Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Preaching and Teaching in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library
Although this series is primarily focused on how to preach from different literary genres in Scripture, I thought it wise to review some basic definitions of preaching, to offer a defense of preaching, and in particular, to define and to defend the primacy of expository preaching. Now in some measure, I attempted to do these things five or six years ago, or whenever it was that I was in Melbourne for this conference the last time.
So those of you who were there (and there weren’t many of you) are going to get a modified rerun. If you remember everything that I said on that occasion, then you may leave for a few minutes. I won’t tell you which bits were modified; you may take your guess after we’ve finished. These preliminary comments, analyses, definitions, and so on will certainly be old hat for some of you who have read widely in homiletic literature.
On the other hand, undoubtedly, in a crowd this size, there are some who are just beginning this business of preaching and some who are coming to terms with what the task is all about. It will be very helpful later in the series, from my point of view, if we can assume a certain commonality of definitions, a baseline. So that is really what I am attempting to do in the next two hours.
I must tell you, quite frankly, that I come out of a tradition, out of an understanding, of preaching that elevates the Word of God very highly. Along the line, I shall be defending that view, both implicitly and explicitly. At the same time, I would be the first to acknowledge that that view is not widely shared in the current Western evangelical church.
There is a fair malaise regarding preaching in the Western church. A lot of people recognize that something is wrong, but the solutions about what to do with what is wrong vary from a sort of Willow Creek experimentation, to a simple abolition of preaching, to a very seventeenth-century and extremely straightlaced Puritan vision: Take half a verse and treat it for three months. Never, under any circumstances, use any vocabulary that was invented after 1850. Be very serious, and never, under any circumstances, crack a joke.
Now in all of these perspectives, there is some modicum of truth and insight. I would even venture a guess that all of those views are in some measure represented here in some degree. Yet I have to say I’m not quite comfortable with any of them. I am entirely happy with P.T. Forsyth’s comment: “It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning,” he writes in his book Preaching and the Modern Mind, “but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls.”
The great historian of homiletics, Dargan, writes, “Preaching is an essential part and distinguishing feature of Christianity.” Stott insists, “Preaching is indispensable to Christianity.” Those are strong terms. Let me begin, then, with some reasons for the decline of preaching in the Western world. Before I offer definitions and suggestions as to how to improve our preaching, it is worth pausing to think through some of the factors that have brought us to this point.
1. There is large-scale loss of spiritual vitality in a fair bit of the Western world.
Now some will question that because they point to various forms of charismatic renewal and so forth. I would defend the thesis on two grounds. First, I’m speaking very globally about trends in the Western world and not simply in this or that denomination. Second, I am less impressed with enthusiasm than I am with the numbers who pray, with the integrity of righteousness and personal relationships, and with knowledge of the living God that is articulated to a broken generation.
One writer goes so far as to say, “I suspect the widespread perplexity today as to the relevance of the New Testament gospel should be seen as God’s judgment on two generations of inadequate preaching by inadequate preachers rather than on anything else.” Now that many be something of a damning indictment, but that’s Packer’s assessment. In my view, he’s not far off.
Good preaching is often used by God to generate a deeper spiritual life, but good preaching also emerges from a church full of good spiritual life. The two complement one another. When one declines, so does the other. It is very difficult to nurture preaching with unction in a time of rapidly rising secularization and appeal to methods.
2. There is the rush of the post-Enlightenment era towards secularism.
Most define the processes of secularization not in terms of the abolition of religion, but rather in terms of the squeezing of religion to the periphery. Spurgeon died in the 1890s, and every Monday morning until he died, the full text of one of his sermons appeared in the New York Times. It was cabled across the Atlantic so it would catch the early edition. It’s impossible to imagine a secular city newspaper printing the text of a sermon today.
Until the 1850s, in virtually every university in the Western world, it was impossible to write anything serious or advanced in the department of history, without reflection on providence. In other words, even the academic systems that weren’t Christian (and they weren’t, as by and large, they had succumbed to deism and other things), nevertheless thought in terms of a providential reading of history. There were moral lessons to be learned when you studied, say, the French Revolution.
Today, I don’t imagine there is a major university anywhere in the Western world that would allow you to reflect on providence whatsoever in a doctoral dissertation on any period of history. Now undoubtedly, some of the reflection on providence earlier was pretty naÔve, but I’m not talking about the quality of the reflection, I’m talking about whether or not you actually think God has anything to do with history!
