CHAPTER 7

PREACHING THE WORD

You do not really preach the gospel if you leave Christ out—if He is omitted, it is not the gospel! You may invite men to listen to your message, but you are only inviting them to gaze upon an empty table unless Christ is the very center and substance of all that you set before them!

~ Charles Spurgeon1

Expectant parents know the thrill of having a sonogram. There is nothing quite like going to the doctor’s office, hearing the assuring rhythms of a little heartbeat, then seeing the image of your baby on the screen. The doctor prints off the black-and-white pictures, and you treasure the opportunity to share them with friends and family. Some parents even take it a step further and get 3D sonogram images. Then as the months pass, one sonogram picture replaces the last as your eager anticipation grows for the baby’s birth. You can only imagine what this little one is actually going to look like. You can make out her shape, count her fingers and toes, but your greatest desire is to see her face-to-face.

So . . . you wait.

Sonograms serve as a primer picture; they point toward what is coming. They provide wonderful images, but in their shadings and contrasts we can only see shadows. The substance of that which we so eagerly await is yet to come. But when the baby arrives, then we behold what we could once only infer.

And so it is with the Scriptures. With the birth of Christ, the expectancy of the Old Testament gave way to the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

This changes everything . . . especially our preaching and teaching. No longer must we view the Old Testament through the shadows of a sonogram. Jesus fulfills every promise of the Old Testament, bringing light and clarity to the entirety of the canon of Scripture. Our understanding of the promise of Scripture is able to shift from Christ’s first coming to the promise of His second coming. No longer are we wondering who will ultimately redeem God’s people, for the cross colors our view. The preacher has the privilege of painting with his words the beautiful news of Jesus, through the words of both Old Testament and New.

The clarity afforded to the preacher today is that the Word of God ultimately points to the gospel of Jesus Christ. What was implied in the Old Testament has been made explicit in the New Testament.

The Word, therefore, is Jesus-centered.

Prophets and Preachers2

New Testament preaching is rooted in Old Testament prophetic proclamation. The prophets of old were the forerunners of present-day preachers. God has always used His people to herald and proclaim His message both to those within the faith as well as those outside. Whether this was Jonah, called to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh, or Peter preaching at Pentecost, or Charles Spurgeon relentlessly declaring the gospel to countless thousands over his lifetime, God has consistently used heralds to speak His words. In His ultimate wisdom, God uses foolish men to speak the words of His wondrous salvation.

The nature of preaching begins with an understanding of the words and actions employed in the Scriptures to describe it. According to R. H. Mounce, “The choice of verbs in the Greek NT for the activity of preaching points us back to its original meaning. The most characteristic is kerysso,3 ‘to proclaim as a herald.’ . . . Preaching is heralding; the message proclaimed is the glad tidings of salvation.”4 Mounce goes on to say, “While kerysso tells us something about the activity of preaching, euangelizomai,5 ‘to bring good news’ . . . emphasizes the quality of the message itself.”6 The preacher is a herald of the good news that salvation has come!

The task of the preacher is to herald the words of God. But how does he go about doing this? The answer may seem obvious—and it is—but we cannot afford to assume such fundamental truths. If the foundation of what the preacher actually preaches is unstable, then the house will not stand.

Preaching: The Foundation

The Jesus-centered preacher preaches the Word of God. He has in his arsenal all sixty-six inspired books of the Bible to expound, exposit, exegete, unpack, and deliver to a people who desperately need to hear. This highlights the inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture. Many today have a deficient faith in these precious truths. The Church is a “Creature” of this Word.

Gospel-centered preaching and teaching should invade every aspect of teaching in the Church. If the church is a Creature of the Word, then the Word should be present in every facet of church life, from the Sunday school class to the worship music to small groups.

