Preacher, Let God Speak

A few weeks ago I had the honor of preaching via video to a congregation in India. The congregants are not allowed to gather, so the meeting was held on an online conference platform. The pastor introduced me, then invited various members to sing, read Scripture, and pray. Something really special happened after I preached. In about a minute’s time, the pastor gave the congregation an overview of the sermon. Point by point, Scripture passage by passage. It was like he had my notes in front of him. I was blessed by the whole service, but this really impressed me. What a great practice! Over the years, I’ve had people come by the exit of the church, shake my hand, and say, “great sermon.” Some have complemented the sermon and given a one-sentence take-away that shocked me because it had nothing to do with anything I thought I had said (synopses like that keep me up at night fretting over my preaching). But this Indian brother had paid so close attention that he was able to shepherd his congregation into a quick reminder of all that was said. Oh, if we would all take notes and put careful attention onto the sermon like that!

 

One thing I try to do when preaching or teaching is to follow the scriptural text exactly. I don’t want there to be confusion about the sermon’s source, and I want the listener to be able to put his or her finger on the text as I’m preaching and follow along word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase. By the Lord’s help, the goal is to keep my from “chasing rabbits” or using the text to promote something important to me.

 

Here’s the thing: there’s a way to do this that completely misses the intent of the divinely-inspired author. I’ll use a passage from 1 Peter to illustrate what I have in mind:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Who according to His great mercy

has caused us to be born again to a living hope

through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away,

reserved in heaven for you,

who are protected by the power of God through faith

for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5).

 

It is not expositional preaching/teaching if you strip the text down to a list of “important” words and go down the list talking about each in a way divorced from the flow and purpose of Peter’s words. To put it another way, I cannot create from this text a list of words I want to talk about:

1. Blessed

2. Father

3. Lord Jesus Christ

4. mercy

5. born again

6. living hope

7. resurrection

8. inheritance

9. heaven

10. power of God

11. salvation

 

I cannot take this list, go thematically down it speaking about each word separately, and consider this an expositional sermon/study.

 

God the Holy Spirit inspired Peter to give us many more words than the eleven picked out of those three verses. There are conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns. There are adverbs and adjectives. These “little” words matter so much because we learn how the “big” words fit together to give us the divine-intended meaning. I love doctrine and a good systematic theology, but if we’re so full of that stuff we can’t hear the flow of meaning in these words as they were given to us, then we’ve got a problem.

 

And I’m not even talking about getting into the Greek or anything too complicated. With a reasonably literal English translation, our first responsibility is simply to try to understand what the author’s purpose was in this three-verse sentence.

 

The passage is only peripherally about Jesus or us as believers. Who is it about? It’s about the “Father.” He is pronounced “blessed” (it’s an adjective, not a command to “bless” Him) because of what He’s done in securing salvation for us through Jesus Christ.

 

What has He done? Answering that is the point, with every phrase going back and pointing to the Father and explaining that this is why He is “blessed,” worthy of our praise and adoration.

 

Exposition is not word-study. It can involve that, but the word-study must never stand alone, separate from the purpose of the text. It needs to widen the view to phrases. There must be consideration of conjunctions and prepositional phrases. The longer I preach and teach, the more and more I pay attention to those “little words” as much as I do to the theologically loaded ideas.

 

Just as my dear Indian brother listened carefully to what I said and was able to repeat it back in short form with clarity and accuracy, we need to be able to read, preach, and teach the Bible in the same way. Preaching is proclamation – not proclamation of how much I can tell you about a list of words taken from the text, but a declaration of what the Spirit-inspired author is saying. “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God” (2nd Helvetic Confession of 1536, Article 1). At least, that’s the goal.

 

Don’t just focus on the words alone. See how those words fit together to produce the meaning. May we be diligent to preach the exact text, and may the beautiful Church respond with an equal diligence to follow us through the Spirit-given flow of His Word.