Now the impact on preaching is severe. Once religion gets squeezed to the periphery, so that the content of preaching (namely the Bible, the gospel, God, relationships with God, the church, righteousness, and so forth) is squeezed to the periphery, then the national discourse becomes nothing but politics, economics, sports, who is up and who is down, who is in and who is out, social circumstances, media personalities …
(The media personalities start feeding on the media personalities. Who are all the personalities in the media, but other media personalities? If they weren’t when they started, they are by the time they finish! That’s what makes them media personalities.)
Now within that kind of framework, then, people do not come to church expecting to hear something important! They do not come to church expecting to hear a Word from God. They expect to hear something on the relative periphery of their vision. Of course, that makes the preacher’s task far more difficult.
It may be that the nineteenth century had more than its fair share of bad preaching. If you read Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, for example, he mocks a bit of it in his own day. Bad preaching is not the peculiar prerogative of our generation, but bad preaching becomes a more complex matter to overcome when, in fact, you find people not expecting anything important or culture-transcending or absolute to be uttered, but rather nice pious thoughts for the periphery of our lives.
3. There is, partly in consequence of the last point and partly owing to massive skepticism in many theological faculties, a terrible loss of confidence in the gospel and in the Scriptures.
In many evangelical circles, the gospel is now perceived to be something which is akin to getting someone up a hill, to tip over the edge. Once you’ve tipped over the edge so that they are in another valley, then you begin all the life-transforming bits: in counseling sessions, in therapy groups, in small studies, and so on.
You don’t believe, however, that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to those who believe. You don’t believe the gospel transforms. That’s just naÔve when you see abused women, when you see boys coming out of broken homes, or when you see alcoholic families. The gospel doesn’t handle that. What the gospel does is get people to tip in just far enough so that suddenly they’re at least prepared to listen to the odd counseling session, which may, if you counsel them for three years, possibly improve them a little.
Now I don’t mean to be too cynical, but many of us have succumbed to that kind of cynicism, have we not? The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because then we preach the gospel anemically. The gospel is anemic and is basically not the power of God. Rather, it’s the power to get you to tip into a counseling program where the real life-changing work begins.
Moreover, because the gospel is basically not acceptable by many in our society (that is, the gospel worked out in classic, biblical terms), we move towards softening it. We start leaving things out. The gospel becomes redefined. It’s confessing Jesus as Lord, with no content or teeth or bite to Lord.
It’s gospel power so that you enjoy the abundant life. It’s fellowship with one another in the name of Jesus. It’s worship which is enjoyable. It’s developing the kind of personal relationship skills that guarantee you a happy marriage. It’s how to bring up your family in a Christian environment. I could go on and on and on.
Where, however, is it a question of reconciling rebellious sinners, who are under the curse, to God? When, in fact, that is at the heart of the Bible storyline. Until we see the gospel in biblical terms, with entailments in all of these other social arenas, then the kind of gospel preaching that we do turns out to be, in my experience, extremely anemic. Unless we are absolutely convinced as to the analysis of the problem, inevitably, we’re going to have dilute views as to what the solution is.
4. As a result, these low expectations become self-fulfilling.
You start getting a cycle. Gradually there are fewer first-class models around to provide young preachers with goals and standards and illustrations as to how to handle the Bible. In consequence, their own expectations are reduced.
There is a lot of technical preaching from graduates from our better theological colleges and seminaries, explaining every third genitive absolute from the left, but without power, unction, application, or fire. It is endless polite waffle, topical surveys with only the vaguest connection with Scripture, text reduced to a peg on which to hang whatever is socially interesting.
In the last century, it was common in Britain for a hearer of a sermon to ask someone else in the congregation how he “got on under the Word” that morning. Nowadays, we ask how you enjoyed the sermon. It is a different world. We do not expect to be challenged, edified, and confronted by the Word of God. We do not expect to do it, either, when we’re preaching.
5. The great gods of our age are pluralism and relativism, and the enormous specter of postmodernism is underneath both.
In consequence, heresy, like treason, has been democratized. Let me explain. That particular use of categories comes from a book by Eric Werner called Le SystËme de Trahison (The Treason System). What Werner argues is that if a state is neither empire nor nation (nacion or people), treason seems less bad.