Martin Luther writes,

Now, wherever you hear or see the Word preached, believed, professed, and lived, do not doubt that the true ecclesia sancta catholica (Christian holy people) must be there. . . . And even if there were no other sign than this alone, it would still suffice to prove that a Christian, holy people must exist there, for God’s Word cannot be without God’s people and, conversely, God’s people cannot be without God’s Word.7

It is common to see the inspiration and authority of Scripture as a church’s stated belief, but the church’s normal practice seems to undermine the sufficiency of Scripture. Among other places, this is betrayed in their preaching. A message begins by giving passing platitudes to a text, but what is expounded is another idea altogether or a concoction of worldly wisdom. The underlying current is that Scripture is not sufficient and must be supplemented. This is not to say that ideas and insights cannot be used to round out a message, but the sermon or teaching must be based on what the text says. The role of the preacher is to dive into the text, mine the depths, and reveal the truth that is there in the Scripture.

John Stott writes:

It is my contention that all true Christian preaching is expository preaching. Of course if by an “expository” sermon is meant a verse-by-verse explanation of a lengthy passage of Scripture, then indeed it is only one possible way of preaching, but this would be a misuse of the word. Properly speaking, “exposition” has a much broader meaning. It refers to the content of the sermon (biblical truth) rather than its style (a running commentary). To expound Scripture is to bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view. The expositor pries open what appears to be closed, makes plain what is obscure, unravels what is knotted and unfolds what is tightly packed. . . . Whether long or short, our responsibility as expositors is to open it up in such a way that it speaks its message clearly, plainly, accurately, relevantly, without addition, subtraction or falsification.8

The preacher must courageously and ferociously believe that transformation occurs through the interplay of God’s Word and Spirit. He is simply a vessel, a broken jar of clay, spilling out before the people the water of life. The Holy Spirit always uses the revealed Word of God to open the eyes of both the unbeliever and believer to the wonders of the gospel. The preacher should not feel as if he is carrying the burden of life change; he merely carries the burden of faithful exposition and the robust proclamation of the text at hand, trusting that God’s Word will never return void (Isa. 55:10–11). This is the wonder and weight of preaching.

One Message, Multiple Audiences, and a Myriad of Needs

On any given Sunday, the preacher is faced with a diverse audience. There are those who are lost and doubting and those who are saved and trusting. Some are maturing; others are sliding. The room is a kaleidoscope of hurts, habits, and hang-ups. You preach to the desperate and humiliated prodigal as well as his entitled and prideful older brother—all in the same sermon. Thankfully, the message is the same for anyone and everyone.

The gospel of Jesus Christ saves us, and the gospel of Jesus Christ sanctifies us. Grace ushers us into salvation, and grace sustains us through it. The gospel is for the world as well as for the Church. The gospel is always the point of application.

James Boice writes,

It is by the preaching of the Word that God moves in the hearts and lives of people to turn them from sin to Jesus Christ. . . . Preaching is important as a means of grace not merely because it is used of God to bring about conversions, but also because it is used for our sanctification, that is, our growth in holiness once we are born again. . . . Preaching is also the primary means of growth for the local church. There is a great deal of debate about this in our day, but it is the preaching of the Word that God most uses to build up a church, not only numerically but above all (and far more importantly) in the spiritual depth and understanding of the people who make up the congregation.9

The content of the preacher’s message is the Word of God. It has the unique ability, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to rightly divide the soul. The Word can heal the broken and break the proud. The Word can assure the weak and weaken the strong. It brings wisdom to the foolish and makes fools out of the wise. The Word of God bears the uncanny ability to do what you and I cannot: transcend human limitations. So the preacher must preach the Word, confident that the Word ultimately points to the gospel.

The Emmaus Road

On a lonely road to Emmaus just days after the crucifixion of Jesus, two disciples walked and talked together. Their conversation was filled with the talk of the town. Confusion and sadness flooded their hearts as they tried to make sense of what had transpired. Jesus, who they thought to be the Messiah, had come to Jerusalem. The people sang hosannas as they welcomed Him by laying cloaks and branches on the road He travelled. They were ushering in the One they believed would redeem Israel and establish the nation again to prominence. But the song of praise soon gave way to shouts of condemnation. Jesus was crucified, and the hopes of a nation were dashed in despair. There would be no redemption for Israel. Another prophet lay dead in a tomb.

