I congratulate you and your families on this remarkable achievement. You will look back upon these days as sacred times when the Lord fulfilled His promises to you as you accepted your first call in your larger vocation of ministry: the call to prepare, to study to show yourselves approved, and to deepen your love of Christ, the Church, the ordinary means of grace, and the Great Commission by being nurtured under the wings of pastor-scholars at RTS Charlotte. A surprising Providence has kept me from being with you. I am weak and unwell, but my spirit soars. My spirit soars for I see in you—many of whom I had the privilege to teach—preachers who will stand between heaven and hell and declare the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ to this generation. My word to you is simple: there are many potential opportunities to do good in this world with the gift of your seminary education. There is no greater singular use than to pour your seminary experience into the narrow channel of preaching. For as it has been said, “if you have been called to preach, never stoop to be a king.” In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Louisa” from “Doc Martin” (Caroline Catz)

Another attack. Another official response—in this case, a good one. British PM David Cameron wasted no time in naming the most recent atrocity for what it is: “terrorism.” He vowed that Britain would never yield to it and would fight against it. Good for him. Good for all of us. Some heads of state seem shamefully reluctant to even name the enemy for what it is or acknowledge the fact as it really is: we are at war.

Yet there was another message that was sent in this terrorist attack in London. The message was encoded within the very confrontation that happened that night. It is a message that epitomizes this war we fight and maybe signals the very ideals that are at stake.

Watch the video. The crazed, radical Islamic terrorist murderer prowled about like a blood-thirsty beast over its ravaged victim’s remains, screaming, “We are at war!” Then came the shock—to him and I hope to the radical Islamic enemy we face. The murderer and his roaming pack of warlords lurking in the shadows met with…A cub scout den mother from Cornwall (think “Louisa” from the “Doc Martin” TV series). She leaps from London bus no. 53 as the terrorist act unfolds. She was overcome with righteous indignation. Without regard for her own life, she intuitively sought to help the bludgeoned, young soldier, Lee Rigby, of 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, right there on the streets. When she found no pulse she turned and went for the Islamists. There, on the veritable battlefield of one of our great cities of Western Civilization, a mother, a symbol of all that we cherish and hold dear, and yet still a defenseless but defiant female, stood as a golden visage of hope between the Enemy and a dead soldier just 200 yards away from the Royal Artillery Barracks, Woolwich. The murderer, still griping the blood-stained meat cleaver, faced off with the unarmed woman who asked him if he really thought he could win a war against all of us. She told hime he could never win. As if trained in terrorist negotiations (she is a mother and cub scout leader after all), she asked for them to put down their weapons. Then, realizing that her baggage was still on the bus, she returned to no. 53 and was off. Yet before doing so, this heroine had executed a brilliant battlefield move. Her courage stunned them. The police then shot the murderer and fellow Islamic terrorist.

For one instant, this whole conflict became extraordinarily clear. Barbaric brutality in the form of a seemingly possessed madman, insanely chanting to a god of violence, worshipping with the blood of a young man smeared over his hands, waving a meat cleaver weapon, like an insane warrior from another century, being chastened by a quite, intelligent, brave, and unrequited cub scout leader and mother from a small English village. Heathenism at its worst being stood down by civilization at its best. “She spoke for all of us,” David Cameron said. She stood for all of us.

We are at war. The President’s recent speech seemed to convey the idea that “all wars must end” and so he seemed to suggest that this global struggle is now over. “It is more regional now”—whatever that means. The Prime Minister’s urgent and strong message, on the other hand, following this horrible act of war in the streets of London, was a realistic and necessary response needed to awaken us from the potentially deadly slumber of thinking that withdrawing our troops means cessation of the Enemy’s mission of violent world domination. But no act has spoken more loudly than one mom from Cornwall standing down radical Islamic terrorism with nothing more than her will, her dignity, her poise, and her courage. She is the shocking image of decency and civilization that must surely startle the enemy: a woman, a mother, a quiet but firm and resolute voice of intelligence and honor. Louisa the village school teacher from Portwenn takes on the Taliban.

She is why we will win this war.

“Haply a woman’s voice may do some good

When articles too nicely urged be stood on.”—William Shakespeare, Queen Isabel in “Henry V,” Act V, Sc. 2.

Oh, God our Father:

Our hearts are broken. Our minds cannot conceive of the destruction. Our spirits are numb as we listen with stunning stillness to the death count and the stories of human carnage. We as a nation lift up the victims, families, and responders in Oklahoma.

“Everything is gone!” A frightened, young mother tells a reporter. And we want to help her and many like her. Where shall we go but to You?

In faith we acknowledge your Fatherly love and care over us, your sons, daughters and children. In hope we trust in your divine providence of giving us wisdom and courage as we face the challenges and mysteries in this life. In love we plead for your help during these days of devastation following the tornadoes in Oklahoma.

Lord, we are each reminded that ours is a fallen world, that heaven is not on earth and that Creation is yearning for redemption from the sin that has come into the world. Lord, we are moved to repent for calling upon you when we are in need and desperation but forgetting You and Your Gospel in good times. Father, the wounded Creation has wrought chaos and death. Will You, once again, reveal Your glory to bring order and life?

Lord, we are desperate to release our burden for the grieving people of Oklahoma as we lift their needs before Your throne of mercy:

We entrust the souls of those who lost their lives to your infinite mercy through Jesus Christ our Lord. Embrace the children who died. Help those who are hurt and heal those who are broken. Bring hope to those in shock and remind them that Your Presence and Power which transforms the Cross from shame to salvation and the empty tomb which assures them of the renewing of all things.

Encourage those who sit amidst the ruin and rube of what was once their homes, like Jeremiah weeping, and help them to rebuild and give them a faith beyond their own to sing into the turbulent skies, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”

Guard and give strength to all those who extend their hands of compassion to those in need of food, shelter and clothing, who share their lives with others for they imitate You in their ministry of mercy.

As the breaking of spring has brought not only the beauty of the earth but terror from the sky, remind us, too, that these things shall not always be: for in Jesus Christ a new Kingdom has come, and will at last yield a more glorious, eternal spring when glory appears in the sky at Your Second Coming. Until then, grant these dear people help and hope in the hurtful times, and send revival and renewal for the love of Your own creation. In the Name of Your Son I pray. Amen.

Streptococcus pastoralitus

I recognize this bacteria and its symptoms because I have been infected. Perhaps you have as well. It is all too common in North America.

I believe Paul was aware of this as he precluded any thought of pastoral pride by opening his heart to the Thessalonians to expose his pulsating heart of a Christ-consumed love for the saints.

In this passage the Lord has revealed for us a treatment for Streptococcus pastoralitus—pastoral pride— in order to establish a biblical pastoral vision. And if you believe you are not infected then perhaps you can receive this as preventative care which is no charge no deductable needing to be met!

What is the treatment or preventative treatment here to insure that our vision is Biblical?

In order to establish a biblical pastoral vision we must be prophetic in our preaching.

Now when I say prophetic I’m speaking of prophetic in the sense that Peter wrote of prophecy when he spoke of Scripture being a prophecy that is made more sure. I’m speaking of prophecy in the sense of Hebrews chapter 1, verse one where we understand that in times past God spoke to the prophets but now he has spoken once and for all times through his son. I am speaking of the inerrant,  infallible word of God. I am speaking of what Paul was writing up when he addressed the Thessalonians in chapter 2 and versus three and four:

“For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or in a attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.”

The prophetic preacher is one who understands that he is entrusted with God’s truth in order to extend God’s grace. Is under the authority of a session or a diocese or an association or board of deacons or a Council of Elders but he also recognizes that he is at a sacred encounter with the living Christ. And he has been called and separated out to preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ. The biblical vision stays a biblical vision when the pastor is grounded in prophetic preaching – preaching that is fearless and is grounded on a word from another world.

The greatest danger, you see, is that the vision becomes untethered from the word. This is what happened of Moses. When Moses saw the Egyptian taskmaster beating the poor Hebrew, having recognized his birth identity as a Hebrew, he had a vision to stop the injustice. His vision led him to a mission. His mission led him to a philosophy of justice: killed the Egyptian. He not only killed them but buried him in the sand. It didn’t win him any friends in the court of the Pharaoh, just as our vision never wins any friends in the world, but his vision didn’t win any friends with the Hebrews either. When our vision becomes untethered from the word of God it may sound sensational in the beginning but in the end it puts us in the back forty of the Midian desert working for a pagan name Jethro. Whatever we do we must make sure that our preaching stays tethered to the word of God. It is for this reason that I urge expository biblical preaching through books of the Bible. It prevents hobbyhorses. It prevents malignancies on the soul of the pastor which block blood flow to the brain and cause him to blurt out things like, “I’ve had a vision for a new family life Center,” as his elders sit looking bewildered having never heard of such a thing.