Thus, in a state like Japan, which is nacion … it’s a nation; it’s a unified people (oh, there are a few Koreans there, and others, but basically it’s Japanese) … in that kind of framework, treason seems abominable. In an empire, like the Roman Empire or the British Empire, treason seems abominable because there’s this entire mythology hanging over your head. So in that kind of framework, to betray the empire is vile.
However, once you have a nation like America, not to mention another nation beginning with an “A,” which is neither a nation, nor an empire, having a wide diversity of cultures and races and backgrounds, nor does it have a kind of mythology surrounding empire, then treason is democratized. You just have the right to give your opinion, don’t you?
In North America, recently, there have been some extraordinary spy scandals in which very senior people have betrayed their country, caused the deaths of countless officers, and so forth. Nobody is scandalized. They’ll get their wrists slapped and go to jail for a few years, but there is no shock or horror. “Well, you know, they’re the product of the 60s, what do you expect.” Treason is democratized.
So, likewise, once the despotic gods of pluralism and relativism reign, then of course truth is democratized. In which case, there’s nothing shocking about heresy either. There’s nothing really to fight about. Postmodernism kicks in, and for the first time in history, for the predominance of our intellectuals, the only heresy is the view that there is such a thing as heresy.
Now within that kind of framework, although you can make use of the relationally important things that postmodernism advocates, and so forth, so much of the gospel is bound up with truth and cast in Scripture in terms of opposition to its antithesis. If this, then not that. It becomes very difficult to handle Scripture in a biblically faithful way without getting people’s backs up because they’re living in another worldview. They’re living in another era.
I’m not given to apocalyptic readings of history; they make me nervous. However, there are many people today who argue, in my view rightly, that we are now going through an epistemological change in Western culture as significant as the dawning of the Enlightenment. The dawning of the Enlightenment meant the dawning of what came to be called modernism. So we are moving into an entirely different epistemological framework that might aptly be called postmodernism.
It has many complex features to it that would take me too far astray to outline them here. If you have particular interests, we might pursue more of them in the question-and-answer period. In my view, this is one of the most difficult things to face in the contemporary pulpit. It is explicitly difficult in evangelistic settings today. Unless you are evangelizing in a “churchified” group (where people still have basically adopted a modernistic outlook, not a postmodernistic outlook, and basically still have adopted a Judeo-Christian view of history), then it is very difficult.
If I do university evangelism today (and I try to do such missions once or twice a year), the most difficult thing I have to do is introduce the notion of sin. Sin is a snicker word; when you hear the word, you snicker. There’s no odium attached to it. Yet unless you get across something of the Bible’s view of sin, then what’s the point of forgiveness? If you don’t have any need of forgiveness, then what purpose is the cross?
All the vocabulary changes. There’s no longer a linear view of history. It amorphous. A linear view of history has God at one end, starting things off, and God at the other end, holding everything to account. If it’s an amorphous New Age kind of view, however, then history, Spirit, truth, sin, judgment, God, and all the categories change. What vocabulary do you use? Yet if you don’t get the analysis right, the gospel will certainly be wrong.
As a result, a great deal of evangelical, gospel preaching, under these sorts of pressures, is in danger of being a parody of the British advert for Automobile Association helpers. Jesus is a nice man; he’s a very nice man; he’s a very, very nice man, and if you break down, he comes along and helps you. Yet something along the line has been left out, and the underlying problem is postmodernism and how to come to terms with it.
6. These and other pressures have conspired to transmute classical true preaching (which I still haven’t defined) into something that apes it.
It becomes a species of entertainment, feel-good topics, meandering around helpful advice, moralistic encouragement, expository lectures, and sentimental intimacy. Even the current cult of spontaneity can sometimes militate against preaching that is, in any sense, prepared or thoughtful.
7. There are the changing roles of clergy.
I cannot speak for Australia, but there was a very interesting study, published in America about a year ago which examined what was expected of clergy 50 years ago, with a prioritizing of that list. There were four items. Preaching, depending on who was speaking, was first, second, or third on this list of four.
Now in terms of lay expectations of clergy performance today, there are 13 items on the list. Thirteen. Yet, as far as I know, most of us still only have 24 hours in the day. Depending on whether you are talking about over-45s or under-45s (the interview crowd was analyzed in a variety of ways), preaching was never above item number eight.
So suddenly, you are in the awkward position of having to justify elevating preaching in your congregation. It may be more important for you to be a good committee person, “Oh, we don’t want a preacher; we want a counselor,” or “We want somebody who will help us in our worship,” and so on.
