25. Preaching the Bible Biblically
Preaching the Bible Biblically
Alas! alas! I have not the recollection of one strong moment. A cold mechanical preparation for a delivery as decorous—fine things, pretty things, wise things—but no arrows, no axes, no nectar, no growhng, no transpiercing, no loving, no enchantment.”[1]
Maybe you’ve occasionally felt that way about some of your sermons: “no arrows, no axes, no nectar.” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those words when he evaluated a series of lectures he delivered in Boston between 4 December and 12 February 1840. Note that he blamed his “decorous delivery” on “cold mechanical preparation,” something that occasionally occurs in ministers’ studies today. “A burning heart will soon find for itself a flaming tongue,” Spurgeon told his students; and he warned them against being the kind of people who “gathered fuel, but lost the fire which is to kindle it.”[2]
Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones defined preaching as “logic on fire . . . theology coming through a man who is on fire.”[3] Trained as a physician, his approach to preaching was definitely that of the logical diagnostician, stethoscope in hand. Whether the focus of his sermon was the hopeless sinner, the careless saint, the powerless church, or the godless society, Dr. Lloyd-Jones was always the compassionate physician examining sick patients and prescribing biblical cures.
His definition of preaching is a good one, and the Doctor exemplified it marvelously in his ministry, especially when he was expounding Romans and Ephesians, two of Paul’s most logically arranged letters. But the Doctor’s definition of preaching has one flaw: not all of Scripture is what we would call a “logical” presentation of God’s revelation. As we’ve seen in this quest, Scripture also contains images and metaphors that picture God’s truth in many different ways. In fact, even Lloyd-Jones’ phrase “logic on fire” isn’t strictly logical; it’s metaphorical. Who ever saw logic “on fire” or, for that matter, a preacher “on fire”? Yet we know exactly what Spurgeon and Lloyd-Jones were talking about because we know that metaphors have a logic of their own.
James Boswell once asked his learned friend Samuel Johnson what poetry was, and Johnson replied, “Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.”[4] However, in his essay on John Milton, Johnson gave an excellent definition of poetry: “the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.”[5]
Pleasure, truth, imagination, and reason are the four elements that Johnson identified in poetry; and I have a feeling that these same four elements are also involved in biblical preaching. While preaching is not a form of entertainment, we certainly experience intellectual and emotional pleasure in hearing a good sermon: the mind enjoys grasping the truth presented reasonably and the heart enjoys responding to the truth presented imaginatively. Without the truth of the Word, explained and applied, there could be no true ministry; and without the imagination, even the most faithful ministry would be stale and boring.
For a tentative definition of biblical preaching, let’s start with this: a biblical sermon is a form of human verbal communication that involves the organized explanation and application of biblical truth, presented in a manner that is reasonable, imaginative, and intrinsic to the text.[6]
Nobody needs to defend the assertion that a biblical sermon must be based on the truth found in the Bible, a truth stated in what we call “a text.” It’s the preacher’s task to explain and apply the truth of that text to those who hear or read the sermon. The preacher may use visual effects to illustrate the message, but the primary form of communication is verbal. God uses human instruments to convey His truth, what Phillips Brooks called “truth through personality.” Preachers are both heralds and witnesses. We announce what the King tells us to announce, but we also announce what the message means to us personally. Heralds come with the authority and urgency of their calling; witnesses come with the reality of personal experience to back up the proclamation.
A biblical sermon must both explain and apply God’s truth. If you want explanations without applications, you attend a theological lecture. On the other hand, applications that aren’t based on doctrinal explanations are merely moralistic exhortations. The preacher must appeal to both the mind and the heart in an attempt to capture the will.
What the preacher has to say must be put together and presented in an organized manner. I don’t know of any Scripture that tells us how a sermon should be organized; and we all realize that no two preachers preach alike. The biblical record and church history testify to that. But no matter what approach we take in arranging our exposition of the Word, what we say must be organized. We must know where we’re going and why we’re going there, and we must not go on detours. One of my homiletics professors used to warn us, “When you hear a preacher say ‘Today, I just want to talk to you out of my heart,’ you can be sure he’s not prepared.” Preaching that’s organized (reasonable) can permanently impact and instruct the mind.
