I am enjoying reading Barth’s, Homiletics. In the preface, Bromiley previews Barth’s “belief that closeness to life, important though it is in the sermon, must not be at the cost of closeness to the text” (p. 14). That got me thinking about whether or not we preachers sound like our world with respect to our voice and delivery. Closeness to life is another way to speak of relevance; closeness to the text, of course, speaks of preaching with accuracy.
Lately, I have wondered if all TV news anchors and field reporters take a course in how to speak or how to sound while they’re reporting the news. Listen to them and you’ll discover that they all sound the same. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I’m suggesting that there are two dominant preaching styles, the traditional preacher and the conversational preacher. The conversational preacher includes the real relevant, seeker-sensitive approach.
What do you sound like when you preach? Would our listeners say that we sound like a preacher (with respect to how we say what we say)? When we report on what God has said, do we sound like all the other contemporary, seeker-sensitive preachers who evidently took the same class on how to speak or how to sound? We must be constantly aware of the tension between closeness to life (relevance, or, in this case, sounding relevant) and closeness to the text (accurate reporting). I loved Barth’s advice: “For in preaching it is always better to be too close to the text than to be too thematic or too much in keeping with the times” (p. 117).
Sometimes I wished just one TV news reporter would break from that mold, be real, and talk to me about what happened.
Creating Creative Christological Connections
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Say that the title of this blog five times fast!
One of the more difficult interpretive moves I attempt is connecting the Gospel to practical instructions such as James 5:16. The book of James is difficult in this regard because the letter/sermon doesn’t begin like other NT letters. James doesn’t give a clear statement of the Gospel at the beginning. The first I encounter is James 1:18 and James 1:21. Another one is in James 2:1. So, in many of my teaching times, before I urge the faith-family to implement James 1:16, for instance, I try to take a moment to explain who faith in the Gospel creates the desire and capacity to obey the instruction. There are times when I can make a creative connection. For instance, our healing began when Jesus died on the cross. He was the only Person who did not have sins of His own to confess. When Jesus died He took our sins on Himself so we could be healed and forgiven. Wording it like that allows me to make a connection to the Gospel directly from the wording of my preaching portion. Now I can urge Gospel-driven obedience or what I’ve referred to elsewhere as faith-first application.
“My Preaching Portion Was Difficult to Preach Because…”
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Definition:
Preaching Portion: The amount of Scripture you choose to interpret and apply for a given sermon.
The past couple of weeks I’ve been conscious of how much easier post-Isaiah preaching is. In a prayer I worded for our congregation one recent Sunday morning I said to God that we needed His help even though the preaching portion wasn’t as difficult as Isaiah. I was feeling a bit of relief now that we had completed our study of Isaiah. But I was also feeling the need for Divine assistance because the act of preaching in general and, specifically, preaching any given preaching portion is beyond me and my abilities.
Would you be willing to share briefly with me why a particular preaching portion was difficult to preach and why? I want to begin to catalogue these issues for my learning, but also for future interaction with students and colleagues. How about your preaching portion for last Sunday? What made that Text difficult to preach? Thank you for sharing your insights with me. Here’s mine from Sunday…
1 Thessalonians 5:14 contains four Christian responses to four kinds of Christians. The instructions weren’t hard to preach. What made this sermon difficult was explaining why these instructions were vital for faith and the faith-family. As I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs, it’s easy at the end of an epistle to forget the Gospel foundation that appears at the beginning (in this case, places like 1 Thessalonians 1:3 and 1 Thessalonians 1:5).
Do you learn during the preaching event?
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I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. That usually means agonizing over my studies so that I have everything “figured out” by Sunday morning. It didn’t take me long to realize that I never have the preaching portion all figured out. In more recent years I’m becoming more comfortable with the reality that all my interpretations are partial at best. I’ve also been able to look forward to what God will teach me during the teaching time. Virtually every weekend the preaching event, including the important interaction I enjoy with active listeners, adds to my understanding of the preaching portion. This means that my accuracy increases while I’m preaching. In Preaching & Preachers, Lloyd-Jones states, “…you never know what is going to happen to [the sermon] until you get into the pulpit and start preaching it….You will find that the Spirit Who has helped you in your preparation may now help you, while you are speaking, in an entirely new way, and open things out to you which you had not seen while you were preparing your sermon” (p. 99). Barth adds, “We should not try to master the text. The Bible will become more and more mysterious to real exegetes. They will see all the depths and distances” (p. 128 in Homiletics). I hope that you are finding this to be true of you–that you are learning while you preach.
Two Angles in which to Explore Offensive Commandments
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I just recently completed preaching through Isaiah. Before beginning another through-the-Book study, I am spending several weekends on God and the Life He Gives. The short series will highlight key characteristics of God and also key aspects of living the Christian life. A proper study of the Christian life involves studying the God who grants it. At times, we struggle with God’s kind of life because we do not understand Him and His character.
Take, for instance, God’s difficult instructions to Hagar in Genesis 16:9. Why would God tell Hagar to return and submit to a woman, Sarai, who was dealing harshly with her (cf. Genesis 16:6). What kind of God would instruct a female servant to return to an abusive mistress? The answer is a God who has determined to save the powerless and afflicted. This concept applies equally to instructions in 1 Peter 2:13-14. See also 1 Peter 2:18 and 1 Peter 3:1. God is a God who saves those who depend on Him or rely on Him alone.