8. The role of the media (in particular, television) has certainly affected us.
In the United Kingdom, two out of every three preschool children watch 21 to 35 hours per week. In the United States, the average preschool child watches 30.4 hours per week (I don’t know what’s on that 0.4 of an hour). The average adult in America watches 20 to 24 hours of television per week.
Now what does this have to do with preaching? Well, for a start, watching television is an isolating activity. In my view, that’s the most important thing to observe. Even when you watch it as a whole family, you usually watch it alone because if somebody starts asking questions (“Well, what’s that for, Mommy?”) the response is usually “Shhh! Wait till it’s over. Wait for the next advert!” So as a result, children learn very quickly not to ask questions when the television is on.
The television thus becomes an isolating feature, unless you make the effort, at the end of a program, to shut it off and say, “Now we’re going to talk about that program. Now what moral standards were presupposed in it?” Otherwise, it’s an isolating function. We do that sometimes with our children. We don’t let the children watch TV unless one of us is there as well, and then we regularly talk about it. Those are strict rules.
The whole vision of rhetoric changes when you have a talking head coming at you, saying, “Today, 20,000 more people died in Rwanda in the terrible bloodshed that is taking place, and now, the cricket scores …” It blows your categories. There’s nothing that’s important, and there’s nothing that is unimportant. There’s nothing to get excited about.
Today, a few shots can be fired anywhere in the world, and if the text editors decided that it’s important because nothing else is more important, then it gets shown on your screen at nine o’clock or ten o’clock or whenever, and you’re called upon to worry about something off in Burundi. Eventually, you get burned out. You’re tired, and you just watch it.
Somebody else gets shot, and there’s not much difference between those people getting shot and what’s on the police programs in any case, is there? It’s all in the world of flickering images. So there’s nothing that causes horror. There’s nothing that causes revulsion. There’s nothing that causes worship. It’s information.
T.S. Eliot, 50 years ago, asked the question, “Where is wisdom in our knowledge? Where is knowledge in our information?” This is the Information Age; it’s not the Wisdom Age. In any case, we’re more interested now in fast action, in graphics, and in entertainment. Even information programs only get high ratings if they’re extremely artistic. Professionalism is in. Attention spans are down. Now you’re supposed to go to church and listen to a 45-minute exposition? “Well, we all know that preaching is boring, don’t we? Talking heads.”
9. There is the rising problem of broken lives, which do require more time.
For whatever reason, there are rising percentages of people in our congregations, many of them genuinely converted, who nevertheless were abused when they were children or come out of broken homes.
If, in fact, between 35 and 50 percent (depending on the Western country) of our marriages break up, as opposed to something like 20 percent in most Western countries a bare 40 years ago, is it not surprising that there are a few broken lives that we’re going to have to deal with in the congregation. Many of them do take more time, do they not?
10. There are the problems connected with traditionalism.
In many of our congregations, there’s one part that, frankly, is turned off by any music before 1960. There’s another part in our congregation that thinks that any music after about 1880 is certainly compromised. Both have their traditions. Very few think creatively about assessing these sorts of thing in a Christian way.
Now I don’t mean to be too cynical or too dark. There are some positive things going on in the world, some wonderful things. I’m merely trying to outline some of the elements that, in fact, contribute to making preaching difficult and that have contributed to the decline of preaching in our generation.
So let me turn, then, to a preliminary definition of preaching. I am now not referring to expository preaching, just to preaching. I shall avoid, here, technical study of New Testament words like kērygma and the like, or kēryssō or parakaleo or euaggelizomai, although all of those have important things to say. I shall try to give a functional definition of preaching. This has been modified and culled from a number of others and put together to shape what I have to say.
Preaching is oral, verbal communication of which at least the following things are true:
1. Its content is God’s gracious and special self-disclosure, his revelation.
That’s what its content is. For evangelicals, that means its content is the Bible, as its focus is Jesus Christ.
2. It is biblical truth mediated through human personality.
(This one is robbed, shamelessly, from Phillips Brooks.) That is, it is not simply the transference of content from my computer memory bank to your computer memory bank. It is mediated through human personality.
3. Its immediate purpose is to elicit an appropriate human response to this God whose revelation is the content of preaching.
More specifically, it is to inform, persuade, appeal, invite response, encourage, rebuke, and instruct in righteousness.
