When a preacher preaches, he must preach the Word of God (2 Tim 4:1–4). Unfortunately, we know that’s not always the way it goes. From the beginning of time, false teachers have taught their own ideas instead of God’s. Jesus confronted the Pharisees and scribes of His day, quoting the prophet Isaiah, saying, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” And the Lord added, “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men" (Mark 7:6–8). False teachers are present throughout the entire New Testament. Sadly, in the book of Revelation, followers of Balaam, the Nicolaitans, and Jezebel were allowed by the churches in Pergamum and Thyatira to teach their false doctrine from inside the churches (Rev 2:14, 15, 20).
Today, there are so-called preachers who
continue to neglect the Word of God and instead peddle self-help tips, moral
lessons, ecstatic experiences, political and social agendas, pseudo-Christian
practices, and health and wealth promises—none of which have anything to do
with the gospel of Jesus Christ which is a message of reconciliation between
man and God. At best, they are distracting, man-centered talks. At worst, they
are damning heresies taught by wolves in sheep’s clothing.
There are of course many faithful preachers
who have as their main goal the reading, interpretation, explanation, and
application of the written Word of God. I trust you’ve settled into a
gospel-centered church and submitted yourself to a pastor and church leadership
who faithfully teach and preach the Scriptures each and every week. If your
pastor is a faithful preacher of the Bible, your right response is to
acknowledge that what you hear from his pulpit is in fact God’s Word, not just a man’s.
In other words, when we listen to a sermon, we are not listening to the word of
a man—we are listening to God Himself, through the agency of that man. Biblical
preaching necessitates that we understand whose mind is actually being
revealed—it is the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16).
Several months after preaching the gospel
in Thessalonica, Paul wrote to the newly established church in that city. In
that follow-up letter, the Apostle was constantly thanking God that when the
Thessalonian believers received his message, they “accepted it not as the word
of men, but for what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess 2:13). They didn’t
dismiss Paul’s message as if it was his own manmade conception.
They accepted his words as God’s words. We need to be like this when we go to
church. Assuming our preacher’s goal is to correctly interpret and explain
Scripture, then when we hear his sermons, we are listening to God’s Word not a
man’s. We need to acknowledge this reality every Sunday.
Martin Luther comments:
My dear friend, regard it as a real treasure that God
speaks into your physical ear. The only thing that detracts from this gift is
our deficient knowledge of it. To be sure, I do hear the sermon; however, I am
wont to ask: ‘Who is speaker?’ The pastor? By no means! You do not hear the
pastor. Of course, the voice is his, but the words he employs are really spoken
by my God. Therefore, I must hold the Word of God in high esteem that I may become
an apt pupil of the Word. If we looked upon it as the
Word of God, we would be glad to go to church, to listen to the sermon, and to
pay attention to the precious Word.[1]
To be sure, Christians can and should have
a steady intake of God’s Word in their personal Bible reading. We have the
privilege of owning our own copy of God’s written Word, and we do well to
saturate ourselves with it. James calls it looking “intently at the perfect
law” (Jas 1:25). But personal Bible reading does not replace the exercise of
listening to God’s gifted representatives when they preach His Word. There’s a
dynamic in the preaching event that God has determined to be necessary for
every Christian. That’s why preachers must preach God’s Word, and listeners
must humbly listen and respond to it.
The Apostle Peter makes the case that
believers “have been born again not of seed which is perishable but
imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet
1:23). He then explains, “The word of the Lord abides forever. And this is the
word which was preached to you” (1 Pet 1:25). It’s through the faithful
preaching of the eternal Word of God that sinners are regenerated. Something
supernatural happens when the Word of God is preached. God is at work in that
moment. Submitting ourselves to that preaching will have a life-changing effect
on us because “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any
two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of
both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the
heart” (Heb 4:12).
So, to avoid preaching—to relegate the
preaching event to an optional extra—to regard our pastor’s words as simply his
own, and not God’s—is to undermine the purposes of God. We must approach the
sermon event expecting God to speak.
Not only should we anticipate God’s voice
in the preaching event, but we should demand it from our preachers. We must
provide the context and support for our pastor to prepare a message from God.
