Biblical Evangelism Talk Conference Talk 1

Preaching as Worship 

November 2005 

My aim in these reflections is twofold:

1. To excite you with the Lord who you are learning to proclaim. It is possible to teach you all sorts of techniques and tips and tricks for handling and using the Bible but none of them is the slightest use to you, or to non-Christians or to the church unless you are gripped and thrilled with God. I don’t know the state of your heart as you come this weekend. I have been to this conference on a number of occasions and there is always a mixture of people:

Some of you are thirsting for him. You are yearning to be used by him. And I want to tell you that you will be, because that, rather than skill or eloquence, is the criteria God is looking for in people he is going to use

Some of you have come because you like the intellectual task of teaching the scriptures and you are looking for help and encouragement. That’s a noble aim and we will do our best to help. But take a care that you aren’t just here because you like the intellectual task. The Bible says that mere knowledge puffs up. At the end of the day the necessary result of your Bible-handling is not an intellectual one, but a spiritual one of growth in people’s lives and worship being given to God

A few of you may have come because you believe that public speakers and leaders in churches get the praise and adulation of the Christian world and you have an image of yourself receiving the same. If that is you, beware. It is all too easy to do things for the praise of men and miss out on the glory of God. Jesus said that the fine-looking religious types of his day who did things for the praise of men had their reward in that praise but nothing from God. God is looking for speakers and preachers and leaders who are prepared to seem fools for Christ, what Paul describes as the off-scourings of the world. Demeaned, abused, apparent failures in the world’s eyes, martyrs. In them he will reveal his glory

Some of you have come because your staffworker bullied you and you don’t know quite why you are here. Be encouraged. The reason they will have done that is because they perceive a potential for Christian service in you that you may not perceive in yourself yet. Use this weekend to pray that God will use you now and in the future to bring him glory. Even if you have never thought about giving a talk or Bible study before let the thought of doing that get hold of you. I was speaking at a houseparty 3 weeks ago. At the end there was a period left for testimony about what people had received from the teaching. One girl got up, trembling all over. She said “I have never said anything in public ever, but I believe God has put it on my heart to say this…” And then she gave a word that was clearly prophetic to that situation. It just opened up our hearts. She had no skill, no experience, just a little courage but she was used by God because she was open and willing. And you can be too.

2. My second aim is to give you practical help in the task bringing God’s word to God’s world with power. When I use the word “preaching” this weekend, that is just my shorthand for Bible-handling in your situation. I don’t just mean what happens in church pulpits. So when you hear me use the word you mentally substitute “evangelistic Bible study,” “small group talk,” “CU meeting,” or whatever the context you have for bringing God’s word to people.

I believe in preaching because I believe as in Romans 1 that the gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes. Romans 10 says:

everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on him in whom they haven’t believed? And how are they going to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they going 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 bring good news.”

Preaching is “good-newsing.” Preachers are good news people. The ones with beautiful feet blessed with the task of bringing the message of God’s triumphant victory. And it isn’t just being good news people to the unconverted, preaching is also good news to the Christian. In Philippians 1 Paul says:

my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith

So our question for this weekend is “how do we bring God’s word to Christian and non-Christian so that they call n the name of the Lord and so that they make progress and have joy in the faith?”

I borrowed the tonight’s message Preaching as Worship from John Piper. I have in mind two questions:

 

What is preaching?

 

Preaching is:

taking God’s word and proclaiming it in such as way as his all-supremacy is seen and rejoiced in. Or…

 

When Paul says “how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news” he is picking up Isaiah 52.

Read Is 52:7-10.

God will end the exile of his people. He will triumph over his enemies. He will vindicate his holy name. He will bring happiness, joy, redemption, salvation, worship. The waste places will break out in singing. The ends of the earth will see it. Paul says – that’s Jesus. That is what God has done in Christ. That is the salvation we are proclaiming, full, vast, free. Therefore proclaim “God reigns” in order that his throne may be established in people’s hearts. He receives glory when it is. The Psalmist says that God is exalted and enthroned on the praises of His people.

 

Has Preaching Had its Day? 

