Lawson’s Address

March 17, 2012 at 9:39 am (Preaching, Theology)

This is actually Lawson’s second address. His first address was a description of the contents of the new book on Spurgeon that Reformation Trust is publishing. That was an excellent address, but I did not write a summary of it. This lecture is entitled “Foolishness to the Greeks.”

The text is 1 Corinthians 1:18ff. Greek philosophy was very much a going concern. It came to Corinth from Athens. there were many differing philosophies on offer in the first century. The gospel Paul preached was in direct conflict with all the philosophies of the day. It was regarded as foolish. Furthermore, the messengers were also considered foolish. It is also a foolish method. In these three ways, Paul’s message is foolish to the Greeks.

The message was regarded as foolish. We are not just dogmatic about the cross: we are bulldogmatic about the cross! But it is nonsense to those who are perishing. Notice the present tense: they are currently dying from the inside out. We preach what seems like a contradiction: a crucified Christ. That’s like saying “freezer burn.” Or “Central Intelligence Agency” (LK) We preach a crucified conqueror, a slaughtered savior. This is foolishness to the world. But it is the only way. Why? Because God will have all the glory for Himself. We should therefore never try to make the foolishness of the cross appear to be brilliant to the world.

The messengers were also regarded as foolish. In verse 26 he shifts to the messenger, although this is not a shift of main subject. He is still plumbing the depths of why the world considers the message foolish. It is nott only because they think the message is foolish, but they also reject the messengers. God wanted to make sure that it was not because we were to have faith in the messenger. So God chose the foolish ones of the earth. Notice that God’s choice stands behind and before the calling. This is so encouraging, though. How could God use us? We didn’t make Who’s Who? We didn’t even make Who’s Not. God intentionally reached down to the bottom of the barrel. The only possible explanation left is that there has to be a God. We are all nobodies telling everybody about Somebody. If someone is intellectually elite, God will have to work quite a bit harder.

Lastly, the method God chooses is also regarded as foolish (chapter 2:1ff. “Lofty speech” refers to the style, and “wisdom” refers to the substance. We cannot come at this by saying that the method never changes the substance. Paul says that the method is important. It has be a cross-centered method. It has to be a straight-forward approach. This is in contrast to all the rhetoric that was so much loved in Athens and Corinth. Preaching is foolishness to the world. Everyone who tries to change the method God has established is trying to rely on man’s wisdom. Hence the vital importance of preaching in the church today.

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The Bride of Christ

June 25, 2011 at 3:13 pm (Church, Ephesians, Marriage, Preaching)

(Posted by Paige)

A friend and I were discussing this biblical metaphor this morning, and I thought to cast this question out to all of you as well: Do you think it is in keeping with biblical intent to speak of the marriage of God or Christ to individual believers as well as to the Church corporate?

In his preaching and writing, my friend will speak in terms of both individual and corporate marriage as rich expressions of God’s/Christ’s relationship of union with believers. I am not sure that he is wrong to do so, but I am personally less comfortable speaking of the individual’s “marriage relationship” with Christ (or calling the individual believer the “Bride” of Christ), simply because in both OT and NT usage God and Christ are never (as far as I can see) said to be “married” to individuals, but only to the corporate bodies of Israel or the Church (cf. Is. 62:3-5; Jer. 2; Eph. 5; Rev. 21). On the other hand, there are plenty of relational metaphors available in the Bible that express the individual’s relationship to God and Christ: child, sibling, friend, sheep, servant (even slave), soldier, citizen, etc.

Is the application to individuals of this “marriage” metaphor a fair implication of the corporate picture of Christ’s Bride, or do you think it is beyond the intent of the scriptural witness? If the latter, do you perceive any harmful or misleading influence in speaking this way?

If, on the other hand, you think it is a fair way to picture Christ’s union with the believer, how can it be framed in teaching and preaching so that the individual does not lose sight of the corporate nature of being the Bride of Christ?

Thanks for your thoughts!

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Not Masses of Help?

