Thesis 23 We must preach rather than teach.
I don’t know if it happens at all seminaries, but it happened at the seminary I attended. Seminaries, presumably, are established to prepare men for gospel ministry. But where I went more young men than not were there preparing not to serve in the church, but in the seminary. They came, they looked up to their professors, and they dreamed that one day they too would be professors. Trouble was, precious few of them make it that far. The pressures of families and work cause most who had hoped for an academic career to “settle” for a pastoral one. What tends to console those who “settle” I suspect, is the prospect of having a flock of sheep to serve as a substitute for a classroom of seminarians. These men can pretend to be professors, because they are given, as pastors, a captive audience. The result? Sermons that sound, feel, and act more like lectures than sermons. Preachers who are really teachers. And sheep with swollen heads and shriveled hearts. What we are too often left with is “worship” where we hurry through the preliminaries so we can get to the good stuff, where the pastor downloads his knowledge into the heads of the flock.
We, especially those who us who consider ourselves heirs of the Reformation, have jumped from the wise belief that sound thinking can change our hearts to the foolish notion that sound teaching will automatically change our hearts. We react against the sloppy sentimentalism of the broader evangelical church, where we are told that doctrine divides, and we are encouraged to merely emote when we gather together for worship, and fall off the other side of the horse. We think that if we have all our theological ducks in a row, then we are ready to inherit the kingdom.
We need to reform our thinking about our feelings. We need to confess that “dry orthodoxy” is not only real, but is pandemic. What we need is preaching. Preaching, like teaching, certainly involves and includes the passing along of information. But unlike teaching, it is designed to go through the mind and into the heart. Preaching not only explains, but exhorts. It not only proclaims, but pierces. Preaching causes those who hear it not merely to affirm that what they have heard is true, but causes them to cry out, “Brethren- what must we do to be saved.” Preaching causes hearts of flesh to burn with joy for the glory of the Son.
We must put away the pride that says, from the pulpit, “I must give the people some new insight they could not have discovered on their own.” We must put away the pride that says from the pew, “Let us see if the pastor can come up with something that is both new, and orthodox.” We must come to the preaching of the Word prepared to be changed. The Word is not smarter than a super computer, but sharper than a two-edged sword. Teaching talks about the sword. Preaching wields it.
Yes, of course we are. Before, however, you start packing for the Rapture Express, you might want to remember that your grandparents were also living in the last days. And their grandparents before them, and their grandparents before them. Luther lived in the last days, as did Aquinas before him and Augustine before him. Same for Polycarp, John the Revelator, Peter and Paul. We have been in the last days for close to 2000 years now. How much longer will the last days last? I don’t know.
The Bible itself describes its own times as being a part of the end times. Among other places, Peter, during his sermon at Pentecost describes what everyone was seeing by alluding to Joel’s prophecy of the last days, “But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,
That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your young men shall see visions,
Your old men shall dream dreams.
And on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy (Acts 2:16-17).
Does that mean Jesus will return soon? He certainly might return soon, but this specific text does not say that. We commit the fallacy of equivocation, using the phrase “last days” in two different ways but act as though we are only treating it one way. If “last days” always means that Jesus is coming soon, and soon cannot be 2,000 years from now, then the Bible is in error. “Last days” however can refer to any number of things. It can refer to the last days of the old economy. When the New Testament was written the utter destruction of Jerusalem was coming soon, and with it the end of the temple system.
Last days can refer to those days immediately preceding the physical return of Jesus to earth. No one would dispute that. He is coming again, and my hope is that it will be soon indeed. Last days can also, however, refer to that time between the ascension of Christ to the right hand of the Father and His return. And that, we know, is a time period that has almost stretched to 2000 years by now.
All three of these uses are perfectly legitimate ways to speak of the last days, though each can be referring to actual days that are rather far apart. The old economy has come to a close. We are in the time period between His ascension and His return. And we might be just around the corner from His return. All of which means that we are called, as our grandparents were, and their grandparents were, to be ready for His coming, to pray for His coming, to look for His coming.
Jesus Himself, when He walked the earth, did not know the day or the hour (Matt. 24:36). It demands immeasurable hubris for any man to suggest that he knows what Jesus did not. May He grant us all the grace to long for His return, to prepare for His return. May He find us faithful.