I believe in preaching. But good preaching is in short supply today. There are plenty of myths doing the rounds that preaching has had its day. That in a visual age with short attention spans we need to place the emphasis not on expounding the content word but on the medium that gets and hold attention. We are told that word alone no longer does it. Now that is just a reflection on poor, boring preaching from untrained and thoughtless preachers and the fact that the spirit of the age has got into churches. Whose word do people think this is? It is His word and it always does it. He says “I have sent out my word and it will not return without accomplishing all I gave it to do.”

Another myth doing the rounds is that we can preach without doing so verbally. I am frequently hear St Francis of Assissi quoted “preach the gospel at every opportunity, if necessary use words” to justify a wrong view of evangelism and a wrong view of the kingdom of God. By this view Christians just being in a place doing good works is implicitly extending the kingdom because they are demonstrating Christ.

Last week a student exec member told me that he was getting involved in starting inter-society sports events and that this was evangelism. I asked how it would get him opportunities to speak for Jesus and he looked shocked. He said “no, that’s not right, it is evangelism just because I am doing it. I don’t have to say anything.”

I am sure it is a good thing to do, but it isn’t evangelism and it rests on a very flawed view of the kingdom of God. In the middle of all kinds of good stuff, healings and miracles Jesus said to the disciples “lets move on from here to the surrounding villages in order to preach the good news of the Kingdom, that is why I have come.”

Or another myth, perhaps closer to home for some of us, the myth that preaching is merely teaching. When we preach we are just educating people in knowledge of God and his ways. All that we have to do is communicate truth to the mind and the affections and the will are automatically ignited. If we follow this myth then we will give all our attention to teaching with accuracy but little to applying the text in order to exhort people to do what it says.

The purpose of no text of scripture is that we should merely know stuff. That way we just get puffed up and our preaching dulls because we are only interested in informing the mind, not inflaming passion for God. I asked two young preachers what they hoped to achieve when preaching a passage on God's holiness. One said that his congregation should know that God is holy, the other said that his congregation should leave in a cold sweat because they had met the Holy One.

 

Gazing on Jesus 

With all that in our minds I would like to turn us to 2 Corinthians.

Read 2 Cor. 3:12-4:6, 13-15

The first thing I want you to notice is the goal of preaching in 3:18 – that people who behold the glory of the Lord are transformed into his likeness, from one degree of glory to another, this being produced by the Holy Spirit. That tells me that the task is to get people to behold. When they behold the Spirit is bringing transformation into glory.

Transformation comes when people gaze on Christ with the eyes of their hearts. So when we are opening the Bible our chief question is how do we get them to do that, because when they do they will be changed. The lost will be saved, disciples will grow in the faith and joy. There is growth in Christ

But there is also geographical growth in gospel scope. 4:15 says that we believed, therefore we spoke the gospel in order that grace extends to more and more people. And notice the reason, the outcome – that glory is attributed to God.

So when we are preaching there is growth in glory in us and our hearers and there is spreading of God’s grace through us. All of which rebounds to his eternal praise. People are giving thanks, bringing him their worship.

In 4:5 Paul tells us what this message, this gazing, is that accomplishes this.

what we proclaim is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord

So we proclaim Jesus’ lordship, his sovereign reign, and God shines in hearts to bring the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. The conviction of truth about his glory and the personal knowledge of it. People meet Jesus. They see his face, the imaging forth of God, the exact likeness of his being.

When you are giving your talks here or back home, your goal is NOT education. It is seeing and savouring the glory of God. The goal is worship by people who encounter Christ, who are transformed, who give thanks and in whose hearts Jesus is being enthroned. In their worship and their own subsequent proclamation God’s glory is made much of.

It may sound very obvious to say but God is at the centre of preaching. There are all sorts of therapeutic messages around at the moment that make man the centre, even in churches. Come to church to find out how valuable you are. Come to church for a spiritual backrub to help you through the week. Come to church to be part of a warm, loving family to help with your loneliness. Come to church for comfort and help at a merely human level that misses out on the divine, the eternal and the glorious.

You must not do that. Its easy to do, you will get applause. But not from God, which is the only applause that counts.