November 5, 2010 at 4:38 pm (Books (reviews and recommendations), Preaching)

Paul Levy over at Ref21 has written (quoting Ray Galea) that sermons that become chapters in a book lose their life. He says: “He’s right isn’t he? We’re probably a bit afraid to admit it but those vast volumes of commentaries which are just transcribed sermons are often hard work and not masses of help in preparation apart from when hunting for illustrations or we’re very short of time.” I would certainly waive the point when it comes to plagiarism. Pastors MUST preach their own sermons to their congregations for the very simple reason that no one else knows their congregations like they do. Only the local pastor can bring home the text to THAT congregation.

However, I wish to address a different point here. He says, basically, that commentaries made up of sermons are not masses of help in sermon preparation. I cannot say that I agree with this statement. For one thing, there are very few commentaries period which could be said to be “masses of help.” The question is this: what are one’s expectations on using a commentary? I find a commentary to be somewhat helpful if I underline anything in two or three pages. If I underline one thing per page, it is a very helpful commentary. If I underline 3-4 things per page, then it is a massively helpful commentary. How many massively helpful commentaries do I own? Not many, and I own many commentaries. My point is that reading commentaries is not like hitting up Fort Knox for gold. It’s like looking for needles in haystacks (this can certainly be said for the entire scholarly enterprise). I have not found sermonic commentaries to be less helpful than the other types of commentaries. In preaching on Romans, for instance, I have found Boice and Lloyd-Jones to be very helpful, even though I don’t underline on every page. Anything Iain Duguid writes on the OT is massively helpful, and they pretty much ALL originated as sermons. I would not like to see pastors reading fewer commentaries as a result of Paul’s statement, however much he might have been addressing a different point.

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Amos As Preacher, Contrasted With Modern Social “Preaching”

June 3, 2010 at 8:32 am (OT-Amos, Preaching)

I found Old’s discussion of Amos as preacher to be very engaging and helpful, especially as it focused on a book that we do not study very much, although it is a book that has undergone exceedingly extensive analysis since the 1960′s (60 commentaries have been written on this book in just the three decades of the 1960′s-1980′s).

Amos is generally regarded as the first of the writing prophets, the first whose words are recorded in literary form (p. 47). Old notes that “For the prophets, the word that they preached was as much the Word of God as the word that Moses preached.” In Amos’ case, it is clear from the opening words, wherein the prophecy is introduced as “the words of Amos,” but then immediately go on to say “The Lord roars from Zion” (p. 48).

Amos was not the “bubba” type sheep-herder that many have thought he was. Instead, the evidence of his own writing points to someone who was sophisticated, cultured, and wise (pp. 48-49). Maybe he was one of the elders in the gate (49). He could express himself clearly and with power, indicating some measure of practice with public speaking. And some of the book that bears his name records for us his public speaking, which can be labeled sermons.

Incidentally, we are treated to a helpful distinction between the Law and the Prophets, when Old writes, “The Law, the Decalogue, was understood as the Word of God in the most direct sense, too, but the Law, or at least the Decalogue, was apodictic. It applied to any place or time; regular pronouncement of it was sufficient. The prophetic oracle generally was understood to be the Word of God in every bit as direct a way, but it was sharpened and pointed to be shot like an arrow into a particular situation” (p. 49).

Another incidental discussion Old gives us is on the nature of the Word of God as preached, which, as the Reformers all stated, IS the Word of God. Muller has a very helpful distinction that helps us here (pp. 204-205 of volue 2 of PRRD) of immediate and mediate Word of God. What comes from God’s own mouth is immediate, and what comes from the preacher’s mouth is mediate. Nevertheless, both are said to be the Word of God (inasmuch as the preacher’s words agree with the text, of course).

Old notes that the targets of Amos’s preaching in the cows of Bashan has direct relevance to pampered women today (which is, of course, only one subset of all women), who tend enjoy the cosmetic luxuries of the culture, but care nothing for justice and righteousness. Amos’s thundering against them could very easily be applied to today’s Hollywood women.