4. Its ultimate goal is the glory of God as well as the calling forth and edification of the church.
5. It has an unavoidable heraldic element.
That’s my definition of preaching. Now let me explain it.
1. This definition of preaching defines the nature of the preacher’s authority.
It is bound up with the truth of God’s gracious self-disclosure. The closer you get to declaring the Bible, then the closer you are to saying, with rightful authority, “Thus says the Lord.” The farther off you are in possible imaginative reconstructions and inconceivable implications, then the farther away you are from being able to say, with any sort of confidence, “Thus says the Lord.”
In other words, because the content is bound up with God’s self-disclosure and revelation, the definition presupposes a great deal of the preacher’s authority, of his objective authority. Now there are subjective elements in authority that I’ll come to in due course.
2. It is not mere expository lecturing.
That is ruled out by definitional component number three. The aim of the sermon, at the proximate level, is to inform, rebuke, instruct in righteousness, call to decision, elicit faith, and so forth. The sermon is not an art form to be admired. It is not an expository lecture or an amusing string of anecdotes.
It is, at the end of the day, some kind of summons. The aim is the edification of the people of God. The ultimate aim is the glory of God. The sermon is never an end in itself. Never. So it cannot be reduced to the mere expository lecture. It has a burden beyond the mere content of explaining the passage.
3. It is through human personality.
Murray M’Cheyne (Godly Mr. M’Cheyne, as he was known), in the last century in Scotland, died at the age of 29. He used to say, “A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hands of a holy God,” for there is a subjective component to authority. Namely, as your people get to know you and assess your integrity, your walk with God, your knowledge of God, and your grasp of his truth (and your ability to apply it to people’s lives with compassion, integrity, and insight), so your believability as an individual increases.
If, for example, you are perceived to have a wonderful gift of rhetoric and a very fine mind but basically the personality and people skills of a shark, your credibility will be somewhat diminished. Or if you are all wonderfully smarmy and sweet but you can’t think your way out of a paper bag, then when you’re trying to explain something structured to university students, quite frankly, you’re authority level is going to be reduced, even if what you are saying is the truth.
Or if you’re calling people to holiness and discipline when, quite frankly, there’s no evidence of discipline anywhere in your life, then clearly, again, your authority is going to be reduced. However, if the gospel of God has so been working out in your life that when you talk about the joy of the Lord and confidence in his wisdom and goodness … when people look at you and say, “Yes, that preacher, that clergyperson, really has gone through some terrible struggles and come out full of the joy of the Lord. I must listen!” … then clearly, your authority has been enhanced.
4. This definition presupposes a certain simplicity about the task.
Rather refreshingly, it helps us maintain our focus, however complex the job is. The last thing I would want from a series like this is that everybody goes away saying, “It’s such a big job. I can’t do it. I might as well just go back to what I’ve always been doing.”
There is a sense in which the preacher’s job is very simple. I know it’s difficult. I know there are complexities. We’ll come to the complexities. Yet there is a sense in which it is very simple, and that has been put nowhere more refreshingly, I think, than in the first book (of which I am aware) written in the English language on preaching.
It was written by William Perkins, who was one of the mediators between the Magisterial Reformation and the English Reformation. The book is called The Art of Prophesying. It defines preaching like this: “It is to collect the church and to accomplish the number of the elect and to drive wolves away from the folds of the Lord.” Then he says there are four great principles in preaching:
A. To read the text distinctly from canonical Scripture.
That was important in an age where there were many illiterate people and many other people didn’t have Bibles even if they were literate, and so forth.
B. To give it sense and understanding, according to Scripture itself.
Of course, that was the great Reformation principle of comparing Scripture with Scripture. So far, what you’re doing is reading it and saying what it says.
C. To collect a few and profitable points of doctrine out of the natural sense.
That is, see what it says, and then see what kind of truths flow out of it, what kind of teaching (that’s what was meant by doctrine).
D. To apply, if you have the gift, the doctrines to the life and manner of men, in a simple and plain speech.
There’s a sense in which there’s nothing to it. Unfortunately, there are other senses as well, but it is very important to keep in mind what preaching is. It is not to be cast, in the first instance, in a certain style of rhetoric. It is not to be confined to having a certain kind of wooden hunk in front of you or insisting that it be at eleven o’clock just after the fourth hymn.
