Preaching – Protestant or Not?

The “worship” of the Church of Rome focuses on the mass in which the priest magically turns a wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The participant then partakes in a fairly passive way of what the priest has prepared for him. The central feature of the service is the priest. The “worshipper” goes home basically unchanged and none the better for having been at “worship.”

The Protestant Reformation rescued the Word of God from the obscurity it suffered at the hands of Rome and made it once again the central feature of true Christian worship and life. However, we Protestants are in danger of returning to the centrality of a man, in this case, the preacher, at the expense of neglecting the Word of God. How so?

Part of the problem stems from the philosophy both of preacher and congregation as to what constitutes a “message” from God’s Word. When you hear a preacher talking about “getting a message” for the Lord’s Day it can reflect the mentality that borders on the prophetic, in the biblical sense of the word. It can be common to refer to someone’s preaching ministry as “prophetic.” People expect to hear messages that are not only timely, but also speak powerfully to the things around them. They want messages that confound their enemies and speak to their needy nation, as did the prophets of old.

However, the prophets of Scripture “got messages” from God because He newly revealed them to them. Their messages were revelation in the strict sense of the word. They did not so much “get” messages; rather God “gave” them to them. However, the New Testament preacher (which we all are since the ascension of Christ) is in a different situation. The canon of Scripture is closed. There is no more new revelation. There is no ministry that is “prophetic” in the strict sense of the word. The office of prophet ceased with the last of the apostles. This means that God has said all He wanted to. This also means that the Scriptures themselves are God’s message. God preaches to us in His Word.

So far, so good. But how does a preacher obscure God’s message and make himself the central feature of Christian worship? It comes back to “getting a message” for the Lord’s Day. Preacher, you already have your message – it is Scripture. You don’t have to “get” it; rather you have to study it in order to pass on what God has already said to us in the text you will preach. The text is the message; God preaches it to us. Your mission is to understand the text to the best of your ability and to “repeat” it, or to explain it to the congregation. That is all the “getting” there is (apart from the Holy Spirit’s leading as to which text to preach).

The text is the message. You don’t have to traipsing all over the Bible to pull together various threads to make a garment. The garment is fully made in the text. It may be illustrated in various biblical passages, but the thought of God is the text itself. You may need to bring in instruction from other passages and explain theological concepts used in the text, but the message itself is the text itself.

The problem comes in with the expectation of preacher and congregation. What is a “message” as far as they are concerned? Is it what God has already said in His Word, or is it what the preacher puts together from often disparate sources on a “timely” theme? Is it the plain meaning of the text or is it a compilation of timely thoughts or even good doctrinal statements that “spring” from the text? I say “spring” because a text is often a “springboard” that a preacher uses to get to the “timely thoughts” he already has in mind for his congregation. He might as well use Luke 7:40 as his text, “I have somewhat to say unto thee.”

When a preacher concocts a message from various texts or uses a passage for a purpose other than what it was inspired by the Holy Spirit to fulfill, the congregation is entirely dependent on that preacher for whatever he is going to impart. The message reflects the preacher’s own mind and not the text. There is no way the congregation could ever reread the message in the text because the message did not reflect the text. They must depend on note taking (which is not a bad practice in itself) and perhaps on a catchy alliterated outline to remember anything that is said. However, when they read the text again in their regular Bible reading what the preacher said is only a distant memory at best.

The worst thing about all this is that the congregation did not hear from God. They heard from the preacher. They might have heard truth and they might have heard some sort of helpful “ought to” for their Christian life. However, they did not hear God speak from His Word. They may have heard God speak in spite of the sermon, but they did not hear His voice through the sermon. The logic of the sermon came from the preacher’s mind, not from God’s mind.

The result of such an approach to preaching is that the central feature of the worship service is not the Word of God, but the preacher. The participant listens in a fairly passive way to what the preacher has prepared for him. The central feature of the service is the preacher. The worshipper goes home basically unchanged and perhaps none the better for having been at worship.

Never Read the Bible...

            Have you ever read a novel, or at least a short story? In a novel the author creates a world in our imagination that may more or less resemble the real world. The world he creates is one that fits his story line and characters to produce a somewhat believable whole, at least in the context of his story. When we read the story we are transported to the made-up world, and to some degree we live out what his characters experience. For the duration of our reading we are living a different life, in our imagination. However, when we close the book, we immediately move back into the real world. We might carry some residue of feeling around with us for a while and we might remember some of the lines of dialog or description. But for the most part, that “other life” is over.

            The same is true of movies, and even TV series. The world of the movie is our world, and the lives of the leading characters, or heroes, are our lives for as long we watch. But when the movie credits come on, the lights come up and we step out of the air-conditioned comfort of the theater into the steamy, hot parking lot and get in our stuffy car, the alternate reality is over and “real” reality kicks back in. We go and get a pizza and get back to the humdrum of everyday life. [For those who do not frequent movie theaters, the same experience of a return to “real” reality occurs, except perhaps for the pizza, when the DVD is over and the children are sent off to bed.]