Another angle on this is to ask what it is about the nature of our salvation that would warrant such an instruction. In this case of Hagar submitting to Sarai, salvation, by nature, involves being delivered in the midst of a terrible environment (as opposed to being delivered out of a terrible situation). Saving faith involves dependence upon God, the opposite of taking matters into one’s own hand (in this case, taking matters into her own hands would be Hagar not returning and submitting to Sarai).
You might find yourself in conversations where someone asks, “Should so-and-so submit to that?!?” In other words, the particular circumstance seemingly cancels out the biblical instruction. Before you attempt to answer that specific scenario, try taking the person through these two angles: (1)What is it about God that He would require such actions? (2) What is it about the nature of salvation that would require such actions?
Isaiah 66’s theology-through-vision of the future
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This is a bitter-sweet ending to our Isaiah study. Actually, Isaiah’s ending, like the ending of the Canon, is also bitter-sweet. It is bitter for all engaged in hypocritical worship (Isaiah 66:3). It is sweet for all true worshippers described in Isaiah 66:2. The rest of the chapter describes what will happen to people in either category. In Isaiah 66:4, 15-16, 22-24 we see visions of complete destruction and complete deliverance. Isaiah ends (Isaiah 66:24) where it began (Isaiah 1:2): the subject of rebels and rebellion. And all this drives us to make sure that we are the worshipers who will inhabit God’s new heavens and new earth. Our Lord Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to become a child of God. Christ’s sacrifice is seen in His perfect life where He is the contrast to those described in Isaiah 66:4 and also in His substitutionary death for sinners (cf. Isaiah 66:15-16 and Christ suffering under the fiery wrath of God for our sakes). All along, Isaiah has been urging us, like Peter, to be all the more diligent to make our calling and election sure in light of His return. This response will help us slow the tide of the Church becoming more and more like society and less and less like the Savior.
Isaiah 65:17-25 Theology Through Visions of the Future
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Isaiah 65:17-25 contains a wonderful picture of the new world God will create for His people to inhabit. Your theology will probably lock you into either a millennium or eternal state understanding of the description. But do not let those systematic categories detract from Isaiah’s purpose. Long before Peter urges Christians to holy living in light of God’s return, Isaiah does the same. The description moves back and forth between the new creation and marred creation. God knows that His children will read this description and desperately want to inhabit His new world. Isaiah 65:23 describes the type of person who will live there. Cf. Genesis 17:7 and Isaiah 53:10. This person was described repeatedly as God’s “servants” in Isaiah 65:13-14. Isaiah is ending as he began: urging all professing Believers to give proof of their faith through obedience to the Word of God (the opposite of rebellion). The Gospel is prefigured in Isaiah 65:20. On the cross our Savior was the accursed sinner, dying the death we should have died. His death and resurrection life opens the door into God’s new world for all who genuinely believe.
Isaiah 63:15–65:16 Theology in Isaiah’s Prayer
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As you near the end of Isaiah’s Gospel, you discover a lengthy prayer (cf. Isaiah 63:15-19 and Isaiah 64:1-12 and Isaiah 65:1-16). This section functions much like the earlier section of Isaiah that read like a Psalm. So, Isaiah intends that God’s people pray this prayer. I find it best to focus on the requests, the special relationship we have with God, the problem that gives rise to the requests, and the solution to the problem (cf Isaiah 64:4-5). The last section continues to carry Isaiah’s intention forward: creating a righteous people ready for Christ’s return. One unique feature of Isaiah 65:1-16 is that it contains God’s answer to a very specific question (cf. the question in Isaiah 64:12 and God’s answer in Isaiah 65:6). A saved remnant is hinted at in Isaiah 65:8. The repetition in Isaiah 65:13-14 is a strong call for every congregant to be sure they can be accurately identified by God as his “servants.” Of course, the only way any of us can be identified as the servants of God is because God’s Servant, our Lord Jesus Christ, took all our uncleanness upon Himself (cf. Isaiah 64:5-7) when He died on the cross for us sinners, when He literally “spread out” His hands for a rebellious people (cf. Isaiah 65:2).
Tracing The Argument Of A Text
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Isaiah 63:7-14 Theology In Isaiah’s Psalm
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Isaiah 63:7-14 reads like a Psalm of David and it functions like one, too. Isaiah’s memories are designed to shape our own memories. We are to remember God’s “steadfast love” (Isaiah 63:7-9); we’re to remember our terrible tendency to spurn God’s steadfast love (Isaiah 63:10). Finally, thankfully, God Himself (according to the ESV and KJV reading) remembers the time when He rescued His people. All that remembering is designed to lead God’s people to put an end to their rebellion and their grieving “His Holy Spirit.” Or, to use the language of Isaiah 63:14, the Psalm of Isaiah is designed to make sure all of us are being led by God. According to Romans 8:14, being led by the Spirit of God confirms that we belong to God. Paul can instruct his readers in Ephesians 4:30 to stop grieving the Holy Spirit because faith in Christ gives the desire and capacity to do so. Isaiah 63:9 previews the Gospel. Christ truly “was afflicted” on the cross and those who receive Him respond to His love by yielding to His Spirit.