Here’s the other thing: you were called to preach the word by God. Paul says that he was entrusted by the Lord with the word. You were also. You will never find more vocational satisfaction and when you study, exegete, expositor, and apply, the very word of God. There is nothing like it in the world. And when you do people will recognize, “surely, this word is not.” And they will see.

The second part of the treatment plan according to this passage is this:

In order to establish a biblical pastoral vision we must be personal in our preaching.

This epistle is written to a general audience and yet it contains a most personal form to it. That could be because of the nature of the questions which were coming out of Thessalonica. There were questions about death than families and questions about whether there was divine approbation over the lives of those families because of death. It was great misunderstanding about several aspects — key doctrines — of the Christian faith that relate to us personally. So Paul’s letter is most personal. But if you look at Paul’s theology, one must say that Paul does not separate theology from the person. For St. Paul all theology is personal, for himself, but even more so for those he is ministering to. The classic words that come out of this passage is a  deep, personal word to the church at great city of the Thessalonians:

“But since we were torn away from you, brothers, for short time, in person not in a bar, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face-to-face, because we wanted to come to you – I, Paul, again and again — but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you or our glory and joy” (1 Thessalonians 2:17 – 20 ESV).

We must guard against the vision that is detached from the people who were in front of us — the people whom we have been given sacred charge over as keepers of their soul under Christ. Remembering that we should give account for their souls should be a sobering reminder that should craft the way we cast vision out of the word of God in a very personal way. It is not just that we have a vision for the world, is that we have a vision for people.

As I began my medical sabbatical I wrote a farewell letter to our students. In that letter I reminded them that our heroes in the face must not be Luther or Calvin or Spurgeon must be the 12-year-old girl who got braces and who is feeling embarrassed yet striving to live the Christian life. That seems small to you but it is big to her. Let her courage inspire you. The story of faith is being lived out by giant Christian heroes like 19-year-old boys in their freshman year at college standing up for the faith in the midst of great temptation. The real heroes, I told him, or the ordinary people in the pews before you. They are the people like the empty nest couple now use their time, previously given to child rearing, now to helping inner-city children who have no parents. The real heroes of the faith are like the man I ministered to one Sunday. I made a habit of looking over my congregation before preached. I would say many that I had spent time with in their homes or in hospitals or somewhere in the community. Sometimes they were in my office and counseling. Sometimes, as in this particular case, they were at a funeral. I looked into the eyes of an 85-year-old man whose wife I had buried that week. I could see in his eyes the conflict — “do I go on? Or do I stay and keep fighting the fight of faith?” It was my vision to minister the Word to him and that little girl in the teenage boy and that middle-age couple that day. And when theology becomes personal, the Bible becomes real, and your preaching becomes electric. And people, once again, begin to see. And “seeing” is what vision is all about.

As I studied this passage I came to a third treatment against a pastoral disease that would distort pastoral vision in preaching. It is this:

In order to establish a biblical pastoral vision we must be pastoral in our preaching.

Now this sounds very similar to being personal in our preaching. Yet being personal in our preaching refers to the object of our preaching — the congregation. Being pastoral in our preaching refers to ourselves. Paul demonstrated his pastoral heart to the Thessalonians and through the power of the Holy Spirit across the centuries to us today. I love the way he asked that rhetorical question. It really hits of what we’re dealing with today in the matter of biblical vision and separating that from a fleshly vision. “For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not even you? For you or glory and joy.” Paul’s question was rhetorical. He wanted them to know the answer was absolutely, unequivocally pastoral. His heart was for his people.

We often think of this great man as the greatest missionary of all time or the most prolific apostle or perhaps the most brilliant man who ever lived. All those or appropriate ways of thinking of Paul. Yet we should also think of Paul as one of the great pastors in the history of the church. Each book of the Bible overflows with the love and grace and compassion of Jesus Christ towards others. All at one point will say that he gives his all for the sake of the elect. He recalls that he is being poured out like a drink offering for the church. And here he wants them to know that his joy and his hope in his crown of boasting is going to be “souls safe in the arms of Jesus.”

And you know what? That really is your hope and your glory and your joy, isn’t it? Your vision for ministry is not tied to any other measure of success than seeing your people safe in the arms of Jesus Christ when he comes again. You cannot boast or be joyful about any buildings that you leave behind or any programs that you have established or any titles or degrees are institutions that you have found it. Those are all instruments — means to an end. The glorious goal of all of our resources and tools is to see souls saved in the arms of Jesus — not only those who sit before us each Sunday that their children and their children’s children and generations that we will never see until that day when Christ comes again. When we begin to preach like that and we believe in that, our hearts begin beating with the heartbeat of St. Paul’s and this sort of pastoral rhythm that will recognize that this is a vision from out of this world. They will know that this is a vision from God flowing through the conduit of a pastor’s heart to their lives and to the eternal arms of Jesus.

There is a fourth and most important, climactic, treatment to guard against Streptococcus pastoralitus:

In order to establish a pastoral vision we must be panoramic in our preaching.

Now this is what I mean when I say panoramic: I mean that our preaching must be too teleologically transcendent.  When you hang around seminary professors long enough you begin to talk in a strange language.  If we were to break that down we would see that preaching in a teleologically transcendent way is being very faithful to first Thessalonians. Teleos refers to a funnel vision into the another world as in tele-scope. Transcendant is referring, of course, to being outside of the existential reality. Thus this kind of preaching would be preaching about a vision for a future out of this world.  Such  preaching would be very faithful the letter a first Thessalonians and that is because in all five chapters a first Thessalonians the apostle Paul deals with the coming of Jesus Christ.  This must’ve been the great question Paul had to deal with for he addresses the second coming in each of our chapters.  He lifts the eyes of the people to the reality that the same Jesus who came once is coming again period that the sky will be rent in twain and the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords will return and the dead in Christ will rise first and then those who are alive and remain will be caught up with them to be with the Lord forever period whatever your eschatological position we can all say as one holy Catholic apostolic Church, “Christ has died period Christ is risen. Christ will, again.” This was the teleologically transcendant vision that Paul gave the Church and it is a way for us to preach.

But my sabbatical will soon be over and sometimes soon I will return to a pastorate and I will stop using such language. People don’t say, “teleologically transcendant.” They say things like “the Sweet bye and bye.” So I will say things like, “when the roll is called up yonder.” I like that better anyway! We will say things about “Beulah land.” I will not describe it as much as I will quote from the Bible on it and declare that “the kingdoms of this world are becoming the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ.” And I will regain my sanity and my pastoral equilibrium will be restored, I pray!

A pastoral equilibrium must have a panoramic vision flowing from the full redemptive flow of Scripture. Every text is related to Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

It is important that we are preaching our messages set within the panoramic vision of the sweeping, redemptive, panoramic plan of God that goes from Paradise lost to Paradise regained period from the fall and the eviction from Eden to a new heaven and a new earth period for in that preaching is hope against hopelessness and justice triumphing over injustice and little legs that cannot walk walking again and ears that cannot hear hearing again and eyes that cannot see seeing again in families broken by the haunting specter of dark death reunited again. In that new heaven and in that new earth there is a new world on its way — yet He is already here with the coming of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ in the hearts of his people and His Kingdom is growing from the inside out as lives are transformed and souls are saved and people are reconciled through Jesus Christ. When you begin preaching out of the panorama of holy redemption in Scripture your people will begin to see. That is a Biblical vision. And in this sense, seeing—with eyes of faith from Biblical preaching on with vision—is believing.

Conclusion

And seeing is what biblical vision is all about period seeing Jesus ruling and raining is what biblical vision is all about period the bacteria the viruses of the world, the flesh, and the devil constantly attack to distort that vision but first Thessalonians chapter 2 has helped us to prevent such damage or perhaps to restore  a biblical pastoral vision.  We have noted  that a biblical pastoral vision must be prophetic, personal, pastoral, as well as panoramic.

He had no symptoms of whatsoever of streptococcus pastoralitus. Indeed, his vision was prophetic, personal, pastoral, and panoromaic. His vision became his biography and his biography became the model of a faithful pastoral and biblical vision for others like John Wesley, William Carey, Francis Asbury, and the man who edited and published his diary in 1749, just two years after his death in 1747: Jonathan Edwards. David Brainerd, the missionary to the American Indians died of streptococcus pneumonia in 1747. But his vision was so filled with the lives of the American Indians he wanted to reach in the Connecticut River Valley and later Pennsylvania, that his vocation became his sanctification and his sanctification became his translation, and he would cry out:

“All my desire was the conversion of the heathen… I declare, now I am dying, I would not have spent my life otherwise for the whole world.”

Many were converted under Brainerd’s preaching and His vision in ministry. Many golden lampstands planted. Many pastors called. Other missionairies sent. And his Diary and Journal influences young people all over the world today to give their lives to this Gospel vision of surrending their gifts so that others will be safe in the arms of Jesus. The disease that killed him could not kill his vision. For his vision was not of himself and not of this world. It was of Christ. And others saw, which is what vision is all about: seeing what you could not see otherwise. They saw and they repented and they believed.