The phrase in my definition “intrinsic to the text” was a tough one to come up with, and maybe it isn’t the best way to say it. What I mean is this: our treatment of the text must not violate the nature of the text itself. If the text is a psalm, we must deal with it as poetry and not as if it were a doctrinal argument from a Pauline epistle. In our desire to come up with a neat outhne, with every point snugly in place, we must beware lest we rape the text rather than woo it. Perhaps there sometimes shouldn’t even be what the homileticians would call a “formal outhne” with main points and sub-points. I’m not suggesting that the sermon lack order and progress, because then you’d have confusion in both the pulpit and the pews, and God is not the author of confusion. All I’m suggesting is that the organization of the message must respect the literary genre of the text. We must honor the way the biblical writers and speakers communicated the truth to us.[7] If we don’t muzzle biblical images with our rigid and sterile approaches, they can speak to our generation with just as much vigor and excitement as they spoke to generations in ages past. In our scientific computer age, people are accustomed to learning new vocabularies and the significance of symbols; if they don’t fully grasp a biblical image the first time, let’s keep instructing them until they do understand. Even the 12 Apostles, who lived in the presence of Jesus, didn’t always understand what the Master Teacher was talking about.[8] Rather than dilute the Word of God to bring it down to the level of the learner, let’s seek to lift the learner up to the level of the unadulterated Word of God.[9]
Imagination is the tool that helps us make the “connections” needed to bring sinners and the Savior together. Those who proclaim the Word are ambassadors who must know the language and mind-set of the people to whom they’re sent if they hope to be understood (2 Cor. 5:20). We’re roadbuilders who must connect the city of Man-Soul with the City of God (2 Tim. 2:15; orthotomeo, “to cut straight, as a road”). We’re fathers and mothers (1 Thes. 2:7-12) who must be able to identify with the needs of God’s children and show them how Christ can meet those needs.
We must never lose faith in the power of the Word of God. Our listeners are like those six empty waterpots at the wedding feast Christ attended in Cana (John 2:1-11). As we preach the Word, we pour the water into their minds and hearts; and one day, the miracle will take place and the water will turn to wine. When you proclaim the Word in a way that “connects” with human minds and hearts, you’re sending out the light (2 Cor. 4:6; Ps. 119:130), planting the seed (Luke 8:1-15), giving the medicine (Ps. 107:20), wielding the sword (Heb. 4:12; Eph. 6:17), serving the food (Matt. 4:4; 1 Peter 2:2; Jer. 15:16), applying the water (John 15:3; Eph. 5:25-27), and holding up the mirror so that people can see Christ and be transformed into His image (2 Cor. 3:17-18). What a privilege! What a responsibility!
Phillips Brooks encouraged the ministerial students of his day to “seize the human side of all divinity [and] the divine side of all humanity.”[10] In other words, find the place where human life and divine truth meet and there grow your sermon.
Biblical preaching requires a preacher whose life witnesses that it is lived under the authority of the Word. Emerson said some ridiculous things, but when he made this statement in his famous “Divinity School Address,” he was right on target: “The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life—life passed through the fire of thought.”[11] We might add “life passed through the power of prayer, the awe of worship, the joy of obedience.”
To summarize: for our preaching to be biblical, the message must be based on the truth of the Word of God, presented by a messenger who lives under the authority of that Word, organized in a manner that instructs the mind and moves the heart and captures the will, and interpreted and applied in a way that is true (intrinsic) to the text. That’s enough to challenge any preacher!
Our quest has been a long and complex one, and we’ve not yet reached our destination. As I said in the Preface, my purpose has been to try to open some neglected paths on the homiletical landscape; but when it comes to the ministry of preaching, the quest never ends. There will always be more land to be possessed.
In his excellent book Stewards of Grace, Donald Coggan quotes F.W. Dillistone, whose words beautifully summarize what I’ve been trying to say in this book:
The preacher is the man whose calling it is to create forms out of the most precious material which this world provides. His material is the everlasting Gospel, his tools are his full powers of thought and imagination, his object is to create a form which shall be the best possible to convey to other minds and imaginations the glory and beauty of that which he is seeking to portray.[12]
The great teacher is the one who turns listeners’ ears into eyes so they can see the truth.