            One of the elemental features of reading fiction is that when we close the book, life in that unreal world is over. We entered that world for a time to understand the author’s point, if there was one worth understanding. But once we finished the book, we finished life in that world. It’s over. However, one of the problems with fiction is that people can think that the imaginary world is the real one, and it can be lived out in this world. Star Trek comes to mind as one example where people adopted the identities and characteristics of fictional beings and attempted to live life as a “Trekkie.” Thankfully, most people recognize that this is not the secret to a fulfilling life. Once the story is over, life in that world is over, too. Then, it is “back to porridge,” as the British say.

            Christians generally like to read. One popular genre is the Christian biography. We all have our heroes of the faith. Reading the lives of those who have gone before us can be encouraging and edifying. It is heartening to read how God met simple people who had a great and faithful God working on their behalf. We can receive hope for our difficult times and strength of heart for the long nights of suffering as we see God meet others with similar needs. However, in reading Christian biographies there is a danger similar to the one faced by novel readers and movie watchers. As we read the dramatic accounts of the lives of others, we can imagine that we ourselves are actually experiencing what they went through. We can identify with these heroes of the faith to the point of assuming something of their path in life. Their experience becomes our experience, at least in our imagination.

This is especially true of 19^th Century missionary biographies. Although the stories of those heroic characters are largely true, they are often recounted in a “larger-than-life” way that approaches fiction. Such books border on praising men for the work of God. If a reader has any sensitivity to the “greatness” of the call to the mission field, or any other kind of “full-time service,” he can begin to see himself in that same “larger-than-life” way. If the reader is to any degree idealistic, then what he has read of others must also become true of himself. He becomes like the Trekkie who lives out the imagined “Spock” or “Kirk,”, but the name has been changed to “Hudson Taylor,” “C. H. Spurgeon,” or “Amy Carmichael.” What the hero of faith did and experienced must be seen again in the reader’s life. They did certain things that God blessed, so to have the same blessing, I must do the same things, or live with the same convictions. Then I will see the great blessing of God as they did.

I hope we can see the fallacy in such thinking. God creates everyone to be different, to live in different circumstances and times, and to do different things in the kingdom of God. I can learn much from the lives of others, perhaps mostly from their mistakes. But to think that my feeble efforts of imitation, even my best efforts as a Christian can guarantee the blessing of God is to treat God as a giant candy machine. If I put the same money in the machine that my hero did, then I will get the same candy as he did. This might sound a little harsh to those who believe that the greatest benefit of historic examples comes from imitating them. As far as I understand from Scripture, God is the Hero of history, not man. We have only to ask our heroes, with the apostle Paul, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor.4:7). Furthermore, as far as our heroes were truly men and women of God, they certainly did not attribute the blessing of God to their efforts. “God did not bless us,” they would say, “because we were good. He blessed us because HE is good.” God is the real Hero of history.

To take this thought to a higher level, such a man-centered “candy machine” mentality can bleed over from reading biographies to reading the Bible. Bible characters can assume a heroic status and become examples for us to imitate. Of course they were not perfect, it is reasoned, but they must be in the Bible to show us what God expects from us. That conclusion is built upon the assumption that man is the most important person in the universe. Man, it is wrongly supposed, must be the center of attention. After all, look what God did for him at Calvary. However, the Scripture is clear that what God did at Calvary was first of all “To the praise of the glory of His grace… to the praise of His glory…(and) unto the praise of His glory” (Eph.1:6, 12, 14). However much God may value those He purchased at the cost of the substitutionary death of His Son, the primary beneficiary of the cross was not man, but God Himself. If, however, we read the Bible with man in the forefront of our thinking, then the not-always-implicit supposition is that if we do imitate them, we will get the same blessing they did. In fact, it can even be communicated that unless we do imitate them we will get no blessing at all.

The God who is the Hero of history is first and foremost the Hero of the Bible. God is the central Figure in the Bible, which makes Him the central Figure in every book of the Bible, which makes Him the central Figure in every chapter of every book. His role might be only implicit in some places, but we must NEVER read the Bible without God foremost in our mind. The book is not about great believers, but about the Great God they believed in. They, too, would rebuke us with, “What did we have that we did not receive?” To be sure, they performed great exploits. But “they were what they were by the grace of God” (1 Cor.15:10). They only performed those exploits because God was gracious in turning their hearts to Himself, and faithful in doing what He promised to perform, usually in spite of their unbelief and disobedience. (That, by the way, is the whole point of Hebrews 11. It is not “The Hall of Fame of Faith” but “The Hall of Fame of the Faithful One” who is worthy of our continued trust in Him.)

The point of this long ramble is this: when we read Scripture, especially the stories (narratives), our question must NOT be, “How can I do what they did for God?” but “How can God do for me what He did for them?” NOT, “What does God expect from me?” but “What can I expect from God?” After all, He is the Savior, not me.