastered by one book in particular: the Bible. He is not called simply to preach. He is called specifically to preach the word (2 Tim. 4:1-2). His message is already determined by the Divine Author. While he may benefit from all fields of learning, those fields serve the one source of eternal wisdom–the Scriptures.
So, one critical question for the listener to keep in mind is simply: “Where did he get that from?” Or, “what source is this man using to make this claim?” “Is it rooted in the word of God, or some other source?”
Everything that comes to us from the word of God, properly explained and rightly handled, is to be eagerly and joyfully believed. As Jesus prayed in John 17:17, “Your word is truth.” Truth is for our good and comes from God, especially the truth of Scripture. So, the Bible is that one infallible source for knowing the mind and will of God and knowing how to live before him.
Other Sources
But, again, a preacher may make claims based upon other sources. He may quote philosophers, interact with scientists, or draw from research and personal experience. As we said earlier, these things may be drawn into service to the word.
But here is where listening becomes critical. For the authority we give to claims based in sources other than the Scripture is not the same kind or degree as the authority we give to God’s word. We may know things from other sources, things that may change or be improved upon, or things that may later be refuted. But the Bible tells us what God knows, things that can never be improved, changed or falsified. His word is truth. Not just true, but truth itself.
Where Truth/False and Source Meet
There is, then, an interaction between the first two filters we’ve discussed: True/False and Source. The figure below organizes these two filters in a 2×2 grid.
Where we hear truth from the Bible, we might borrow from Francis Schaeffer and call that “True Truth.” We are hearing things that are incontestably true and we’re hearing them from the divine source, the Bible. This is what we most covet and need. Whenever we have a faithful shepherd who declares to us the word of God, we must realize that we have been singularly blessed by God. We have been given an extraordinary gift, a herald from heaven opening the divine mysteries of God. What a privilege and a blessing! As we listen, we should rejoice at hearing the truth from the source. As we listen to Him, we will look like Him.
Second, we may hear true things in the preaching that come from a different source. Because all truth comes from God, truth that comes from secondary sources ought to be received for the common grace that it is. If the preacher shares an experience or some research that explains reality and doesn’t mislead, we should embrace it. We should bring it under the light of scripture, testing it; but if it stands, we should embrace it even though it comes from an uninspired source with less authority than Scripture.
But, third, we may also hear false things even as the Bible is being cited as a source. This may be error, or it may be more pernicious, heresy. I never cease to be amazed at the number of television shows that feature a popular preacher before vast crowds teaching–with the Bible open–things that simply are not in the Bible. False things may spring forth from different soils. Sometimes, preachers make honest mistakes. We are not omniscient or infallible. We, too, must grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord like all other Christians. So, honest mistakes and misstatements are possible and even likely from the best of preachers. On the other end of the spectrum, however, are men who deliberately twist the Scripture to make it “say” what they like (2 Peter 2; Jude). When that happens with cardinal points of doctrine (the Trinity, the Atonement, Person and Work of Christ), they prove themselves to be heretics. In the case of honest mistakes and limitations, we pray, encourage, and wait patiently for the Lord’s growth so that the minister’s progress is seen by all (1 Tim. 4:15). In the case of heretics, we warn once, twice, then we have nothing to do with divisive persons (Titus 3:10). We protect the Scriptures by listening for accurate handling as the Bereans are famed for doing (Acts 17:10-11).
Finally, there is the worst category of all: false things from other sources. Here, not only is falsehood reigning but the plumb line for discerning error, the Bible, is set aside for other sources. This is that viewpoint that comes from the world, is hostile toward God, and proves always to be false (James 4:4; 1 John 4:4-6). I once visited a church where the pastor preached on some things he was learning from the creative writings of a popular Christian writer. I remember the horror of sitting up in anticipation of the word being preached only to hear the pastor explain that he would be expounding these creative writings. I can’t tell you how much of the sermon was true or false, because I quietly assembled my family and drove across town to another church where we would be certain to hear “thus saith the Lord.”
Where we find “True Truth,” we want to root ourselves there and feed upon the word for the long haul. Where we find common grace and truth being taught with understandable human limitations, we want to “eat the fish and spit out the bones.” We want to lovingly encourage the pastors and pray for more reliance upon the word and purity in the preaching. Where we find heresy or an abandonment of the word, we want to run for our spiritual lives! For with other situations, we may hear the word and be nourished, even with the imperfections of the preacher and the listener. But where the word is distorted and twisted, or where it’s abandoned, we may never hear the word of God at all. We perish for lack of knowledge.
Dust in the Filter
It’s easy to see how our hearing filter may be clogged by the dust of other opinions and sources. That may happen either because the preacher relies on other sources too much or in the wrong ways, or because we the listener make other sources to rival the scripture. How often have we bristled at something clearly in the Bible because it contradicted something we heard from another pastor, as though that pastor were our authority? Or, how often have we missed the truth of the word because our own opinions sit enthroned in our thinking? Do we not sometimes think that this or that scientific theory or discovery certainly proves to be more reliable than the Bible? And are there not times where a certain “reading” of history or a philosophical presupposition affects our ability to hear the Scripture clearly?
Again, all these other sources have their place. The place simply is not above or on par with the Lord’s holy word. The Scriptures are that divine light that casts out the shadows of ignorance and darkness. We are enlightened by the Spirit of God as He applies the word of God to our lives. That’s the true Enlightenment we all need. So, we want to be sure that we learn to listen for and to listen to the source of all wisdom, the treasury of divine revelation, the Bible.
Conclusion
We are meant to live on every word that comes from the mouth of God. We may only do that where the word is preached and the preacher is dedicated to opening its meaning from first to last. So, when we listen, we should listen for the accent of Zion, the language of glory, the word of God. When we preach, we should preach with all the authority that comes not from our experience or other things, but from the word of God itself. For God has invested the word with His divine seal.