And now it is your time and mine to say,

“Lord, open my eyes that I may see. Heal me of any disease that would attack the lining of my call and prevent me from lifting up Christ, from loving my people, from loving the lost, and from helping them, as far as I am able, to see Jesus. Remove any disease of the soul that keeps me from Thee.”

Now is the time to say, “Be Thou My Vision…”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We often recall that Jesus ascended with his last words being what we call the Great Commission. What were Jesus’ first words in his public preaching and teaching ministry? The answer to that question can change the way you order your ministry and your church.

This is the inerrant, infallible Word of the living God.

“Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light,and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:12-17 ESV).

* * *

I believe that we are addressing the most important aspect in our work as preachers and as elders.

There are books on pastoral preaching, textual preaching, topical preaching, expository preaching and first person preaching. Yet these topics, as important and helpful as they may be for the work of the preacher, does not get at the heart of all preaching. We can have all sorts of programs in our churches but if we miss this one critical aspect of proclaiming Christ as Lord to the ends of the earth we have missed it. Thomas Chalmers said that if we fail to multiply, we divide. We have all seen that sad truth at work.

It was Lesslie Newbigin who wrote in his pivotal work, The Household of God,

“We must say bluntly that when the Church ceases to be a mission, she ceases to have any right to the titles by which she is adorned in the New Testament.”

Thus, there is no Bride of Christ without a self-identification with mission. There is no spiritual building. There is no “household of God.”

Because preachers are the servants of the Church, proclaiming the message of God in the Church, we can also say that when the preacher ceases to preach as an act of Gospel mission, the preacher has no right to the titles by which he is adorned in the Bible.

Yet I feel the threat of this bluntness in my own mind. For I preach different texts and different topics and must be faithful to the text. Is it an act of mission to preach on the parables of Jesus in Matthew 13? Must my messages be missional when I preach on a text from, say, Leviticus, or the Minor Prophets? The answer to the question is in the life of the Lord Himself. Jesus said in Luke 24 that all the Scriptures were about Him, so we can see that as He is the very incarnation of God’s mission to redeem a fallen world and to glorify Himself in Christ. I say, then, the message of the Scriptures are essentially about that mission. This position is undeniably established in the central activity of Jesus leading to the Cross and the Empty Tomb: preaching. For Jesus came preaching mission. He ascended leaving us with mission.

In Mark, Jesus comes preaching the kingdom of God. Matthew, so important a link between Old and New Covenant, alternatively, prefers the phrase “kingdom of heaven,” to the Kingdom of God (he does use that phrase four times). Yet it’s the same mission. Whatever your eschatological position, we can all agree with Herman Ridderbos,

“The whole of the preaching of Jesus Christ and his apostles is concerned with the Kingdom of God.”

Indeed, for Christ and the Apostles, the mission is comprehensive and clear: In Jesus Christ, the chaotic state of a fallen world would not remain forever. The renewal – radical undoing of death, “the death of death in the death of Christ” as the Puritan John Owen entitled his famous book, was underway with the coming of Jesus. That one phrase, “the Kingdom of Heaven” or the “Kingdom of God” pointed to a sweeping redemptive plan of God that always forced the Church, whether the Ancient Hebrew people of God or the New Covenant saints, to focus on the world, not themselves. The Gospel is thus centrifugal. And this was his preaching. Shall it not, therefore, be ours? Can we possibly be witnesses to the Kingdom of God that has come (and, yes, will come in a fuller, glorious “in-breaking” when He comes again) without preaching as an act of mission?

The words from Revelation come to me now as I think about the kingdoms of this world becoming the kingdoms of our God and of this Christ. This was gloriously evident in the preaching ministry of Jesus as we see Him in His public ministry appear in Matthew chapter 4 verses 12 through 17. Embedded in that simple message of Jesus, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is a at hand” is the fullness of the redemptive plan of God in Christ. This mission in preaching is the Gospel. The passage is pregnant with redeeming love of God being born into the world. And how then shall we preach?

It is clear that the Lord God calls preachers today to be ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven and to preach for mission. We bear a “Word from another World” that must be proclaimed. This is our mission. This is preaching on mission. Such preaching brings powerful dynamics to your church and your life. From this passage, Let us focus on five Biblically revealed dynamics of preaching as mission.

The first dynamic we might point to in the passage is this:

Preaching for mission crafts Identity

The preaching ministry of Jesus Christ begins after a grueling series of tests and trials in which he is baptized into his public ministry by his cousin, John the Baptist, and then, wet with his identity of mission, Jesus is driven into the wilderness (as Mark puts it) by the Holy Spirit. There he overcomes the devil in the wilderness and proves greater than Moses and the Hebrew children who wandered in sin. With John arrested, Christ begins to preach repentance and faith because the Kingdom has come. For the common people, there is an awareness of His identity: “He speaks as one having authority, not like the Pharisees.” His identify is clear in the hearts of the people because His identity is sealed in His own mind and heart. From this message at the beginning of this ministry until he says “Father into the hands I commend my spirit,” the identity of Jesus created his understanding of preaching as mission. Examine the texts of the Word of God. There will not be one instance in which the preaching ministry Jesus is separated from the missional ministry of Jesus.

The Diary and Journal of David Brainerd (1718-1747) edited and published posthumously by his friend Jonathan Edwards (in 1749) reveals that the more Brainerd’s heart pulsated for the mission to the American Indians he sought to reach for Christ the more he was crafted by Jesus Christ into the image of the Savior.

“My soul is concerned not so much for souls as such but rather for Christ’s Kingdom that it might appear in the world, that God might be known to be God in the whole earth.” (see the Gospel Fellowship Association)

“I long to be a flame of fire, continually glowing in the divine service in building Christ’s Kingdom to my last and dying moment.”

It is no wonder that his life influenced so many: William Carey, John Wesley, Francis Asbury, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, David Livingstone, and Andrew Murray, to name but a few of the greater lights we know. His vocation became his sanctification and ultimately his translation into glory. That is what preaching for missions will do for the preacher. This is what preaching for mission will do to you.

When God’s mission has reached us and we preach out of that mission at work in our own lives, a new identity is created that will bring authority. The common people will hear you gladly. And souls will be saved and lives will be transformed. Cultures will be impacted. Heaven will be filled. God will be glorified.

There is second dynamic that I would bring out in this passage.

Preaching for mission cultivates Urgency

Both the Gospel of Matthew and Mark moved the scene from the victory in the wilderness over the Devil to the fact that Jesus was confronted with the arrest and imprisonment of John the Baptist. Jesus began his ministry in conflict and crisis. Being fully God and fully man, something that we talk about in our theology classes and repeat throughout our ministries, he must have felt the emotional impact of the fast-moving spiritual attacks and strange events. But we often default to understanding his divinity without appreciating his humanity. We must recognize the humanity of Jesus as He’s dealing with the imprisonment of his cousin and the last great prophet to announce His coming. It is not just that John has been taken away but that the diabolical activity of Satan was not confined to the wilderness experience. The Devil and his demonic band was working in the hearts and minds and hands of unwitting agents of Hell. Thus, our Lord he left Nazareth, went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. And out of the crises of spiritual warfare, human pain, reverent awe, and a palpable opposition, He began preaching repentance. For the kingdom had come. Preaching as mission contains urgency.

This is seen not only in the preaching of Jesus, but in the preaching of His apostles. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans that, “The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:12 ESV).

Read Bonhoeffer. Listen to Henry Luke Orombi from Uganda today. Listen to the Chinese House Church preachers. You will hear a message of urgency. They have not been drugged by the opium of banality and inevitability. They believe that their years are numbered and that souls are before them who need Christ. Believers must be deployed. The lines of life are never long when seen from end to end and shall we ever approach our pulpits without this urgency? It is the dynamic that gives strength to our sermons and power in our preaching.

I draw your attention to a third dynamic:

Preaching for mission creates Tension

The preaching of Jesus – preaching his mission – intentionally provoked the status quo. His message “to repent and believe because the kingdom of heaven is at hand” provoked individuals personally. His call for repentance signified the presence of sin in their lives and in their culture. Jesus was then this is now, an affront to humanity, which prides itself in its own supposed achievements and abilities. But the preaching of Jesus Christ’s assaults the pride of man and establishes Him as a fallen creature in need of divine salvation. Such preaching also provoking the powers that be. To declare that one must repent for the kingdom is at hand implies that the present kingdom is being done away with. The kings and rulers of this world, whether political or religious rulers of this world, all come under the indictment of God in Christ. There could be no other way for the kingdom to come in except by such preaching and yet such preaching led Christ to the cross. It has led more than one preacher to follow Him to places they never wanted to go. But to preach the mission of God in the world guarantees tension. Preaching is not for wimps.