It is not bound up with a certain kind of personality type, with an artistic form, or maybe you can’t do it until you’ve read at least 13 books on homiletics. There is a sense in which it is very simple: basically read and teach the content of the Word of God in such a way that people are instructed and reformed. That’s the whole job.
5. This heraldic element is of great importance.
It is not simply the conveying of information. There is an announcement in preaching. It would be at this point, if I had time, that I would spend an hour or so on kērygma, kēryssō, euaggelizomai and such terms, for the thrust of such terminology in the New Testament is this, as I have called it, heraldic element.
It is why I still insist on using the word preaching, although it sounds archaic. In some components of our society, that’s the wrong word to use. Preaching sounds to many ears like moralizing. “Oh, he’s a preacher,” which being interpreted means he’s telling people off, sounds superior, and looks down his long, self-righteous nose. That’s what preaching is to some people.
Yet I’m reluctant to give up the term. I’m reluctant to let it slide, to drift off to teaching or speaking or instructing. I could live with proclaiming because, in biblical preaching there is a heraldic element, a proclamation element, an announcement: “This is the good news!” Or, to use the language of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5, you are an ambassador for the king, and the ambassador has an announcement to make.
It’s not cozy advice or even erudite instruction. It may include good advice, which could even be cozy, and I hope it’s not uninstructive, but over all of that, there is a heraldic element, an announcement, a proclamation. Otherwise, it is not preaching. It may be very good teaching, but it is not preaching.
So now, let me turn to a preliminary defense of preaching. I’ve tried to outline what has gone wrong, to say what preaching is (I’ve still not yet defined expository preaching, merely preaching), and then analyzed or unpacked the definition a bit. Now I would like to turn to a preliminary defense of preaching (not expository preaching, not yet, just preaching).
Why would I bother to defend it? After all, doesn’t Anthony Trollope’s the Reverend Obadiah Slope have the last word on the matter? “A monstrous monologue by a moron to mutes.” Don’t the social scientists tell us that there is really no learning without expression? Here you have all the communication going one way. This is unwise, surely. What shall we say?
1. The most basic act of revelation that God himself takes in the Scripture (say for the incarnation) is his speech.
God is a talking God. Oh, it’s true, he does perform great acts, but the burning bush was merely an intellectual curiosity until its significance was explained. Certainly Sinai thundered, but what you obey is the Decalogue. Even God’s self-disclosure in Acts is regularly portrayed in Scripture as the function of his speech.
So God is self-disclosed in nature. How did nature come about? God spoke. “ ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” God regularly is portrayed in Scripture as a talking God, who works his providence, his salvation, his creation, and his revelation through speech acts. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.” “He sent forth his word and healed them.”
So strong is this that, ultimately, the supreme act of God’s revelation uses this language to be described: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” That’s a description of Christ, but it is word language that is being used to describe him. Or “In the past God spoke to the fathers through the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken unto us en huios.” Not by his Son, as if the Son is one more agent of speech like the prophets. “… he has spoken unto us in the Son-Word.” It is the controlling metaphor of speech that defines even the Son revelation.
2. Scripture itself, especially under the terms of the new covenant, seems to reserve a special place for preaching; that is, for heraldic utterance full of the gospel.
Now I wish, here, I could take an hour just to work through a batch of texts with you. Instead, let me suggest you do one of two things: Take a concordance, and look up every instance of kēryssō, kērygma, and euaggelizomai. Start with that. There’s more, but start with that.
Alternatively, read the following texts before tomorrow, meditate on them, and pray over them tonight by your bed. Matthew 10:6–7; Mark 3:14; Mark 13:10; Luke 24:45–49; Act 5:42; Acts 6:2–4; Romans 10:14–17; 1 Corinthians 1:17–24; 1 Corinthians 2:1–5; 1 Corinthians 9:16; Philippians 1:12–18 (along with Peter O’Brien’s commentary), 2 Corinthians 2:16–17, certainly 2 Corinthians 5; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 4:2–5, and Titus 1:3. There are many other passages. That will keep you on your knees in prayer for a while!
Romans 10:14: “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ ”
Now, you see, the language is not accidental. Paul could have said, “How can they share unless they are sent?” He could have said, “How can they hear without someone instructing them?” He could have said, “How can they hear unless someone bears personal testimony to the witness of God in their lives to them?” Yet he uses heraldic element and then ties it, if you please, to Isaiah and Revelation language. We’ll reflect on this further in a few moments.
