6 Feb 2024
To approach the Bible correctly it is important to know something of the God who stands behind it. God is both transcendent (i.e. he is ‘above’ space and time) and personal. He is the sovereign and all-powerful Creator to whom the entire universe owes its existence, yet he is the God who graciously condescends to interact with us human beings whom he has himself formed in his own image. Because we are locked in time and space, God meets us here; he is the personal God who interacts with other persons, persons he has made to glorify him and enjoy him forever.
We know that God has revealed himself to us in creation; he has also revealed himself in providence (eg. the arrangements that brought Joseph to Egypt); he revealed himself through miraculous events, in prophetic words through the prophets of old, and finally he revealed himself through David’s son, who would sit on David’s throne but who would, nevertheless be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9). God himself would come down and usher in a new heaven and a new earth (Isaiah 65); he would pour out his Spirit (Joel 2); introduce a new covenant (Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel 36), raise the dead (Ezekiel 37) and much more.
Any genuine knowledge human beings have of God depends on God’s first disclosing himself. What must not be overlooked is that this God is a talking God. He reveals himself in many ways, but word is not the least of them; he has disclosed himself in verbal revelation – this is tied to Scripture itself.
Because he is the speaking God, his people have always gathered together to hear and obey his Word. If this is not happening in the precious time the preacher has each Sunday, then the world’s insistent messages will win out and win us over to a compromised Christianity, which is no longer recognisably different from the mores of society at large. And if the church is neutralised in this way, then the strongest contemporary proof of the authenticity of the gospel has effectively been removed. So instead of the church changing the world, the opposite will have happened.
In my years as a believer, I have had the opportunity to attend various churches and their services; I have heard many sermons and even attended several bible study groups – and I am saddened to conclude that the opposite has happened in many of these congregations. I have heard the preacher spending his time on the pulpit talking about contemporary issues that are not in any way related to what God desires to speak; there are those preachers who talked on their pet subjects and “throw in” some bible verses to make them sound biblical as messages; some have ‘violated’ the sanctity of the pulpit by using the time to ‘preach at’ certain individuals or certain organisations that do not support their cause. Then there are those who behave as “stand-up comedians”, giving one joke after another, illustration after illustration (that are not even related to the topic supposedly ‘preached), and then spend the last few minutes referring to some bible verses (out of context) and not even supporting the topic he was supposed to expound.
The sort of preaching that changes the church is, in essence, expository. It takes the Bible seriously by putting it in the driving seat and allowing it to dictate the content of the sermon.But it also depends on a confidence in the authority, infallibility and sufficiency of the whole biblical revelation with regard to the contents. It also involves a confidence in the power of the Word given to mediate a personal encounter with the living God.
Preachers have been known to just take a verse and use it as a springboard to project themselves into all the doctrinal and ethical connection they can think of. These sermons may be fundamentally biblical in that they neither contradict nor misrepresent the teaching of Scripture, but they pay scant attention to the text in its content and end up as topical excursions, dependent of the ability of the preacher rather than the clarity of the Word of God. Here again, the preacher is in the driving seat – it is a problem of preaching a text without a context. We shall look into this, God willing.
But at this juncture, because the Bible is God’s word, it is vitally important to cultivate humility as we read, study, or preach – we need to foster a meditative prayerfulness as we reflect and study, to seek the help of the Holy Spirit as we try to understand and obey, to confess sin and pursue purity of heart and motive and relationships as we grow in understanding. Failure in these areas may produce scholars, but not mature Christians (which is God’s unchanging desire and purpose for individual believers and the church at large).