I once had a professor, Dr. Robert L. Reymond, who said that if you are not taking any hits because of your preaching, you’re probably not preaching the Gospel according to Paul. I would only add to that by saying you’re probably not preaching the message of Jesus. You’re not preaching as an act of Gospel mission. Such preaching is provocative. It is neither safe nor wise according to the world’s ways. Preaching for repentance and calling men and women and boys and girls to surrender to the rule of a new kingdom is to issue a Divine fiat to abandon the systems of this world because they’re crumbling. Calling people into a new kingdom can cost a great price. And yet, where else do we go? What else should we preach? We’re not lecturers on the circuit. We are called to preach this missionary message to God’s come down to live the life we could never live and die the death that should’ve been ours. We are called to preach that the redemptive purposes of God are being fulfilled through the coming of Jesus, His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit in the empowering and the sending of the church into the world. When tension comes we must hear the words of Jesus to Paul at Corinth when tension was like a black pall over the ministry of the Apostle:

“Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”

Preach for mission. Tension will both precede and follow your message. But Christ is with you and that is enough.

There is a fourth dynamic of preaching for mission that gives great joy:

Preaching for mission comforts the Broken

What is so amazing about this kind of preaching by Jesus is that while it brings provocation, it also brings the light that Isaiah prophesied. From the time of the fall until this time, darkness and Satan oppression covered the earth. In Jesus and in His preaching the darkness began to recede—the darkness of ignorance, the darkness of diabolical oppression, and the darkness of disease and backwardness. As you note in Matthew 4.23, “He went throughout all Galilee, …proclaiming the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.”

Preaching as mission obviously fulfills the redemptive plan of God to release human beings from the bondage of sin. Now there is a sometimes irritable but absolutely unmovable paradox in such preaching. The paradox is that if we seek to be compassionate by withholding preaching the mission—we are sinners in need of salvation and Jesus is the only Savior—we end up preaching to the prisoners without setting them free. We speak beautiful words, interesting stories, but there if there is no Gospel mission there is no light and the people are left in darkness. To preach like Jesus is to preach a missions message that brings the light of Heaven to the darkness of earth.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was critiquing the preachers of his day, in the late 19th century, when so many of them thought it rude in society to bring up the matter of hell. Some felt that Hell was not a fit subject for the pulpit. Charles Spurgeon replied that Jesus Christ knew no such supposed compassion.

“None used stronger language or more alarming language than our dear Redeemer concerning the future of ungodly men. He knew nothing of that pretend sympathy which will rather let men perish than warn them against perishing.”

He showed real compassion by talking about hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He talked about hell so much because he offered a way out and he declared that he was the way. In a similar way we must not be tricked by the peddlers of preaching methodologies today who would call us away from the plain preaching of the Word because it is too stark for postmodern man. Such peddlers are not only wrong but naïve. They forget that at the core of humanity we are all the same whatever our generation or are time or for that matter are nationality or culture. We all asked the same great existential questions – “who am I? Why am I here? Is there life after death? What is the purpose of living?” I have preached in India, northern and southern. I have preached in Albania. I have preached to different generations and groups in Great Britain, Europe, and America. I have attended Lausanne and spent deep and meaningful times of dialogue with people from around the world. Languages and customs notwithstanding, I’ve seen no difference in any of these people. The message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of the mission, transcends language and culture and every barrier because it is conceived by the Almighty God who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves. So let us avoid the cultural carnies that entice us to spend our pastoral currency on phony tricks that never pay off. Stick to the supernatural means that only can realize a supernatural goal. Stick to the message. Stick to preaching the mission. Jesus did and people were healed. When we do people will also be healed and set free in this life and the next.

Preaching for mission calls for Response

Finally, we need to see that the preaching of Jesus Christ was not only announcing that the kingdom had come, but was commanding the people to respond to the message. Such preaching is not just the giving of helpful information. It’s not just a transfer of data. It is not just telling stories to scratch the itching years of an audience. Such preaching has demands a response.

Think about the ministry and am preaching of Jesus. And think about even Jesus’s ministry at the a funeral, if you will, of his friend Lazarus. Jesus receives a mournful rebuke from Martha. If only Jesus to been here then the brother would not die. The contacts and Martha’s response calls for a new response. So Jesus asked her, “Martha do you believe in the resurrection?” She replied that she did. But the response Jesus required was a deep personal response based on the fact that the kingdom of God, the mission of God had come to Martha. Jesus declared, “I am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me though he dies yet he shall live.” there is no room for subtlety or irony. It is a stark statement requiring an absolute surrender.

Recently I had a great joy to meet with Dr. Billy Graham. We all remember in the biography of Billy Graham there came a time where he had to make a response to God over the truthfulness of his Word. He could not go on preaching until he settled the matter of faith in the Word of God. As I shook hands with Dr. Graham and knelt down beside his wheelchair to talk, I remembered that his decision changed his life and the lives of millions and millions of human beings.

We must not succumb to any movement in preaching that would tell us to essentially let people off the hook. There are movements afoot in homiletics which would say that the message best comes to the postmodern man by respecting the intellect of the audience and allowing them to “get it” without having to say it. In other words preach and then he will fill in the blank when the sermon is over. That all sounds rather clever and gives quite a bit of credence to the spirit of postmodern man. There’s only one problem. Mankind is in sin and cannot save himself. He’s fallen and all of his faculties are infected by Original Sin. The Word of God must be preached clearly. The Holy Spirit will then take it from there. The Word of God will not return void, but implied therein is that the preacher must preach the Word of God and not hope that it bubbles up from within sinful man. The Bible knows no such sort of preaching. We cannot let any man get away from the truth of Jesus Christ when we have the opportunity to proclaim the truth. Call people to repentance. Call them to see that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lord’s. Call them out in the name of the Lord and command by the authority of God that they must bow their minds and hearts to the resurrected and living Jesus Christ now before it is too late. The Kingdom has come. It is coming in a fuller, more glorious way, but it is also here now in the person of the resurrected Christ. There must be a response. “Now is the time. Today is the day.”

“There is no other way to preach but to preach for Mission”

Preaching for mission finally, after all else, lifts up Jesus Christ as the God of unstoppable love who will not be denied. The Kingdom of Heaven marched through the dusty roads of Israel from Galilee to Jerusalem, and came to human beings. Jesus Call the others to be preachers and they were sent to preach the kingdom. You and I stand in a spiritual apostolic line that reaches all the way back to Jesus Christ the greatest preacher. and you and I stand in our pulpits, whether that Pope it is a cathedral, chapel, and itinerant evangelistic ministry, a seminary, a college, or a small church, and we preach for mission — the mission of God in Christ to save humanity and to bring about a new heaven and a new earth. We are part of the sweeping epic of redemption.

Such preaching of mission (1) crafts identity. Such preaching (2) cultivates urgency. Such preaching (3) creates tension. Such preaching (4) comforts the broken. Such preaching (5) calls for a response.

There is no other way to preach but to preach for mission. But there is one thing that is necessary in preaching for mission and it is this: that the preacher has experience the mission of God in his own life.

In post-Reformation all England there were two great preachers who lived at the same time in London. There was Lancelot Andrews whom TS Elliott called the greatest preacher of his time. And yet the other preacher who lived at the same time remains a much more compelling figure even according to T.S. Eliot who preferred Andrewes. I have read both. And I have to agree with the English literature critic said the difference between the two is quite clear to him:

“John Donne used to be Jack Donne, but poor Lancelot was always Lancelot.”

And that one statement we come face-to-face with the life of John Donne. As you know this icon of English literature was quite a profligate in his younger years. And many people know John Donne for his sensuous, lustfull poetry. Yet this man would be converted by Christ and would stand in the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral and preach of the grace he had receive from Jesus Christ. Even T.S. Eliot admits that he was a personality. Something happened to Jack Donne that caused his preaching to soar and shout forth such memorable lines as “every season is the season of his grace.” He knew those seasons so well himself! It was not Donne’s style or his voice or his pitch. I am talking about the nuclear engine which was at work inside of his heart producing a message that was on fire. That fire which came from a personal encounter with the God of missions who visited him caused Donne’s preaching to stand out over his contemporary, Andrewes. This leads me to what I want to say to you today.

Preach for repentance of sinners. Preach with the authority of one who is a sinner saved by grace. Preach that the kingdom of heaven has come to you. Preach with the authority of the call of you as a sinner saved by grace now summoned by the King of Grace to proclaim His Kingdom to the world. This requires a preacher who is on fire with the Gospel from the inside out. He is on fire with the glory of God’s grace in his own life. Then will others gather to watch you burn alive, and some will catch on fire themselves. This is how churches are planted, churches are revitalized, and ministries advance with vision and courage. And this is how the Lord will bless your preaching.

Remember His mission when it came to you. Out of the fullness of that personal mission proclaim—preach—the mission of God.

Today is a good time for preachers, and for church leaders to be renewed in the Kingdom message of our Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated with His very body and blood. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

References

Brainerd, David. Diary and journal of David Brainerd. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press, 2010.

Chapell, Bryan. Christ-Centered Worship : Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice. Grand Rapids, MI. Baker Academic, 2009.