3. In the Gospels, Jesus Christ sets out to teach and to preach.
What I mean by this is when you look at purpose clauses in the Gospels and ask why Jesus goes here or there or somewhere else, almost without exception (there are only a couple of exceptions in all four gospels), he goes somewhere to teach and preach. He does not go somewhere to hold a healing meeting. He does not go somewhere to cast out demons. He does not go somewhere to walk on water.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I am not a cessationist. I am not saying that he doesn’t do those things. I’m saying that when the purpose clauses are factored in, again and again and again, in a very striking way, when he goes somewhere it is in order to preach and teach. Again and again and again.
Then someone confronts him along the line, and he has compassion on them and heals them. Or after he’s finished preaching, after the dusk is falling, then people bring their ill people, and he heals them. Those two are seen as kingdom witnesses, don’t misunderstand. Yet in terms of his intent, what he goes to do, his plan, and his purpose in self-disclosure, in declaration, and in announcement of the kingdom, it is bound up with announcing the good news. Preaching. Teaching.
4. Preaching, precisely because it is in monologue form, has some decided advantages.
Now here one simply must confront some of the social scientists, some of the educational scientists, who insist, “No impression without expression. That which goes in the ear is not learned very well; that which goes in the ear and eye is learned better. That which goes in the ear and the eye, and then is expressed with the hand is learned best of all.” All those sorts of things. You’ve probably taken courses that have taught you all of that.
As usual, there’s a component of truth to them. It’s only part of the truth, however. Contrast, let’s say, a discussion group, on the following points … Can a discussion group go powerfully for mind and heart the way a good sermon can? It’s very difficult. With a very good discussion leader, it sometimes can, but then the discussion leader is sort of waffling over into preaching sometimes in any case. Where there’s sort of inductive study … “Now what do you think of this, Josephine?”
“Oh, what do you think about it, Michael?”
“Well, I think …”
How, then, does this build up into some massive structure, bringing glory to God and then driven home to deal with somebody’s adultery in the church? Not likely. In an inductive Bible study, the whole idea is to be as courteous as possible, and in a postmodern generation, inductive Bible studies have shifted their function. It used to be that there were inductive Bible studies in order to find out what the Bible says. Not anymore. Inductive Bible studies in the postmodern generation are primarily so that everyone can express an opinion.
The one rule of inductive Bible studies is that you must never say that any opinion is wrong. That steps outside the postmodern paradigm. In which case, you can never hear the Word of God. You see, a powerfully put together sermon is capable of displaying some grand theme in its proportions, structures, and human relevance. Such a sermon can hold the mirror up to ourselves and focus on particular needs and sins and self-deceptions.
There is a certain intensity to it. If there’s intensity in inductive Bible study, it’s because somebody is getting angry. Then there’s sort of an intensity in the room. “I wonder how he’s going to stick his foot in it this time.” Intensity in a sermon brings, very often, a kind of solemnity, a holy hush over the whole congregation.
Now not for a moment am I suggesting that there is no place for small-group Bible studies. Far from it. I encourage them, especially in a larger congregation. Nor am I suggesting there are not some things usefully done in discussion groups, better done in discussion groups than in a sermon. Don’t misunderstand me.
I am saying, however, that insofar as what educational theorists tell us is true (namely, that discussion groups and other forms of communication have some advantages in some arenas), they do not tell us the whole truth. There are some things done well in a sermon that are better done, as far as I can see, in a sermon, in a proclamatory address with truth on fire in a human personality, than in any other way. Moreover, insofar as what they say about the sermon is true, there are several things that can be done to ameliorate the deficiencies.
For example, some churches organize a kind of “talk-back” session every once in a while. That is, after the sermon, you sing two or three hymns, have a cup of coffee, and then there is a talk-back session on what was said. “What does that mean? How does this work out in our lives?” In churches with adult class Sunday school, sometimes it works out that you have the sermon and the main service first, and then Sunday school classes with adults, with whoever preached the sermon there mediating, talking, sharing, and answering questions.
Moreover, in Puritan times, homes were taught how to handle sermons. It was expected that any Christian home would have the father insisting that people take notes. There would be a review of the main points around the dinner table and praying over them in family devotions. That was part of the structure of listening to sermons responsibly.
Now how many Christian homes that you know do that with sermons today? How many homes are instructed in doing that? We provide outline sheets very often. That way they don’t have to remember. They can just sort of put them in there and then file it in the wastebasket when they get home and feel that they’ve remembered!