Amos warns against syncretistic (read here “postmodern, inclusivistic, ecumenical”) worship in chapter 4. Old makes the very interesting observation that Amos 5-6 is a literary dirge for the whole Northern Kingdom, which at that time was prospering and well (p. 55)!

To close, Old has some choice comments for so-called “social” preachers, in his contrast to Amos:

In the strictest sense of the word, the Church has neither prophets nor apostles today; the canon of Scripture is closed. In a larger sense, however, both the word “prophet” and the word “apostle” are used today. Surely today’s ministers are called to be prophets as well as apostles, and surely the Church of today, as always, needs prophetic preachers. During the last half of the twentieth century, Americans have heard plenty of preaching that claims to be prophetic. We have had a whole generation of amateur social critics in our pulpits who thought they were following the example of Amos by denouncing everything from the Vietnam War to smoking marijuana. By a sort of typology they imagined that President Johnson or President Nixon, or President Reagan or President Clinton, was the contemporary Jeroboam. Few of these sermons even came close to those of Amos. Their social criticism may or may not have been justified, but that is not the point. The problem was that they imagined that one line of social criticism or another was the Word of God for our time. They used the prophets to justify some economic program or social ideology and thought they had done their job (pp. 58-59).

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The Prophets Samuel and Elijah as Preachers

May 25, 2010 at 3:48 pm (Preaching)

Continuing on in Old’s book, we come to an interesting distinction he notes from Roland de Vaux. This distinction is that “priests were concerned with the interpretation and application of the Word of God as it was revealed in the law of Moses, while the prophets were concerned with proclaiming the Word of God as God revealed that Word directly to the prophet” (p. 41). Undoubtedly, this is a bit simplistic, as there were preachers who also proclaimed a new word from the Lord. Ezra was one of these. However, the distinction is still helpful, as long as it is remembered that the preaching of the Word of God IS the Word of God (while it is faithful to the Word of God, of course).

What motivated prophets to say “Thus saith the Lord?” Old says that “It was not that they were so convinced of the truth of their interpretation of current events and so impassioned by the moral imperatives of what they thought ought to be done that they were willing to call their view the word of God in order to get people to listen. As they understood it, God had given them His Word” (p. 42).

Old asks the question what Samuel was doing in Shiloh with old Eli (p. 44). The answer was almost certainly that he (probably along with other boys) were “being taught the sacred traditions, both the written and the oral ones” (p. 44). In terms of the distinction noted above, Samuel also constitutes something of a crossover, since he combined both priestly and prophetic duties in one person. Given the fact that he was a judge, he also had a somewhat kingly function as well. Von Rad points comes to the conclusion that Samuel can best be regard as a preacher of the Law (Old Testament Theology, 2:7, referenced on p. 44 of Old).

When it comes to Elijah, he must be vigorously contrasted with the ecstatic Canaanite prophets (pp. 45-46). Elijah was something “much more profound.” Elijah mediated the Law to the people, especially in terms of the first and second commandments, as the incident on Mt. Carmel indicates. Both of these two prophets understood the necessity of preaching the Law of God to the people of God.

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Connecting Preaching to Covenant Theology

May 12, 2010 at 10:45 am (Covenant, Preaching)

I’ve decided to read through Hughes Oliphant Old’s entire set on the history of preaching. As I go along, I will note some of the more important insights from the set. Volume 1, interestingly enough, describes preaching in the Bible itself.

The first great insight I’ve come across so far is the very close connection there is between preaching and covenant theology. Old, depending on the work of Craigie, among others, has argued that the very nature of a covenant required the reading and the explanation of the covenant. In the ancient Near East, when a covenant was made between suzerain and vassal, the vassal was required to read the treaty regularly to his people, lest the people forget the nature of that covenant. Ancient Near Eastern treaties were always written down. The main reason for this was so that they would be read at solemn assembly to the people (p. 29). Old makes the point even more sharply when he says “Of the very essence of these treaties or covenants is that they are written down and regularly read and taught to the people in a public assembly” (p. 29, emphasis added). Old says, “If Craigie is right, then we have in the covenant theology of the Pentateuch the rationale for the reading and preaching of Scripture in worship – namely, that it is demanded by a covenantal understanding of our relationship to God and to each other” (p. 29). If the people are in a relationship with God based on a covenantal agreement, then it is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of that relationship that the terms of the covenantal agreement be regularly read and interpreted to the people.