Donne, John. John Donne’s Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels, with a Selection of Prayers and Meditations. Evelyn Simpson, editor. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.

Eliot, T. S. For Lancelot Andrewes: essays on style and order. London: Faber, 1970.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church. Friendship Press, 1954.

Ridderbos, Herman N. The Coming of the Kingdom. Raymond O Zorn. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1962.

Templeton, Charles Bradley. “Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.” (1996).

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• How can we have an effective pastorate?
• How can our ministries, our preaching, support church health?
• How can we be faithful in our ministries?

There is a parable for young preachers in Walt Disney’s Dumbo, the little circus elephant that had a hard time keeping up with mom and the other adults. He would just latch his trunk onto the tail of the massive mammal in front of him and go with the herd! He was small, but with one critical attachment, he could keep up.

How do we keep up as pastors in today’s world? How do we even keep up with those who have gone before? How do we follow great preachers? How do we follow long pastorates? There are significant and divinely wise answers to those questions that may be located in the Bible, cultivated through prayer, study, consecration, and dying to ourselves. But I want to consider one single answer today. I must try to answer it, without apology, from the Word of God. So, I ask you to join me, and turn to 2 Timothy 3.16 through chapter 4.1-5. There, a little pastor named Timothy, just like the name of the mouse in Dumbo, who followed a ministry giant, a pastoral pacaderm named Paul, is instructed on how to latch on to the legacy. Hear the Word:

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound* teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
(2 Timothy 4.1-5 ESV)

Let’s just say it and let the power and the possibility for failure sink in: Timothy was pastor of the church planted by Paul. When I feel really challenged, I think of Timothy. The elders at Ephesus had fallen on the neck of Paul and wept over his departure at Miletus. Three years of powerful ministry gave Paul the right to call them to shepherd the Church of God that He had purchased with His own blood. And Paul, in his swan song at the twilight of his remarkable ministry, reminded Timothy how he had to follow Him. He gave the secret to power. He lifted a mouse (no, his words were so divine and powerful that they magically transformed the mouse into an elephant), a giant linked to his ministry, and linked to Jesus Christ, powered by Almighty God Himself. And what did Paul commend? He commended the Word of God, and after calling it God-breathed, he charged a God-called man to preach. The answer to the question, “How do mice latch on to elephants?” is neither original nor surprising at this conference. Like Charles Hodge addressing new students at old Princeton, I, too, say to you, “I glory in saying that you will learn nothing new here.” But it is an answer that every frail follower of pulpit giants must remember:

The only way for any of us to stand in the long and honorable legacy of gospel preachers is through expository preaching.

Why? I offer eight concise reasons why expository preaching is the power for the pastorate, whatever your situation.

1. Expository Preaching is the Power of the Pastorate because it is Divinely Wrought.

The way for Timothy to take his place as “[the] beloved child [of Paul]” (1.2), to latch on the legacy of “faith that dwelt first in [his] grandmother Lois and [his] mother Eunice” (1.5), to “fan into flame the gift of God” (1.6) which was transferred through the apostolic laying on of hands of Paul himself (1.6), to overcome a “spirit” of “fear” (1.7), to “guard the good deposit entrusted to [him]” (1.14), to teach others what he has learned from Paul, thus extending the apostolic succession to another generation (2.1-2), to avoid getting “entangled” (2.4) with “civilian pursuits” (2.4), to proclaim and teach the whole counsel of God, from the old covenant to the new covenant (as Paul speaks of in 2.8-13) “for the sake of the elect that they may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory,” “to take his place,” to “flee youthful passions and purse righteousness” (2.22), and to do all of the things he is charged to do at Ephesus like: reminding the saints not to quarrel about words (2.14), to “avoid irreverent babble” (2.16), to correct his opponents with the aim of leading them to repentance and a knowledge of the truth (2.25) so that they may avoid “snare of the devil” (2.26); to say it again, the way to be this man and conduct this ministry is— khrucon ton log— to preach the Word.

For Paul makes it clear that the Word of God alone is able to meet the mission of the preacher. The reason this is so is that the Word of God is the authoritative instrument from the throne of God to accomplish God’s mission in the world. We remember that Paul’s admonition to “preach the word” follows his teaching that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent for every good work” (3.16-17). Paul had been building up to say that in everything he had written previously.

I love the way Dr. Robert L. Reymond puts it, “the Bible is a Word from another World.” In his New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, Reymond writes, “When God gave his Word to us; he gave us much more than simply basic information about himself. He gave us the pou sto (“[a place] where I may stand”), or base that justifies both our knowledge claims and our claims to personal significance.”

The Word of God is the place where the pastor may stand. Indeed, our very existence, our calling, our vocation only have meaning through this Word. I recently read J.C. Ryle’s wonderful Warning to the Churches, in which the old Bishop of Liverpool warned his diocesan ministers of the perils they faced. The book left me amazed at his prophetic gifts and understanding of the times. I do not have such gifts, I am sure. But I do want to raise a danger related to the matter before us.

We live in an ever increasing iconoclastic culture that demands image and entertainment to communicate, that tells the preacher that short sound bytes are more persuasive than exposition of a text, that narrative is of more importance than the exposition of a text, that postmodern man cannot endure direct teaching, but needs to make the homeletical turns for himself. I say that this is a danger to the preaching of the Word, to evangelism, and to discipleship. And in the midst of such an age, we would all do well to remember that God called for Israel to do something that the heathen did not do, to think about Him in His Word, not in image. The late Neil Postman, a non-practicing Jew, saw this clearly. The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography, thus, became blasphemy, so that a new kind of God could enter a culture. People like ourselves, who are in the process of converting their culture from word-centered to image-centered, might profit by reflecting on the Mosaic injunction.

The Word, my beloved brothers in the ministry, is the God-given place where we may stand, where we may reason, where we may dialogue with man. Indeed, we have been forbidden to go elsewhere. As a pastor, the reason that I want to focus on expository preaching—that is, proclaiming the inerrant and infallible Word of the living God as it is written, as it has been transmitted to me by God through the church, passing muster with the intent of the author, with conviction in my own life, and with love for those before me—is because expository preaching fixes itself, by its best definition, onto God’s Word, divinely wrought and divinely authorized. This has powerful implications for my ministry that I want to explore further.

The only way for me to stand in the company of pulpit giants is to stand with this Word from another world. The truth is, if they are truly giants in the church, if they are linked from Spurgeon, to Ryle, to M’Cheyne, to Whitefield, to Bunyan, to Luther, to Calvin, to Wycliffe, to Augustine, to Paul, to Jesus and the prophets, then they are men of this one Book, and that is all they have to say. This leads me to a second reason that we must cling to expository preaching in order to find our place in the accredited college of godly preachers.

2. Expository Preaching is the Power of the Pastorate because it is Biblically Faithful.

We have seen that Paul tells Timothy to preach the WorUd, and we all know why. Preach the Word because the Word is divinely wrought. It is God’s Word, and what could be nobler? If there were no other reasons to proclaim His Word other than the mere fact that the Bible is His Word that would be enough. The matter, then, becomes how shall we do it? To “preach” the Word must be to faithfully communicate that Word (from another world). Expository preaching, properly understood and properly done, fulfills this mandate.

Expository preaching is defined concisely and Bibmically By Al bert Mohler put it in his contribution to Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship: “Expository preaching is that mode of Christian preaching that takes as its central purpose the presentation and application of the text of the Bible.” And if expository preaching is really exposing the mind of God in a given text and communicating the mind of God to men and women, then no other methodology will do.

William Temple was not an expository preacher, though he said enough good things that we often quote him. But the old Bishop of Canterbury did not believe that God would communicate His Word propositionally in the Bible because man could not understand it even if He did. Temple did not believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible. Temple did believe that you could understand what he wrote; otherwise, he wouldn’t have written anything, but that is another argument. Enough to say, that if we believe that the power for our ministries is the Bible, as Paul teaches us, then it surely follows that expository preaching is the only model we should seek in communicating that Word.

As one who serves a seminart and who is also a professor who gets to teach preaching every now and then, and who, as a pastor, gets to mentor younger preachers before sending them to other places of service, the subject of “the future of expository preaching” in light of post modernity and post Christian America is a hot topic. I have found that many are wrestling with the question of whether such communication really can reach across the widening and ever-changing rivers of modern culture to grip the hearts and persiade the minds of an emerging generation. The realities of the emerging generation cause them to question expository preaching, and, in fact, have led several on a journey to “find their voice,” as they tell me, apart from the safe constraints of exposition. . I’m happy to say that many of these with whom I have met have worked through that question to re-discover the power of expository preaching for this generation.