Dwarves, as a rule, are a rather recalcitrant lot. It was their stubborn refusal to follow directions that caused some of them to suffer the indignity of being turned into dufflepuds, in C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. No doubt some distant cousins of the duffers were found in the stable at the end of the chronicles, in The Last Battle. You remember what happens there. History has drawn to a close. Aslan, the great king, and son of the Emperor Beyond the Sea has consummated all things. Some mule-headed dwarves refuse to be taken in by any religious hornswaggle, including faith in Aslan. The dwarves insist that time has not ended, that they are in fact still locked in an old stable. When the redeemed seek to awaken them by offering them food from Aslan’s table, they insist that they have been offered dung from the stable floor.
While I deny with vigor that the lost in hell suffer only because they don’t know they are in heaven, there is a lesson to be learned here. Lewis makes the same point when he says, “When infinite joy is offered us, [we are] like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slums because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Which is exactly how we like it.
Lewis, however,still missed something here. Isn’t it possible that the reason we have such a hard time believing that the king’s banquet is indeed a feast is because we are already feasting in the gutter with our mud pies? That is, the reason we are satisfied with so little is not because we are all pig-headed philistines, but because even a tidbit of the grace of God overpowers us. There is a beauty and a power in His grace, in whatever form it takes. Like Lucy’s bottle of healing cordial, it only takes a drop. The grace and the beauty of God are omnipresent, and so we find it hard to take our eyes off the beauty of this thing which reflects His glory to look through a glass that is somewhat less dim.
But Lewis is right in this; there really is a banquet, and it really is far more grand than the mud pies. Let’s follow a few different versions of the invitation/encounter in the gutter, and see what we shall see. Here am I, a servant of the king. I have been sent out into the highways and byways to be sure that my Master’s feast is full. I find you in the gutter with your mud pie. Each of us has an opportunity to sin here, and each an opportunity to do the right thing.
Suppose, for instance, that I look at you, see your filthy little fingers, see the silly delight you are taking in the mud and conclude, “Forget it. He’s happy where he is. Leave him be. Anyone that foolish just can’t be worth the trouble.” Have I been nice? I could walk away with a smile, and you could watch me walk away thinking, “What a nice, smiley man. I wonder why he was looking at me,” and then get back to your mud. That’s one option in which I sin, and you don’t.
Now let’s try another. I’ve come to fetch you. I see you in the mud, and I say, “Hey you blamed fool! What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you any more sense than a pig? The Master, I’ll never understand why, has sent me for you. Now get out of that muck, and get a move on. That stuff is nasty. Let’s go.” On the one hand, in this scenario I was nicer to you in a sense. I didn’t leave you where I found you. I told you about the good news of the great feast. On the other hand, I wasn’t as nice as I should have been. I didn’t exhibit much of the Master’s grace. In fact I pride, forgetting that I only became the servant of the Master because He used His grace and power to get me to see that I was in the gutter.
Stick with the second scenario for a moment. Now let’s look at how you could respond. You could conclude that if the Master is anything like the servant, you just can’t believe that His feast would be better than your mud pie. While such a response would be understandable, it would also cause you to miss the feast. The hard truth is that the Master doesn’t perfect us before He sends us out with word about the feast, knowing full well that we will probably stink up the joint serving as His ambassadors. The Master, after all, isn’t a tame lion.
Consider though this third scenario. You are still there in the gutter. I say, “The King has invited you to come to His feast. You will find there delights and joys far surpassing what you have here in your gutter-“ “See here,” you say, “who invited you to knock what I have going on? You certainly are an arrogant cuss, aren’t you? It’s not terribly nice of you to come along bragging about how your feast is better than mine.” “I’m sorry,” I suggest, “did I say the feast was mine? How clumsy of me. No, it is the King’s feast. He is the source of all its delights. (And, by the way, He is even the source of that pie you have there.) I add nothing to the feast. But it is indeed far greater than what you have here. I know because I once also played with mud pies in the gutter.” “Go away you mean-spirited, old coot. God gave me these mud pies, and you should be ashamed of yourself for knocking them.”
Now who is in sin?
We, by His grace, should believe Jesus when He tells us, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it abundantly” (John 10:10). We see, through His power, that giving up our lives isn’t the path of duty, but rather the only way to gain our lives. And we do, because of His love shed abroad in our hearts, go out and invite any who would come to join us in this feast. We ought to remember the wisdom of Tony Campolo, who rightly reminds us that the kingdom of God is a party. We are both building and reveling in that kingdom when we come to that feast because we are making manifest, and drinking in the glory of God. This is blessing and not burden. Would that we would see the grace of God in all that we do, that our joy and thanksgiving would be such a part of our lives that we’d known around the world as the people of the feast.