As the two disciples talked and talked, trying to make sense of their circumstances, a stranger joined them. At first He seemed oblivious to all that had occurred over the weekend. The disciples, shocked at how He could be so unaware of these things, recounted the events and even shared that some women said Jesus’ tomb was now empty. The course of the conversation then took a sharp turn when the stranger declared, “‘How unwise and slow you are to believe in your hearts all that the prophets have spoken! Didn’t the Messiah have to suffer these things and enter into His glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted for them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:25–27 HCSB). Eventually their eyes were opened—first to understand the Scriptures, and then to the Savior who dined with them.

Jesus showed the two disciples that all Scripture, which at this point included only the Old Testament, pointed to Him. He is the common thread. He is the fulfillment of every prophecy and promise. He is the greater Moses and the Lamb to which the sacrificial system pointed. He establishes the eternal throne of David. Jesus is the perfect Prophet, Priest, and King.

The Story above the Stories: Metanarrative

We don’t have to guess what Jesus shared with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The writers of the New Testament essentially let us in on that conversation as they show how Jesus fulfills a variety of prophecies as the Son of God, conquering King and Savior of the world. All of this was in accordance with the will of the Father who sent Him to accomplish redemption and then sent His Spirit to apply it to His people.

Now that the canon is closed, we can read the Scriptures as a complete story. Although we don’t have every answer and haven’t experienced everything contained within its pages, we do have a clear picture. In short, the Bible is about God. He has given us sixty-six books (thirty-nine in the Old Testament, twenty-seven in the New Testament) written in three languages (Hebrew, Greek, and a bit of Aramaic) over a period of more than a thousand years, written by more than forty authors on three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe). Authors included kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, and scholars among them. These books cover history, sermons, letters, hymns, and even a love song. There are geographical surveys, architectural specifications, travel diaries, family trees, and numerous legal documents. It covers hundreds of controversial subjects, yet with amazing unity. And all of it reveals to us the triune God and His plan for a people.

The big story above the individual stories is often referred to as the metanarrative, or grand story. As previously stated, the Word is gospel-centered. This is the grand story we want to tell while weaving for our people a complete, biblical theology of the Word of God. In short, the Bible is God’s Word about His creation, which He created by His word. But when humanity—the pinnacle of His creation—rebelled and failed to trust in God’s Word, He worked to restore what was fractured by sending the divine Word, His Son, to accomplish redemption. The story then resolves with God keeping His Word in the consummation of all things.

It’s helpful, we believe, to capture this metanarrative in the following outline, which (while always a refresher of things we know by heart, as well as something we’ve touched on previously in the book) must never grow old and out-of-date in our minds. The imperative of keeping this story rushing and reverberating throughout our thinking, prayer, and meditations keeps us perpetually drawn to the only reason for our hope. Maintaining a fresh familiarity with the truths of this epic story ensures that it more naturally informs and flows from our preaching, our conversation, our priorities, and our witness. We as proclaimers of this message must anchor it front and center in our lives, so that we may continually do the same for those who hear us proclaim His Word.

In repeating it again in this space, it’s also a visual reminder of how frequently, incessantly, and unapologetically we should keep this note sounding throughout our church culture. The gospel is all. It is complete. It is what has made us, makes us, and even today is remaking us, from glory to glory, now and forever.

Here now . . . the story.

The Beginning of the Story: Creation

God creates through His Word: “Let there be . . .” Light floods the dark, formless void, and the heavens and the earth are established and filled with vibrant life. Ultimately, the pinnacle of God’s creation—the ones uniquely created in God’s image—appear at His Word. Adam and Eve are set apart as image-bearers and given charge by God’s Word to reign and rule over the rest of creation. Humanity is to serve as God’s vice-regents who faithfully represent Him on the earth while enjoying a special relationship with both their God and one another in a sinless existence. The only boundary put on Adam and Eve is not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Problem of the Story: Fall

All of creation is fractured in the fall of humanity, as we see our first parents failing to trust in God’s Word. The rhythms established in the created order are now broken and perverted. Sin enters the picture when Adam and Eve doubt God’s Word and trust their own inclinations. They reject God’s command and go their own way through the temptation of Satan. As they partake of the apple, a collapse occurs in creation.