The whole matter of whether expository preaching can effectively communicate to a “late modern” Western secularized culture is a question that has been posed and pondered by many. Yet if we are preaching the very Word of God, then surely God knows what we need in every age. This Word worked in the fallen ruins of Eden when God promised a Savior in Genesis 3.15. The Word worked in Genesis 12 when God’s Word provided promises to Abraham for a land, a nation, and a blessing that would reach around the world. God’s Word was enough in 586 BC in the crumbled remains of Jerusalem when a weeping prophet named Jeremiah preached through tears. God’s Word worked in first century Rome when Paul preached it. It worked in the 18th century in America when George Whitefield roared out its truths up and down the colonial coast. It worked in the 19th century in Korea when missionaries preached there, and it worked in industrial Dundee, Scotland, when Robert Murray M’Cheyne preached there. It worked in the 20th century, the bloodiest century in the world’s history, when modernity overtook the West and men such as Martyn Lloyd-Jones thundered from a world capital such as London. And it will work in the 21st century, in postmodern and post-Christian North America, as it will work in China, Africa, India, and in Bulgaria. The Word will work in Chattanooga, will free slaves to sin in Miami, give abundant life in Los Angeles, renew cold-hearted saints in Des Moines, restore marriages in Peoria, reunite severed relationships in Louisville, sprinkle the spirit of holiness in New Orleans, call new missionaries out of Kansas City, and save souls from eternal punishment in Bangor, Seattle and Paducah. The power of our ministries is expository preaching because, if what we have to say is the Word of God, how we say it matters. And expository preaching, rightly followed, is the way to say it.

Now, I have said that expository preaching is powerful because it is the Word of God and it is faithful to the Word of God. Let me continue with my reasons as to why it is the power for the pulpit, but let me be thoroughly pragmatic about it.

3. Expository Preaching is the Power of the Pastorate because it is Pastorally Effective.

If this is the Word of God and it is and if expository preaching is the biblically faithful method for giving out this Word of God— and it is— then it surely is the key to success in the pastorate.

What do I mean? I surely don’t mean to imply that success and effectiveness in the pastorate is to be connected with being a celebrity, or selling books, or gaining fame. This past week I read a fine sermon by J.C. Philpot, from 1857, about the ever-present temptation of pride and vainglory among preachers, and I am aware that each of us deals in some way with this. But no, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about effectiveness in what I call the essentials of the ministry—gathering, growing and sending forth strong disciples of Christ. I have in mind the work of seeing souls saved, lives transformed, marriages saved, young people’s hearts burning with zeal for Christ and His kingdom, and desiring to die to themselves to live for Christ. I have in mind “setting in order the things that remain” and ordering our churches according to God’s intentions. I have in mind speaking peace into a troubled, maybe even splitting, congregation. I have in mind being pastorally effective in shepherding the flock of God over whom God has made me an overseer. There is no program, no model, no paradigm, no experiment, no policy, and no amount of pure elbow grease or mental genius that can equal the power of the Word of God preached. It accomplishes everything I hope for in the ministry. Recently, I read where someone said that the best time-tested discipleship tool in the history of the church has been morning and evening worship where there is expository preaching. My own experience as a disciple and a pastor is that I couldn’t agree more. I believe that this is so.

When I counsel people in trouble, I always ask if they are sitting under the expository preaching of the Word of God. I’m not asking them to come to my church, though I would love to have them. I’m simply saying that they must locate a place to belong, a local congregation, where the preacher is committed to moving sequentially through the Word of God⎯that may be moving through books, chapters, or other preaching portions within a book—in such a way that they are getting the mind of Christ in the study. Expository preaching is pastorally effective.

4. Expository Preaching is the Power of the Pastorate because it is Vocationally Satisfying.

When I say “vocationally satisfying,” I am speaking to those who have come, in their own lives, to say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 9.16, “For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”

If we are called by God to preach the Word of God to a dying world, and if preaching is unveiling the mind of God for man in this Word, and this is what expository preaching is, then it follows that we will only be happy in our work if we are doing that!

Eugene Peterson is the pastor’s friend in so many ways. I have greatly benefited from his various works. In Under the Unpredictable Plant, he tells how he was at the point of burnout at Christ the King Presbyterian Church in Belaire, Maryland. He was going from board meeting to board meeting, doing this and that, and as a pastor who has planted two churches a(nd Peterson’s church was a church plant) I know how it can be. Well, this tired pastor goes to his session and tells them that he can’t go on. He thinks he is at the end of his pastorate. Fatigue is physical exhaustion, and we all get that. Burnout is a loss of meaning, and we do not necessarily have to have that, but this is apparently what Peterson had. His Session was wise and told him to list the things he went into the ministry to do. He listed, preaching, visiting the sick, sharing the Gospel, and the things that the Bible teaches us is our work. His Session told him, “You do those things you were called to do, and we will do the rest.” You probably have read what happened. He not only was renewed in his ministry, but stayed over 30 years at that church.

If God has called you to preach, He has not called you to be a rush chairman, a religious store manager, or even a really great storyteller. Yet, there are many who will tell us that expository preaching is not enough. Peterson says, “Propagandists are abroad in the land lying to us about what congregations are and can be. They are lying for money. They want to make us discontent with what we are doing so we will buy a solution from them that they promise will restore virility to our impotent congregations. The profit-taking among those who market these [programs] indicates pastoral gullibility in these matters is endless.”

Let us not be gullible. Expository preaching fulfills God’s purpose for our lives as preachers. He has called you to preach the Word, and you will never be happy until you go to that Word, live in that Word, exegete the meaning of that Word, dive like a Pacific native to the bottom of the ocean for the rich pearls of that Word, and then come back up from your time in the deep-blue of God’s presence, string those pearls together in a sermon, and put them on the neck of your people.

Only a preaching method, a preaching approach, that is radically Word-centered, Christ-centered, Gospel-saturated, and uncompromisingly faith to the text will give you joy. For you were made to preach.

5. Expository Preaching is the Power of the Pastorate because it is Eschatologically Useful.

Now when I say eschatologically useful, I am saying that expository preaching brings our people into contact with ultimate realities. In personal eschatology, expository preaching prepares our people to not only live but to die. Oh, if we could hear the stories of faithful preachers, seated right here today, who have shared those sweet and sacred moments of vigil with a family when a loved one is going home. You know that the power for your ministry at that time is in the exposition of the Word. An elder in our church who recently went home to be with the Lord said, “I have been waiting for this. I am ready to go home.” This attitude comes from expository preaching.

Expository preaching also is eschatalogically useful in that it brings our people to see God’s ultimate cosmic realities. I would say that faithful exposition of the Word would probably distance our preaching from some of the excessive, isogetical propositions that we sometimes hear at certain prophecy seminars that lead to theological speculation and seem to draw cosmic curiosity seekers. But faithful exposition, say of 1 Corinthians 15 or Ephesians 1, leads our people to see that God is a teleological God, that this world is going somewhere, and that we who are God’s children are destined for something greater than ourselves.

The revelation of God gives meaning, purpose, context to time, space, and eternity, to man and God. It gives meaning to sickness, hope, and even happiness in the face of theodicy, and the questions of suffering.

6. Expository Preaching is the Power of the Pastorate because it is Personally Edifying.

The call to preach the Word is a blessing. Each week we come to the text, and we are fed by it, hopefully, before we give it to others. I know the James 3 warning against being teachers, but we also know the words of Paul—this Word will “make you wise for salvation” (2 Timothy 3.15). We will save ourselves as well as those who hear us.

I must say this, also. When we are about the work of expository preaching in the pastorate, the work carries us along in a sense. Week-in and week-out, we develop a discipline of study, for to preach the Word of God line-upon-line, precept-upon-precept, demands time, struggle, and prayer. I know that in this room, your heads and hearts are turning, perhaps not over this address, but over the portion of Scripture that you must deliver this week. Is there anything as rewarding in life as unburdening your soul in that movement when you approach the sacred desk and open up the Bible? Expository preaching feeds my soul. I know of no other way to put it. But more than that:

7. Expository Preaching is the Power of the Pastorate because it is Constantly Challenging.

To present the mind of Christ in a text requires much of us, does it not? I once heard a preacher say that every time he preached, a little piece of him died. I am sure there are those for whom that is true because they are tired of preaching, or they will know that they will get ripped to pieces at the front door of the church. But this man was speaking about preaching in a way that I can identify with. Like you, to preach the mind of God, to go through the necessary steps to get there, then to emotionally discharge the holy calling on your life through the act of expositing a text is the most challenging thing in the world. It takes your very life.

I was once in a seminar with the late Dr. D. James Kennedy where seminary students got to ask him anything they wanted. One asked, “Dr. Kennedy, what is the most challenging thing you have ever done in the ministry?” His answer was, “Prepare next Sunday’s sermon.” Can I get an “Amen” on that? We all know it is true. We all know that such rigorous preaching cut short the life of John Calvin. It must be balanced with recreation and separation unto God in quiet prayer and reflection. We all know that to constantly face the Word of God each and every week, sometimes three or four times each week, is overwhelming at times. But for those called to do so, it is a response to a calling to an amazing love that demands my soul, my life, my all. Would you really want it any other way?