Old goes on to describe what preaching looked like in the book of Deuteronomy. He observes three main elements in the preaching of Deuteronomy: remembrance, interpretation, and exhortation (p. 37). Retelling Israel’s story is absolutely essential, because God’s people are incredibly forgetful (see Deut. 4:9-14). A great deal of preaching should therefore be focused on helping people to remember what God has done in the past. Otherwise, our view of the future will get very dim indeed. The second element is interpretation (Deut. 1:5, for instance). This is obviously one of the main elements of any preaching. One simply has to explain the text. For the people need to hear what God means. Thirdly, there needs to be an exhortation for the people to do God’s will (Deut. 4:1, 6:4-6, 30:11,14).

I will conclude with this wonderful description of the power of God’s Spirit working through the Word (Old has the radiance on the face of Moses in the back of his mind as he writes these words):

God is a sacred fire, and to come near to him is to catch fire and glow with the same holy radiance. This begins to happen to us when we hear God’s Word. We are transformed after the image of Christ. It is through entering into that covenant that we enjoy his presence and through abiding in his presence that we are made holy (p. 25).

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A Taste of a Good Book

May 3, 2010 at 9:23 am (Preaching, Uncategorized)

T. David Gordon, who has written one of the best recent books on preaching, has given us now a sample of it in the latest issue of Tabletalk.

I’m going to be a bit rude here and suggest that much of what passes for preaching these days is nothing more than constipated, triviality-coma-inducing, stream-of-unconsciousness, bill-of-banality, navel-nuzzling, tritch-tratch twaddle. Someday ask me what I really think, and then I’ll tell you. Listen to Gordon and learn something. Of course, I always find it awkward to recommend a book entitled Why Johnny Can’t Preach to a preacher. However, I defy any preacher to read that book and not learn something from it.

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The Series Finished

April 28, 2010 at 11:52 am (Books (reviews and recommendations), Preaching)

This volume finishes the wonderful series on the history of preaching by Hughes Oliphant Old. I make it a practice to read at least one good book on preaching per year, as I believe it is important always to be improving. This series would keep one going for quite a while, and I intend to read the whole of it.

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On a Broad View of Application

March 12, 2010 at 4:50 pm (Preaching, Sermons)

As Christians who listen to many sermons, it is helpful for us to have a broad view of application. There are many ways that God wants His Word to apply to our lives, and we may not be aware of all those ways. In this post, I’d like to address a few of the many possibilities.

The most obvious kind of application is the answer to this question: how should I live my life in the next week in accordance with what God has said? We might call this “immediate” application. This is necessary, since this is where many Christians are. They want help with how to live their lives as Christians in the next week. They might call it “getting through the week,” or similar language.

However, this is not the only kind of application that is necessary for the Christian. Suppose the sermon has something that is not immediately helpful, but might be helpful later on? The Christian might use it a month, a year, or many years later. Is this somehow “less” practical than the immediate application? I would argue that it is not less practical, but is rather equally practical.

In addition to considerations of “when” something is practical, we must also consider “how” something is practical. Practicality is not just about what we do. It is also about how we analyze situations, which will in turn dictate how we react to that situation. For instance, if we analyze cancer as an attack on our humanity, or the worst possible evil, or the end of life as we know it, we are going to react in a posture of despair. However, if we analyze cancer as something God sends to accomplish a particular result, we will look for that result, and therefore be more patient while suffering. As John Piper might say, we would then not be wasting our cancer. In other words, practicality is not just about what we do, it is also about how we think about things.