Their eyes are now opened to a new reality. The foreign emotions of fear, guilt, and shame engulf their hearts as they hide from God. No longer do they run to Him in relationship but instead retreat from Him in hiding. Yet God graciously calls out to them, and a conversation ensues. We not only see that humanity’s vertical relationship with God has been altered, but the horizontal relationship between one another is marred as well. The man blames the woman directly and God indirectly: “The woman You gave to be with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12 HCSB). The woman responds with a similar lack of responsibility: “It was the serpent. He deceived me, and I ate” (v. 13 HCSB).

God justly responds to the rebellion of Adam and Eve by cursing them, along with all of creation. The curse is comprehensive as its consequences include the physical, spiritual, relational, and emotional. Eve, the mother of all the living (Gen. 3:20), will suffer through childbirth and have an unhealthy desire to usurp her husband. Adam, who was formed from the dirt of the earth, will endure ongoing frustration in his efforts to live upon it. In the end, both physical and spiritual death results. In every direction imaginable, Adam, Eve, and the rest of humanity suffer the strife of utter brokenness: before God, before one another, and before nature.

But even in the midst of this crushing curse, a flicker of hope dawns. There is a promise. A word given. In God’s cursing of the serpent, we see through the keyhole of His redemptive plan. Genesis 3:15 is referred to as the protoevangelium, Latin for “first gospel.” Here we see the foreshadowing of what is to come: “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel” (HCSB). God will bring forth one born of woman who will suffer but ultimately crush the head of the serpent.

The Plot of the Story: Redemption

God does not abandon His creation. In fact, He goes to great lengths to call out a people to Himself. The rest of Genesis depicts the story of God making a promise to Abraham to bless him and establish a people through him. Through these people God will restore all things.

The Bible introduces us to the key figures in redemptive history—people like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and David. We learn of God’s gracious power in the exodus event, pointing to a greater exodus from a more insidious master. We see the beauty of the law and the simultaneous inability of humanity to keep it. The sacrificial system foreshadows a greater sacrifice and eternal atonement. The story unfolds with bold prophets, passionate psalms, a fickle nation, and the increased longing for the promised Messiah who would rule and reign.

Then, God goes silent for four hundred years.

The silence is broken with the cries of a newborn lying in a Bethlehem manger—the baby of promise. God has not abandoned His creation; in fact, He has become flesh and has dwelled among us. God has sent His Word, personified in Jesus Christ.

Luke tells us, “The boy grew up and became strong, filled with wisdom, and God’s grace was on Him” (Luke 2:40 HCSB). Then eventually, John the Baptist heralds to the crowds, “Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29 HCSB). Jesus is baptized, and the Spirit of God descends upon Him, punctuated by the Father’s declaration: “You are My beloved Son. I take delight in You” (Luke 3:22 HCSB). God’s plan is unfolding before the world.

Jesus’ public ministry includes a variety of miracles, signs, and wonders. He teaches as One having authority, speaking audaciously about the good news of the kingdom of God. Most of the religious establishment abhors Him, while the tax collectors and sinners tend to gravitate toward Him. Through all of this, Jesus’ face is set like flint toward Jerusalem.

God’s Son moves toward the cross in concert with God’s heart to reconcile a lost and broken world. Along the way He is betrayed by a friend and taken into custody, suffering unjust trials and false accusations. A mob mentality permeates the courts as the people are filled with an insatiable desire to see Jesus crucified. Those He desires to give life are calling for His death.

Eventually soldiers drive nails through His hands and feet, then lift Him up to hang and die on a cross, while His own followers scatter. Jesus breathes His last, declaring, “It is finished!” (John 19:30 HCSB). He hangs on the cross as the last sacrifice necessary for sin, an eternal one. But all of this is contingent on Jesus defeating one last enemy: death.

On the third day after His death, Jesus rises victoriously over sin, death, and hell. News of His resurrection spreads from the testimony of the women who visit the tomb, to the other disciples, to hundreds of eyewitness accounts. Jesus allows people to touch Him. He dines with them. He reiterates His teaching and gives His disciples the Great Commission, instructing them to go and make disciples. Then shortly before He ascends into heaven, He tells His disciples to start sharing the good news of the gospel with those in Jerusalem, and then spread the message to the ends of the earth. According to His Word, they eagerly wait in expectant prayer for the promised Holy Spirit to come and empower them in the work, for the Spirit will apply the divine Word to human hearts to grow the Church.