Finally:

8. Expository Preaching is the Power of the Pastorate because it is Always Contemporary.

When we go to the Word, and preach the Word, we never have to worry about whether it is the right time or not, or if this is the right message or not. Now surely wisdom is needed to discern between preaching Lamentations at a wedding or Leviticus chapter 15 and “bodily discharges” at the dedication or baptism of an infant. But, you know what I mean. As I think about this conference, I am reminded once more that expository preaching is always in vogue, always “cool,” if you will, for the human condition remains the same in every age.

Conclusion

How did Lloyd-Jones follow Campbell-Morgan? Expository preaching. How did Boice follow Barnhouse? Expository preaching. How did Timothy follow Paul? “Preach the Word.” We must guard what was deposited to us with expository preaching. We must, because we can’t conduct a sound ministry of visitation of the sick and dying without it. We cannot carry on the work of evangelism, discipleship, world missions, building up our saints, or being a witness to our communities without expositing the Word from another world. We were made for it. It is our lives. It is our heart. Readers of great missionary’s stories will recall the amazing story of that intrepid Scotsman, the physician Dr. David Livingston, who, like Lloyd-Jones, was not only a medical doctor but also a preacher of the Gospel. You will recall that David Livingston’s body was returned from Africa, where he died, to be buried with highest honors in Westminster Abbey. But do you also recall that before his body was removed from the deepest parts of that great continent to make the 700 mile trip to the coast, the tribesmen of the place where he died so loved this man that they removed his heart from his body and buried it in great ritual in the land where he preached the Gospel? , Jesus said in Matthew 6.21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (NIV). The tribesmen knew that David Livingston’s treasure was Africa. His soul would go to His Savior. His body would return, for the time being, to his native country. But Livingston’s heart was in Africa.

So do our people know that we treasure them? Do they know that we treasure preaching the Gospel of God to them? Do they know where our hearts are?

I was the 12th pastor of a church that was started in 1838. The men who went before me were greatly loved. I followed one of the greatest Christian communicarors of the 20th century. Dr. Ben Haden remains a close friend. He followed a man whose name is engraved on everything from the YMCA to a homeless mission. He followed a beloved pastor who died five years into office but whose five years left an impression of ministry that was felt for six decades after his death. He followed a former Confederate chaplain who ed a veritable civil rights campaign for African-Americans in the late 1800s in that community. He served for 50 years. He always wore a clerical collar and always left the gas light, later electric light burning, on the porch of the manse—”just in case someone needs a minister.”

I once talked to some of the older folks in our congregation about my predecessors! “Why are they still venerated so? What was it about them that made them so special?” I heard answers—from different people, different stories, but always a common denominator.” I think that the reason my predecessors are so honored is that, like Livingston, they preached the Word to a certain people in a certain time in a certain place. That Word did for those people in their land, in their time, what the Word always does—saves, changes lives, heals, restores, gives hope, brings assurance, and brings God to men and men to God. I am convinced that in the final analysis, this is the answer. All preachers, whether they consider themselves mice or elephants, great or small, are loved when they faithfully open up the Bread of Life and feed the lambs of Jesus. And this becomes our legacy, not that our images are recorded in oils to hang on a church wall, but that our hearts are buried in that place where we took our stand, spent our years, and gave our lives to preach the Word. For, you see, to those whose lives are changed, you will always be a giant to them. Amen.

Related articles

• A Question of Character (5) (Gabriel Fluhrer) (reformation21.org)
• As an angel of God (Jeremy Walker) (reformation21.org)
• The Simple Things, the Good Things: Billy Graham Library and the Message We Need Again (michaelmilton.org)
• The Secret Life of a Pastor: Paul’s Passionate Vision of the Pastoral Ministry in 1 Thessalonians 2:17-20 (michaelmilton.org)
• A question of character (4) (Jeremy Walker) (reformation21.org)

A woman’s place? A woman’s place is simply that she is the very pinnacle of all of creation. On the Sixth day of Creation she was the final masterpiece of Almighty God in all of the universe. So those of you who accuse us of putting her on a pedestal this Mother’s Day (and every day) will understand our reason. She belongs on that pedestal. God has placed her there. She is the highest form of Creation and the fairer of the sex in the most celestial sense of that phrase.

A woman’s place? It is true that through woman, mankind was deceived by Satan and fell. Yet, in God’s good way of redeeming all things, woman plays the central part in bringing forth the Redeemer. I am not talking about Mary—at least for now. God gave a covenant—the covenant of grace – that He would do for us what we could not do for ourselves by providing a Messiah. The Messiah would live the life we could not live and die an atoning death that should have been ours. By faith in Him, His life is accounted for ours and our sins are placed on Him, at the timeless Cross of Calvary. This covenant was given through a man, Abraham, and through a nation, Israel. When Israel seemed faithless to God, at the end of the book of Judges, when the Bible says that “everyman did what was right in his own eyes,” the Holy Spirit shifted to the story of women who save the day. There was the Gentile widow-woman, Ruth, an unlikely heroine to bridge the gap between faithlessness and faith to bring about the Redeemer. And yet that is what she does. She becomes the grandmother of David and is in the lineage of Jesus. The role of woman is thus often the anonymous heroine who appears out of apparent weakness, who pieces things together, who holds the family together, and who keeps the promise alive because of a love that God implants in her tender heart. This happened also with the next chapter in First Samuel. There the story begins with Hannah. This woman is very much like Ruth. She is without child. She is not a widow, but, quite the opposite, is married to a man who has another wife. Yet out of the brokenness of her family situation she cries out to God. She takes her tears to the right place: to church, if you will. And there, the Prophet Eli hears her deep cry and grants her prayerful request and a boy is born whose name is Samuel. She dedicates the child to the Lord and that child Samuel would anoint David as king of Israel. Hannah played an important part in keeping the Covenant alive until Jesus would come and until you and I would receive him as Lord and Savior. She played the part that many women play: that of sacrifice in faith. That was her place. That is often the place of women today.

What is a woman’s place? Well, we do have to move to the central woman in all of the Bible, Mary. For she is blessed among all women. She is the new Eve. She is the fulfillment of the promise made to our first Mother. Mary knew this. In Mary’s Magnificat, she shows that she is a great theologian. She says that God has remembered his promises.

He hath received Israel his servant,

being mindful of his mercy:

As he spoke to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his seed for ever.

Mary will give the world, without the help of a man—for woman first fell without man—Almighty God in the flesh. Perfect symetry. Absolute undeniable redemption of the story of woman. No more condemnation of the sex. Just as the new Sabbath revolves around the resurrection, woman’s identify is formed on Mary, not Eve. The role of woman? She brought forward salvation to mankind. If nothing else had happened that would be enough to make Mother’s Day.

Yet we could ask again: what is the role, what is the place of woman in the Bible? Woman was the first to see the resurrected Christ. She was also the first to proclaim the Gospel of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Her message? “He is risen.” And how many of us will testify that the first evangelist we heard was a sweet voice of one on whose  lap we sat, sleepy-eyed, listening to her heart beat, as her voice whisphered to us, “Jesus is risen.” I remember my Aunt Eva even now reading the Bible to me each night before bed. I sat in her lap far past the time when I supposed I should have. If she were alive I would climb up in her lap now, and lay my titles and degrees down at her feet, and ask her to teach me of the Savior again.

So whether you are a wife and mother, a single woman whose life has been to serve others’ children, a mom in a blended family, a birth mother who made a choice for life, a married woman with no children, a foster mother, a divorced woman and a single parent, a young lady in college, or a little girl, the Bible has a message for you: God has a special place in his drama of redemption for you. You were made for Him and for His glory and you were created in a special way to declare and live out His salvation. You have done it before through your mothers. And you will continue to do it until the New Heaven and the New Earth.

Today on Mother’s Day is a day to remember that. Today is a day to say thank you to God for his highest of all creation.

I have heard the similar charges in my ministry through the years. I accept the critique. However, if the matter is important enough for me to address in preaching or writing, I believe I am just being pastoral to God’s people. I cannot compartmentalize the Lordship of Christ to only one area of life. He is Lord of all.

So, is it right that pastors should remain silent about important matters in society that are being debated in the public square because someone is trying to establish in our culture that there is no place in politics for religious beliefs or moral convictions that have been born out of a faith commitment? Because people (and fellow pastors)squirm when sin is exposed in politics or culture, does that mean we should refrain from preaching? No. It may mean just the opposite.

Is a pastor solely limited to sharing the Gospel to his flock on Sunday mornings? Or was the late Dr. John Stott right that one of our identities as Gospel preachers, in a faithful Biblical portrait of a pastor, is a “herald”? The pastor is not a prophet, yet he most certainly does carry a prophetic voice and speaks with Biblical authority to other Beast-like powers when there are souls at risk or the honor of Christ and His Church under siege.