Lets take a little look at what Paul says here about the actual task of proclamation.

speaking the message may sound foolish, but it is backed up by the power of God. I see that in 4:13 where he says “we believe, so we speak but that we speak knowing that God who raised Jesus from the dead will also raise us.” So we have confidence when we speak because God has demonstrated the power of the gospel by the resurrection.

See the logic. He says that we do so because we have the same spirit of faith as the Psalmist when he originally wrote these words. And he was writing praise to God because God delivered him from death. So Paul is saying “we can proclaim the Lordship of Christ, in faith, in the face even of suffering death and have confidence that God’s resurrection power is at work for our eternal protection and his glory in bringing the good news. That is why we don’t lose heart in the face of opposition or apparent failure, because he is extending his mighty power for us.

We proclaim in honest ways. No cunning, no deceitfulness, no tampering with God’s word to se if we can make it more palatable or attractive than it seems. 4:2 we do it by open statement of the truth, commending it to the conscience of our hearers

In that sense it isn’t very difficult. We state the truth openly, God works supernaturally. The temptation is to think that we have to produce the result. That temptation grows in situations that humanly speaking seem spiritually barren. Shall we manipulate people, shall we subtly prey on the vulnerable? Shall we bring glory to ourselves by working for the praise of men? You can produce messages with that goal in mind. The desire for popularity is a dreadful snare to preachers and a work of the flesh.

No, we are plain and we don’t have to produce the results. In fact the results we desire can’t be humanly achieved. Not through cleverness or technique or careful crafting of words. Humanly speaking it can’t be done. It is God who transforms and God who opens eyes to see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

We do it with humility. 4:7 we have this treasure in jars of clay. If you find a great treasure you aren’t particularly interested in the clay pots. That’s what we are, clay pots. In whom God has secreted surpassing treasure. Don’t have a high view of yourself because you are the clay pot that God is using. Have a high view of Jesus who is the treasure. A pot should be humbled and trembling with awe that God chooses to use it.

That’s what it says in Isaiah 66. God says:

this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word

If I can put it like this, if the goal of preaching is to produce worship in people’s hearts, it happens because it is coming from worship in ours. Preaching grows out of worship, out of trembling in us, comes with the word of God on the breath of the Spirit, in order to produce worship in them. It is a motion from worship to produce worship, from faith in order to produce faith.

 

The Goal of Preaching: Worship 

My one overwhelming tip for your Bible preparation for this weekend is this: worship over the Bible as you prepare. For sure we want to be diligent and accurate in our prep and our delivery but it is possible to have accurate Bible talks and studies that that don’t glorify God because they take his mighty word and make it boring.

Someone once asked me how I dare say that if we bring something that is accurate but dull then it isn’t glorifying to God. After all at least it was accurate. I suspect the Pharisees were often startling accurate in their minute handling of the Law but it didn’t stop Jesus saying that they knew neither the scriptures nor the power of God.

I am sure that your staff workers will have given you lots of training on starting to do talks and studies. They will give you technical help and teaching aids like how to read a text in context, how to understand biblical concepts, how to place a passage in the sweep of salvation history, and that’s all good and important.

But the key point is not to deify the technical and underplay the glory. Worship over the text as you prepare. Make every effort at accuracy. If you want your message to have power then it has to come with accuracy from the text. People have to be able to see clearly that you are preaching to them what the Bible says, concretely, specifically and compellingly. But don’t substitute glory for mere accuracy as your goal.

Lastly, that tells us we should pray over our preparation and our delivery. You cannot speak accurately of the Lord and his ways without having been caught up yourself. People can tell if we have engaged with God in our prep and whether they are coming from hearts that are affected by the content. Preaching can never be dispassionate. Occasionally I hear people say things like “present the text as objectively and dispassionately as you can so people don’t see the preacher only the passage.” NONSENSE! Preaching is NOT teaching precisely because the message has affected us and we are urging, exhorting, pleading with our hearers to turn to the living God. and do what the word says. It has exercised our prayer and our spiritual energy as we prepare. It has set our hearts ablaze and our prayer is that it does the same as bring it in the power of the Spirit.