The Resolution of the Story: Consummation

What began as a whisper in Genesis 3:15 culminates with a shout in Revelation 21: “Look! God’s dwelling is with humanity, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will no longer exist; grief, crying and pain will exist no longer, because the previous things have passed away” (vv. 3–4 HCSB). The story resolves with God keeping His Word to His people, proving Himself trustworthy and sure.

God will fulfill and complete our redemption when the Son returns for His people. This time, however, He will come with the sword, eliminating the wicked and all their ways, casting them away forever from God and His redeemed. Those who love and trust in Jesus will live and reign with Him for all eternity in the new heavens and the new earth, enjoying the glory of a new, resurrected body. The mood of the consummation will be festive and alive with joy. Death will have been defeated and all things made new. Better than Eden.

The Story and the Gospel

Understanding the metanarrative of Scripture means that we can preach the gospel from all of Scripture. In fact, the gospel must be preached from all of Scripture. It not only provides the hearer with a better understanding of the continuity of the Bible, it also enlightens them to the wonder of God’s redemptive plan from the beginning.

Mike Bullmore writes:

While the substance of the apostolic preaching was the good news of reconciliation with God through Christ Jesus, that message was delivered and explained almost invariably by means of an exposition of Old Testament Scripture. So preaching in New Testament times involved the preaching of “the word of God,” and an essential component of such preaching was the exposition of the Old Testament. This in turn leads us to the conclusion that the Old Testament Scriptures must be included in our conception of “the word” to be preached, a conclusion confirmed by both the direct and indirect claims of the New Testament.10

The preacher has the ability, given the testimony and authority of the full biblical witness, to preach the text and to preach above the text. This does not give him license to preach outside of the text. Preaching above the text means lifting the eyes of the hearers to see how a particular text fits into the overall arc of the grand story of the Bible. It means preaching a passage in both its immediate context and its canonical (or big-picture) context. It means we can exegete a passage and show how it fits into the wider reality of God’s redemptive plan for His creation. In many ways it allows us to be a type of helicopter pilot who can freely navigate from the ground to the air and back down again. Our perspectives are widened, our vision is increased, and our hearts are humbled as we see the same text from a variety of angles. It is truly astounding to consider how intentional God’s plan for His people really is.

Michael Lawrence, in his helpful work on biblical theology, highlights the importance of such an understanding:

Biblical theology . . . allows us to preach Christ from both the Levitical food laws and the Gospel of Mark. It allows us to recognize and preach the whole Bible for what it is, Christian Scripture. It prevents us from moralizing the Old Testament, while at the same time giving due weight to the meaning of every Old Testament text in its original context. It encourages us to constantly connect every passage we preach to what God has done in the past and what he has promised to do in the future. It provides us with a worldview, a storyline that challenges the reigning stories of our culture. It prevents us from preaching narrowly on our own hobbyhorses. And most important, it focuses the main point of every passage within the grand storyline of Scripture, the story of God’s actions to redeem a people for himself, through the judgment of his Son, to the praise of his glorious grace.11

The preacher/teacher should be flooded with a joy that gives him seriousness, as well as a burden that gives him freedom for the opportunity to elucidate a message that saves, redeems, and transforms. He is given charge, whether to adults or children, to preach the Word and hold out the treasure of the gospel for all who would believe.

The Preacher: Preach to Yourself First

We have talked about the power of the preached Word to transform those who hear, but the first person transformed by the Word should be the preacher himself. A common adage is that one cannot impart what one doesn’t first possess. The idea is that the preacher needs to be like a sponge, soaking in the truths of the gospel himself first, and then being squeezed so that gospel realities can be allowed to spill over. The sad reality is that many are gifted enough to entertain or creative enough to produce clever smoke screens. We can coast on talent alone or employ a variety of elements in the message that provide a buffer between the Word and our own hearts. We can easily replace our time of study and saturation with less important matters. The effects of this may not be noticed initially, but the impact will be severe over time. A hollow soul can only survive for so long. The church will invariably shrink back and follow the shallowness of its pastors, or the church will rise up and oust them. The charge then is to preach the Word . . . and to start with your own heart.