I have an intuitive concern that the liberal professor who won’t let the young believer raise her hand in a state university and speak from her conviction is now trying to govern public discourse. Well, I am not governed by political correctness that has been born out of a liberal educational system or by the pressure of a liberal press but by the one and only true God. The public square is not the university professor’s classroom nor is it the TV news studio. This is my Father’s world. Therefore, I speak, and I speak publicly, as the Lord gives an open door, through media, because I am compelled by compassion for souls that may be victims of systems that will ultimately enslave them.

I believe that pastors must speak to our declining culture, whatever their pulpit. I am pastorally concerned that that there are dangerous idols masquerading under the banner of politics in this increasingly secularized culture. These heaven-rejected powers prefer that we keep quiet. But when the powers move beyond the Machiavellian machinations of politics to the advocacy of principles at odds with God’s Word we must call them out.

The prophets and church fathers of old spoke forth concerning the actions of governments, individuals yielding power, and the idols of culture. Our Lord Jesus did when he said of Herod “Go tell that Fox” (Luke 13:32), St. Paul did, the church fathers did, and the Reformers did. In the Twentieth Century I thank God that J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) was not afraid to speak to the ungodliness in his culture (read Stephen Nichols‘ fine biography of Mechen). And what of Bonhoeffer opposing the idolatry of Statism and the ungodliness of the Church being subservient to National Socialism? How about Solzhenitsyn exposing the inhumanity of Soviet Communism and the horrendous conditions of the gulag?? What about the preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr as he warned of the evil of a racism that had to be eradicated from our own culture? Today pastors like Ugandan Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi preach against the powers of darkness, expose evil in government, and even in churches in our own nation as missionaries to America, and warn people while compassionately inviting them to Christ. Why? Because pastors are like watchmen on the wall (Ezekiel 33) required by God to sometimes we must warn of coming danger, even if others cry “Off limits!” To do otherwise is to be disobedient to our calling. God says if there is harm to his people because the watchmen were silent they will have the blood of the people on their hands. This is a sobering warning to pastors and trumps any criticism of being “too political.”

Yet the challenge of discernment is acknowledged. What must we do?

(1) Pastors must represent no man but God and party but His Kingdom. We therefore refuse to be used as pawns by any political party. We are aware of Psalms 2 that the rulers of this world conspire against God and His Son. We study. We pray. We speak, therefore, when we must, on behalf of the truths of God’s Word to help people.

(2) Pastors must diagnose the presenting ill to discover the real issue beneath it. Only then do we speak. Diagnosis requires prayer, wisdom, courage, and the leading of the Lord. Speaking requires courage and counting the cost. If it is a real or potential spiritual harm coming from the presenting issues of culture or politics, then we must deliver the diagnosis and offer the cure in the Person of Jesus Christ and His Word. If I happen to yell “Warning!” and the demon under the cloak of culture is a straw-man then I have expended my pastoral capitol, perhaps compromising my ability to preach into real or more critical situations. But if it is not a straw-man, and instead an instrument of the “devil, the flesh or the world” that would further mar the image of God in man or further distance us from God, then woe to me if I speak not.

So we must preach, even when the culture labels our message “off limits.” We will live with that criticism because we are pastors and we follow One and His disciples who also were criticized (and crucified) for assuming an authority that challenged theirs.

(3) Pastors must pray for each situation that startles our shepherding instincts, and weigh whether a given issue is an assault on our conscience worth exposing. It is understood that some matters are just politics or a reflection of a sick culture, and a pathology more ably addressed by other men and women.

(4) Pastors must ground their preaching in God’s Word, the Bible. We have no authority apart from His Word. We must also always offer the way out through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To do less is to be embroiled in the political debate. But preaching with an conclusion that leads to freedom in Christ is above the storm, where it should be.

My pulpit (including this column) is not for sale to any political party. I care not a whit for using my position to promote any political agenda. I do care for souls. That is my job. And I will preach. That is my calling.

Jesus said that we need to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16). Thomas Watson, one the most pastoral of 17^th century Puritans said of this passage in his Body of Divinity, “To understand worldly affairs is the wisdom of the serpent; yet to not neglect the soul is the innocence of the dove.”

Dangers exist on all sides for the pastor. But, who said the job would be easy? Yet to silence the pastor in any realm is to cause the Church to retreat into a secluded ghetto where we can no longer be salt and light in the world. And that cannot be. We are pastors. We are shepherds. We comfort the afflicted and on occasion may afflict the comfortable, as it is sometimes put. The ground of our ministry is love from a pure conscience. Let us not abandon our post as long as God gives us the strength to stand. Let us be silent no more.

I greet you in the precious name of our blessed Savior, The Lord Jesus Christ. I want to thank you for your prayers for me and my family. I have received the most touching letters from our students that will always remind me of the “glory and joy” of my pastoral ministry among you.

As I prepare for a long sabbatical to seek to heal and prayerfully prepare for a return to full-time ministry next year, Lord willing, I wanted to leave you with some words of pastoral reflection. I want you to understand my heart for all of you and for this institution as you continue in the Gospel ministry of preparation.

Always remember that our heroes are not Calvin and Luther, or for that matter Frame and Kelly (although they are my heroes!). Our real heroes are the everyday anonymous saints we serve in the pews, in the parishes, in the mission fields, classrooms, counseling rooms, and in the communities where we are called. They live out the faith we proclaim and teach with such courage. There are no lights shining on their stories, no biographers picking up the trail of their lives, but there are great lights shining, and there are magnificent stories being written in heaven’s journals. Your job is to read those stories and to shine the light of Christ’s love on them so they know that God sees them. They are the ones, as you continue to minister (and perhaps one day even find yourself, “sidelined” from ministry because of some malady like mine), that you will always remember.

These are also the ones that you will long to return to. These are the ones who inspire you to bound into the pulpit and look into their familiar eyes and tell them the story they are already living better than you are, but who act like they have never heard it before. They are the ones we train and labor for: the little girl with her new braces and her insecurity, the little boy who gets shifted from one divorced parent to another, the college lad who wrestles with his faith for the first time and honestly asks God the hard questions he needs to ask, the young lady at the bridal rehearsal who is the last of her college class to get married, and the older gentleman whose bride of 60 years you buried last Tuesday. They live the faith with Gospel passion and Christ-like resiliency. They are why we pastor, counsel, witness, teach, and minister. They are our heroes. Remember that. Remember them. All of the theology and training you are receiving is to strengthen them. I think this was the spiritual truth that prompted Paul’s pastoral heart to burst forth:

“Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Timothy 2:10 ESV).

The amazing thing is that they are also the ones who will be your greatest teachers and greatest sources of inspiration.

And remember that our calling is to shepherd. Though I carried a title of Chief Executive Officer and was humbled by that charge, and took great honor and somber dedication in that role in our system, I sought to express it as a pastor and evangelist, which is my one calling from God. My charge to you is to be careful — biblically shrewd — in this present evil age and to be faithful to your calling to minister the Word. There are those who would seek to replace shepherd with another metaphor. There are some who would want us to trade our birthright for a new metaphor. Sometimes there are expectations to become “religious store managers.” Others, well-meaning but misguided, would have us to become “cutting edge pop sensations” to reach the unreachable. Be careful. Remember that shepherd is the title given by Christ. It is a lowly title with a high calling. Be careful of the other false identities which will never fulfill God’s purposes and which will leave you vocationally unsatisfied. Your vocation is your sanctification. In whatever place of ministry you go, be a preacher of the Word. Be a shepherd of Christ’s flock. “Do the work of an evangelist.” And in all of your ministry, in whatever expression it takes, strive to nourish your public life with a deep, ever-growing, ever-green life of intimate prayer. I say again, let your vocation become your sanctification.

I only regret that I did not meet each and every one of you, have a cup of coffee with you, hear your hopes and dreams, and pray with you for a while. Let this letter be my way of not only saying goodbye, but saying a prayer that God will use all of your outstanding preparation to raise you to declare the unsearchable riches of Christ to those simple, anonymous heroes and be faithful to your calling.

My dearly beloved in Christ, I did not seek this call. I did not resign from it. And I will now wait on The Lord to see if He will restore my health to, perhaps, return to my “first love” of Word, Sacrament, and Prayer, though I will never give up the ministry of seeking to prepare other faithful ministers who will teach others too. But if I am allowed to put on my old black robe that my Aunt Eva bought me 25 years ago, when I “left a career to follow a call” and climb into a pulpit once again, or take the bread and cup, the emblems of our salvation in my hands, or pour the clear, covenantal waters over the head of a little child as I hold her in my arms, I will remember you. I will remember that you too formed the glorious company of heroes whose courageous stories of faith are known but to God and to blessed people like me who got to serve you. For you now are precious flowers—beautiful and unforgettable flowers—that Mae and I have held in our hands, and will place carefully beside the others we have been privileged to gather from His fields. You will now be part of the bouquet of saints in the vase of pastoral ministry entrusted to us. For you see, you are our “glory and our joy” (1 Thessalonians 2:19-20). And I long to see you and your families and those who come after you “safe in the arms of Jesus” when He comes again.