5 Reasons Why I Love Preaching Psalms

June 1, 2012May 29, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

So yesterday I shared some thoughts on preaching the prophets. How about another list on the Psalms? Why do I enjoy preaching them?

1. They are self-contained. A psalm is a complete unit of thought. It may be part of a short collection, so it is worth looking at those before and after. It may give a historical clue in its superscription, so it is worth looking at that and chasing the history if there is anything suggested. But essentially with a Psalm I know what I need to study and prepare . . . the psalm.

2. They are real and messy. Life isn’t all clean and simple. Life gets messy. Emotions soar and plummet. Situations overwhelm and resolution of tension can utterly delight. The Psalms don’t pretend we are unfeeling stoical creatures. We might, but the Psalms remind us to be real. Not only does this make for preaching that sounds real and not just some sort of religious talk, but it also connects because listeners are also living real rather than merely religious lives.

3. They are emotive and heart-felt. As a communicator I know the danger of adding emotional thrust to cold sterile content. It can be very manipulative. But I also know the danger of sterilizing powerful biblical texts into safe little life lessons. Oops. The Psalms are sitting up to be preached with a full heart to those who have a feeling heart – whether that be pain, or joy, sorrow, or delight.

4. They are full of imagery. I don’t have to look endlessly for imagery to add to a message when I’m preaching from the Psalms. It is usually right there. I need to spend that energy on the text and then on effective description and presentation, but then I can have confidence that the imagery choice was made by God’s Spirit rather than me.

5. They are always relevant. When people have lived the Christian life for a while, they typically end up appreciating the Psalms. The rugged rawness reflects their own personal experience. It tends to be the less mature who can’t get into the Psalms. So as I preach them, I can have confidence that nerves will be touched, hearts will be stirred, lives will be helped.

I haven’t even mentioned the messianic hopes, the glimpses into the godhead, etc. Ah well, I will stick with the five I put in the title. Just a nudge in case you’ve forgotten to preach from this great collection.

5 Reasons Why I Love Preaching the Prophets

May 31, 2012June 4, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

After three days of reflections on a great series from Daniel, here are a few reasons why I personally love to preach from the prophets:

1. They are less familiar. This isn’t to suggest that sounding novel is a good thing, but it is nice to see people leaning forward once they get the sense that you are going to make clear something they may have avoided in their own personal studies. Obviously there are the familiar parts – Isaiah 6, 40, 53, the first half of Daniel, Habakkuk, etc. But there is plenty of relatively untouched ground in both the major and the minor prophets.

2. They are stunning communicators. The prophets had to get attention. They couldn’t even be normal, let alone dull. As a communicator it is a bit of dream to be able to tap into the creativity of the truly shocking, without taking any real flack for the choice of approach. If we let the genre, the tone, and the creativity of the prophets shape our preaching of them, we should see this as a real head-start!

3. They are robust and direct. You don’t have to go far in a prophet to get a sense of what God is feeling about things. In the narrative sections you sometimes have to think and feel your way through multiple chapters for a single narrative. In the prophets you’ll probably get struck on the nose within a few verses. The prophets were, by definition, stunning communicators. They had to be, since the people were so often so dull of hearing. This leads on to another…

4. There are cultural similarities. I don’t want to overplay the “Christian nation” ideas that some seem so passionate about, but there is a real sense in which our cultures have slipped from what they once were. People taking God for granted or treating Him as irrelevant; people living to please themselves; people pursuing dishonest gain, plotting and scheming . . . this is the stuff of the Prophets, and of today.

5. They are hope filled. There are layers upon layers of hope offered in the prophets. Not only do they give the messianic predictions, but also the shorter term sense of God’s concern and interest and involvement in their lives . . . and also the longer term sense of ultimate reconciliation and kingdom hopes and guaranteed judgment on the wicked, etc.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it there. When was the last time you preached from a Prophet?