Ultimately, what I’m getting at here is that doctrine is practical. Doctrine simply means the teaching of the Bible. We must believe the Bible when it says that all Scripture is useful for instruction, rebuke, etc., so that the man of God may be complete. All Scripture, not just some of Scripture.

What we believe about God has the profoundest ramifications for our lives. If God is a cosmic bully, or homocidal maniac, that will drastically affect how we live. If God is our loving heavenly Father, that drastically affects how we live. If Jesus is the only way to God, that affects how we live. If Jesus is one choice among many, that drastically affects how we live. If Christ’s death and resurrection saves us from our sins when the Holy Spirit grants us faith in Jesus Christ, that will drastically affect how we live. We cannot separate doctrine and practice.

For preachers, this means that we need to have all different kinds of application: immediate, and not-so-immediate, hands-on, and also doctrinal application.

For those who listen to sermons, we need to have our minds open to all the truth of God, not merely to the kind of truth we think we need. After all, no one else in the congregation will be in precisely the same place that we are. They will need different things at different times. We need to believe that all Scripture is useful. We need to believe that God will show us something helpful from Scripture. We need to come to the sermon with the expectation that God will feed us by His Holy Spirit. And we will need to have some method to store away those nuggets that we get. We shouldn’t reject any truth just because we cannot see the immediate application. We should rather be busy bees and store that truth away, so that it will be available when we do need it.

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How Do I Decide What To Preach?

October 11, 2008 at 11:32 am (Preaching)

This is a pressing question for pastors today. Ultimately, there is only one thing to preach: the Word of God. We certainly cannot preach our own hobby-horses. We cannot preach anything but Christ crucified and raised from the dead. We cannot preach a health and wealth “gospel.” We cannot preach the newest fad. We preach the unchanging Word to a changing world, to use Harvey Conn’s helpful book title.

However, there is greater specificity needed here. How do I preach the Word? What part of it should I preach? The answer to the first question is that expository preaching is the best form of preaching. Every example of preaching in the Bible is expository preaching. You take a portion of Scripture, explain it by showing Christ in it, and apply it to people’s lives. Furthermore, I believe the most logical way to preach expository sermons is to preach consecutively through a book of the Bible. I do not believe that it is wise to preach Genesis, then Exodus, then Leviticus. People need a balanced diet of the various genres of Scripture. They need narrative, poetry, gospel, apocalyptic, prophetic, proverbial, and epistolary. They need a healthy balance of Old Testament and New Testament.

Knowledge of the congregation’s struggles is probably the key element in deciding which book of the Bible the people need next. If they don’t know what the good news is, then preach John or Romans. If the congregation has significant unity issues, preach Ephesians. If the people need wisdom because of stupid decisions they are making, preach Proverbs. If the people are to wrapped up in the here and now, preach apocalyptic (Daniel or Revelation). If the people are too legalistic, preach Galatians. If the people are to antinomian, preach James, Exodus, or Deuteronomy.

Lastly, within the parameters of what the people need, there is usually more than one book from which to choose, and more than one need of the congregation. Ultimately, of course, every congregation needs the whole Word, even if some needs might be sharper than others. So, how to decide among these various needs? I decide very simply by which book has the best number of solid commentaries on it. For instance, Acts is completely off the radar screen for at least ten years, since it is so woefully served by commentaries, and there are so many good ones coming out in the next ten years. By the way, to know what is coming out, this page is undoubtedly the most complete and up to date (Jeremy keeps it very up to date constantly). Exodus, on the other hand, is now served by an embarassment of riches in Cassuto, Childs, Currid, Enns, Houtman, Mackay, Motyer, Propp, Ryken, and Stuart, not even including many lesser but still helpful lights in Brueggemann, Fretheim, and Kaiser. Furthermore, Matthew Poole’s Synopsis is now half available (with the rest to follow shortly). With that and the Ancient Christian Commentary, and Keil/Delitzsch, you have a fairly complete access to all the best comments in the ages of the church, and with Carasik, you have the best of Jewish thought on the book. So, Exodus makes sense for me after I finish 1 Peter (which is another book now served with an embarassment of riches).

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