Because we are given to self-interest, the first place our minds tend to go when hardship comes to town is bewilderment. We can’t begin to understand how or why God would allow pain to come our way. Eventually, by His grace we usually come to the place where we’re willing to admit that God could use even our hardship for our good and for His glory. We, after all, have always been impressed by His creativity. We can’t even make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. He can make sows, purses and universes out of nothing. So, yes when God gives us lemons, we’ll cry our tears, and then make the best of it by making some lemonade.
What we don’t often do, but ought always do, is look at the hardships He sends as opportunities. What if I told you that for weeks on end the whole of the believing world would become obsessed with the possibility of dying? What if I told you that you would have a whole month of Sundays when there would be no sportsball games clamoring for your attention? What if I told you that whole nations that bowed at the feet of their government leaders were about to find out their government leaders had feet of clay?
Would you be excited to hear of these opportunities? Or would we miss them? John F. Kennedy, hardly a man known for great wisdom, said, “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis be aware of the danger—but recognize the opportunity.” The first part of the counsel is important- we do need to be aware of the danger. I’m not suggesting that when crisis comes, whether it comes in the form of a pandemic, an economic meltdown or some other unpleasantness that we should go through our days with maniacal grins on our faces. I am saying we should go beyond acknowledging God can use hardship and instead give thanks for it, and look for our calling in the midst of it. If we would live our lives coram Deo, before the face of God, then we had better carpe diem, seize the day.
Our Lord has appointed us as His stewards over the creation. When He returns He will require of us an account of how we have managed the talents He has put in our hands. Will we look at Him, as we look over the spring of 2020 and say, “What could I do? You sent such a crisis.” Or, will we instead be able to say, “I saw the opportunity You gave us and I moved forward with it.
God tells us that it is the wicked who flee when none pursue but that the righteous are as bold as a lion (Proverbs 28:1). We, of all the men in this world, have been given by the God who made us a fear of Him, and a love that casts out every other fear. Our calling is to live in light of that truth, in good times and in bad, until He comes again.
Of course. And of course not. The sermon is that part of the service where God’s Word exposes our failures, and proclaims Christ’s provision. The end is not the sin, but neither can the sin be ignored. We do not preach simply to tell the congregation, “Stop it. Try harder. This is the right way to go.” Rather we preach to tell the congregation, “Stop trying harder. Jesus already went this way.” That is, we want to face our sins, give thanks for the forgiveness of our sins, and in gratitude seek to follow the royal law of love. As such we do indeed preach sin. The notion that we hide the sins of the flock, so as not to offend, to keep them from leaving the church is pure folly. No church has enough musical skill, no pastor enough entertaining style, no coffee shop enough tasty coffee to keep the crowds coming. What we have are the words of eternal life, which begin with Repent, and end with and believe the gospel.
Even in less seeker-friendly services though we can find the same problem. Here we are willing to preach against sin, but against the sins of those who are absent. We may fuss about the bad theology, or the bad strategy of the church down the street. Or we may thunder against the sins of the world. But it is the sheep of our fold that need to know and repent from their sins.
In what sense then is it wrong to preach against the sins of the congregation? Well, we are not called when we step into the pulpit to deliver a sermon inspired by Mr. Jones’ inability to make it to church on time, or Mrs. Brown’s immodest clothing choices. Now it may well be that someone needs to talk to Mr. Jones, or Mrs. Brown, but the sermon is not the time for that. We do not take up the time we have been given to open up the text of God’s Word in order to do private discipleship in public. We do not accuse the brethren in a context in which they cannot speak to their own defense. We do not abuse our opportunity to put someone in his place. That’s not our place when in the pulpit.
How do we avoid both of these failures? The preacher should preach to his own sins. It is likely that this will include the sins of his own congregation. But thankfully they don’t exclude the preacher. When we preach against our own sins we can address where “we” go wrong, and are in need of grace and repentance, rather than a situation where I preach against where “you” go wrong.
Preaching ought to convict. Otherwise it’s just wasted time. It ought, however, to also provide the solution to our guilt, in extolling the provision in Christ. May we preachers decrease, and the One we preach, may He increase.