The gospel must first become a treasure to the one expounding it. This does not mean the preacher is perfect. In fact, this would actually be contrary to an authentic representation of the gospel in the life of the preacher. The gospel assumes we are not perfect. In fact, it shouts from the rooftop that we are completely despicable apart from Christ. So the preacher should first and foremost understand his own shortcomings, deficiencies, and sinful inclinations. Failure to understand this is a failure to understand the gospel. It is a shameful act for the preacher/pastor to pretend to wear a cape. There is only one Hero in the Church, and it is not the preacher.

The Preacher: Jesus-Centered Culture Creator

The primary objective of preaching is to herald the good news of the gospel. A secondary by-product of preaching and teaching is the establishment of a pervasive Jesus-centered church culture. A church will not be Jesus-centered without “prophets” faithfully heralding the gospel and applying it to the direction of the church. The culture of any given church—as defined in the previous chapter as the harmonious synthesis of doctrine, philosophy, and practice—is primarily established and reinforced, both deliberately and unintentionally, through the pulpit.

It would be foolish to pretend that the pulpit does not impact church culture. Everything from the content of the sermons, the style of delivery, the clothes one chooses to wear, and the presence or absence of a pulpit both reinforce and create culture. Our hope in this book is to unashamedly promote a certain type of church culture: an all-pervasive, Jesus-saturated culture. All other church cultures are left wanting. The beauty of a gospel culture is that it can take shape in a myriad of ways.

A common trend in many churches is a deliberate and stated push to be “relevant,” which often translates to being “cool” or “hip.” What is missed in the relevance discussion is the heart behind Paul’s plea to become “all things to all people,” which we see displayed in his ministry over and over. There is a way to walk in genuine concern for those who are outside of the faith so that they feel comfortable and welcomed. There is also a way to try making Jesus cool enough for the world to like Him. The former flows from a gospel-oriented view of hospitality and compassion; the latter reeks of a poor understanding of the divisive nature of the gospel as it relates to the world. The Church should spend less time trying to be relevant (which can actually come across as disingenuous) and more time trying to align their hearts to the authentic gospel message.

Authentic gospel-centered preaching is intensely relevant. The barrier for salvation and sanctification is not whether the preacher is in jeans or a suit; the barrier is the sinful condition of the human heart. Address their hearts with the gospel first, and worry about what to wear later.

The preacher should also consider his own authenticity from the pulpit. As we said above, he should not preach as if he wears a spiritual cape. The impact of a preacher who shares all of his triumphs and never his struggles will be an anxious congregation who hears one thing espoused week after week, being left to wallow alone in the reality of their own shortcomings. The congregant can go one of two ways at this point. First, she can pretend that everything is great in her own life, expending all her energies in propping up a self-righteous, self-supporting image. Or, on the other hand, she can snap under the pressure of living up to what she knows is unattainable. The preacher owns the opportunity to assure the congregation that it is OK not to be OK—but that the gospel will not leave us there. What good news! In this case, you can create a culture in a church that understands the hope of grace.

Flimsy sermons will create a flimsy flock. Consider the words of John Stott:

This is the age of the sermonette; and sermonettes make Christianettes. Much of the current uncertainty about the gospel and the mission of the church must be due to a generation of preaching which has lost confidence in the Word of God, and no longer takes the trouble to study it in depth and to proclaim it without fear or favor.12

The pastor should not underestimate the impact of his preaching. No, we do not want to make too much of preaching, taking it beyond its helpful scope of importance. The preacher should not read about the weight of his impact and become inflated with importance and thoughts of grandeur. Rather, he should retreat in humble prayer when considering the significance of such a charge.

The preacher has the opportunity to create in the culture of a church the importance of the Word of God. If the Word is central in preaching, teaching, music, and the ordinances, then the church culture will flow from this. Similar to buttoning a shirt, the first button is essential. If this one is off line, then all the other buttons will be misaligned as well. The church must hear from the pulpit the gospel of God from the Word of God preached week after week. This is primary.