Not only so, but even within the sermon itself, there are ways of using what John Stott calls dialogical preaching. You find wonderful examples of that kind of thing in the Bible itself, of course. There’s Malachi again: “An oracle: The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi. ‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’ ‘Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ the Lord says. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.’ Edom may say, ‘Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild.’ But this is what the Lord says …”
In other words, what does he have going here but a kind of dialogue? He’s responding to what people might be saying out there. “This is what God says, but you say this.” “Well, God says this, but you say that.” So he has a kind of dialogue going that brings people right to the same point. It brings people in. It sucks people into the discourse and then explodes their worldview.
All of those things crop up again and again in Scripture. Paul uses this sort of argument, for example, in Romans 3 and elsewhere. I’m sure you’re familiar with the train of thought. It’s very telling indeed. Good preachers do it all the time. “What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision?” You can hear the pause in his voice. Click, click, click, click. Everybody is asking.
“Much in every way! First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God. What if some did not have faith?” You can just see Paul anticipating objections out there: “Yes, but supposing they’ve been entrusted with the Word of God, and they don’t have faith.” He has anticipated it. “Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?”
“Supposing God speaks, and they don’t listen?” “Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar.” He has sucked them in from these possible objections and then slammed back. That’s good monologue communication that is nevertheless dialogical internally. So that, with a little imagination and creativity, the monologue is less bad than some people think.
5. Above all, preaching brings God down to men and women; it mediates Jesus Christ to human beings.
The best preaching repeats God’s initial address. It is a re-presentation of God’s verbal self-disclosure. When God spoke to Moses, he was revealing himself. When God spoke to Isaiah, he was revealing himself.
Insofar as preaching is a re-presentation of that word it is a re-presentation of God. As God spoke, was experienced, and his presence felt in that context of the revealed word, so, mediated by the Spirit and anointed by God, preaching characterized by unction mediates God to human beings all over again.
In that sense, a sermon is not so much an exhortation as a revelation, which is why the Puritans called it prophesying. Now I know there are all kinds of dangers bound up in calling sermons prophecy. I know that. (There are also dangers in some of the ways we use definitions today, incidentally, but that’s another matter.) This is not so much a New Testament use of prophesying as a systematic-theological one, but it’s one with a certain kind of integrity to it and needs to be understood sympathetically.
It’s not that the sermon is revelation in the sense that it is bringing brand-new material that has never been thought of before, never been revealed before, or never understood before. That’s not the point. The point is that as God revealed himself in word and presenced himself with his people through word, mediated by Spirit in days past, so far also as we re-present that to the minds of men and women today, God presences himself again and reveals himself afresh.
Thus, it is a heraldic declaration of revelation. In that limited sense, Spirit-anointed preaching is a revelatory act. Small wonder, then, that Paul can say things like, “God has ordained that men and women be saved through the foolishness of the thing preached.” Now I know the form of the expression does not mean, as in the Authorized Version, “through the foolishness of preaching,” as if preaching itself is critical apart from the content. No, no, no. The form of the expression means “through the foolishness of the thing preached.”
The intriguing thing is that he, nevertheless, does say, “through the foolishness of the thing preached,” not “through the foolishness of the thing thought about” or “the foolishness of the thing shared” or “the foolishness of the thing talked about” or “the foolishness of the thing discussed.” It is through the foolishness of the thing heralded. Thus, an ambassador says, “Be reconciled to God as though God himself were imploring you.”
Thus, it is God, in this limited sense, speaking afresh, revealing himself, in a heraldic, revelatory act. In fact, if you were to take a concordance, or if you have one of these programs on your computer than can collocate words, type in on your computer word and Spirit in either order, and get it to kick out every passage in the Bible, then read it. The collocation between word and Spirit is stunning! They are not to be pit over against one another.
The Puritans referred to their prophesying conferences, which ran in Elizabethan times until she abolished them about 1576. In these prophesying conferences, they did, in fact, what the Proclamation Trust does in England today. They brought in preachers, and they had assigned them texts in advance. They all had to preach, and then they would sit around and criticize them. It was a way by which preachers could train other preachers.
I will conclude with this point. There is also, I think, an element of personal experience. Packard, in one of his essays, writes, “Christianity on earth as in heaven is, I echo 1 John 1:4, fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