First Peter 4:11 says, “Whoever speaks, let him speak, as it were, the
utterances of God . . . so that in all things God may be glorified through
Jesus Christ."
I graduated from a seminary that had one
goal—to prepare men to preach God’s Word. For ten years, I was involved in a
Bible college training program in New Zealand that did the same. We believed we
were doing a good job of training preachers to minister the gospel to the
unsaved and bring the Word of God to bear on the lives of Christians. But one
thing we came to realize is that the supply of Bible preachers needs to be
matched by a demand from listeners. If churches don’t want their pastors to
preach God’s Word, those pastors will soon be out of a job. If a church doesn’t
demand that their pastor preaches God’s Word then that pastor is not encouraged
to do God’s will. Over time, that lack of support and accountability will bring
about laziness in the pulpit. Instead, we must demand a message from God. The
preaching event is the high point of our week. We need to hear from God. Our
pastor must be encouraged to preach in this way. Oh, that more churches would
say about their pastor:
Fling
him into his office, tear the office sign from the door and nail on the sign: Study. Take him off the mailing list,
lock him up with his books—get him all kinds of books—and his typewriter and
his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts, broken hearts, the flippant
lives of a superficial flock, and the Holy God. Force him to be the one man in
our surfeited communities who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box
with God til he learns how short his arms are; engage him to wrestle with God
all the night through. And let him come out only when he is bruised and beaten
into being a blessing. . . . Shut his garrulous mouth forever spouting
“remarks” and stop his tongue always tripping lightly over every nonessential.
Require him to have something to say before he dares break silence. Bend his
knees in the lonesome valley, fire him from the PTA and cancel his country club
membership; burn his eyes with weary study, wreck his emotional poise with
worry for God, and make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with
God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God.
Rip
out his telephone, burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets, refuse his glad
hand, and put water in the gas tank of his community buggy. Give him a Bible
and tie him to the pulpit and make him preach the Word of the living God. Test
him, quiz him and examine him; humiliate him for his ignorance of things
divine, and shame him for his glib comprehension of finances, batting averages,
and political in-fighting. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist,
scorn his insipid morality, refuse his supine intelligence, ignore his
broadmindedness which is only flatheadedness and compel him to be a minister of
the Word. . . .
Form
a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day: “Sir, we wish to
see Jesus.” When at long last, he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a
word from God; if he does not, then dismiss him and tell him you can read the
morning paper, digest the television commentaries, think through the day's
superficial problems, manage the community's myriad drives, and bless assorted
baked potatoes and green beans ad infinitum better than he can. Command him not
to come back until he's read and re-read, written and re-written, until he can
stand up, worn and forlorn, and say, “Thus saith the Lord.” Break him across the board of his
ill-gotten popularity, smack him hard with his own prestige, corner him with
questions about God, and cover him with demands for celestial wisdom, and give
him no escape until he is backed against the wall of the Word; then sit down
before him and listen to the only word he has left: God's Word. Let him be
totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order
him to walk around it, camp on it, suffer with it, and come at last to speak it
backwards and forwards until all he says about it rings with the truth of
eternity. . . .
And when he is burned out by the flaming Word that coursed through
him, when he is consumed at last by the fiery Grace blazing through him, and
when he who was privileged to translate the truth of God to man is finally
transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently, blow a muted
trumpet and lay him down softly, place a two-edged sword on his coffin and
raise a tune triumphant, for he was a brave soldier of the Word and e’er he
died he had become spokesman for his God.[2]
Encourage your pastor in this way. Develop
this kind of appetite for the preaching of God’s Word in the church. The key is
to anticipate that God’s voice would be heard from the pulpit. We must demand
it both for ourselves and for our pastor’s sake.
But, as we will see next week, to be an
effective listener, we also need to develop a humble heart.
[1] Martin Luther, Sermons on the
Gospel of St. John: Chapters 1–4, vol. 22 of Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia
Publishing House, 1957), 528.
[2] Floyd Doud Shafer, "And Preach as You Go!" Christianity
Today 5, no. 13 (March 27, 1961): 8–9.
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