Reflections on Great Bible Teaching – Part 3

May 30, 2012May 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / 3 Comments

One more reflection on last week’s teaching. I’ve written about the handling of the text and the targeting of the application. But there’s an almost intangible element to be included in any set of reflections:

The Credibility and Integrity of the Speaker

A. Ministry and life. Since I am not naming the speaker, this post might seem a bit pointless. Nonetheless, rather than focusing our attention on him, I’d love it to prompt our thoughts in prayers in respect to our own ministry. Here is an individual who has been running the race for a good long time. The race for him has included crossing cultures, engaging with different and often very challenging contexts, success in other fields apart from biblical teaching, facing direct opposition with deep integrity, etc. There is a weightiness and a power in a life well lived.

B. Longevity. Maybe this is the same as the previous comment, but it is important. For those of us that haven’t been in the race for five, six or seven decades, it can seem a bit irrelevant to us. But that is exactly wrong. The longevity of our ministry and the impact of our service is very much about the life we live this week. Longevity and integrity doesn’t sneak up on us, it is cultivated in the daily walk with Christ.

C. Humility. It is always striking when someone who has reason to be proud isn’t. If messages like these had come out of a young man, it would be hard to imagine the possibility of such humility. Courage and boldness combined with humility is a powerful cocktail.

I will leave it there, just in case blogging about an anonymous individual is more annoying than helpful!

Reflections on Great Bible Teaching – Part 2

May 29, 2012May 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

In this series of posts I am reflecting on Bible teaching I had the privilege of sitting under last week. It was some of the most stirring and powerful ministry I have heard in a long time. I won’t name the speaker, for I suspect he wouldn’t appreciate that, but I hope my reflections on this ministry might be a stir to us. Yesterday I wrote about his masterful handling of the text … something that reveals hours, even years, of hard work.

Today I am struck by another labour intensive feature of the messages:

Brilliant and On-Target Application.

A. The speaker was sensitive to the specifics of a very mixed crowd. I heard him speak from Daniel almost twenty years ago. It was powerful then because it was targeted to a the group of young people of which I was a member. This time the messages were different. Part of that was the difference in audience. This was a mixed group with a variety of ministry roles from across the continent. Yet the messages were so pertinent to people living as a small minority in difficult anti-Christian cultures.

B. The speaker honoured the intelligence levels of those present. This was a gathering of people that included a significant number of the highly educated. The messages were not elitist at all, but the speaker was sensitive to the intelligence levels in the room. Nobody would have felt patronised, nor would anyone have felt untouched by the ministry.

C. He obviously invested significant time in preparation. The level of relevance and applicational targeting in these messages would not come from a quick scan of old notes. The speaker evidenced a real love for the listeners by the level of specificity he managed to achieve in his thoughtful applications to the audience.

Tomorrow I’ll add one more post, on the issue of the speaker’s credibility.

Reflections on Great Bible Teaching – Part 1

May 28, 2012May 28, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Last week I was at a conference, enjoying it both as a participant and as a presenter. I was particularly struck by the main Bible teaching. I have been pondering what made it so effective and will offer my reflections in three posts. I know the speaker is not a limelight seeker, so I won’t name him, but I trust these reflections will be provocative for us.

Observation 1 – Masterful Handling of the Text

In four messages we were taken through the entire book of Daniel. Not the easiest book to preach, nor the least controversial. How was the text handled so effectively in the course of four one-hour presentations?

A. The speaker was sensitive to both the literary and historical context of the book. He knew his Babylonian and subsequent world empire history and demonstrated a keen awareness of the various disciplines needed for pulling together the complexity of Daniel.

B. He was deeply aware of the literary structure of the book. Layer upon layer of structure was masterfully woven together as the book was presented, leaving the listeners struck by the artistry of the writer.

C. He showed a remarkable ability to summarise the content of multiple chapters without losing the essence or the core intent of the passages. The teaching had integrity, even when a chapter was surveyed only briefly.

D. The speaker was as bold as a lion, yet as winsome as a lamb. In a mixed crowd of people from multiple denominations and disciplines, it would be tempting to try to please everyone with a sort of neutered presentation. Not here. There was a stunning level of courage in this presentation. He knew that many would disagree on various levels, yet he was unashamed in his presentation of the book. I think this kind of courage required both a genuine winsomeness and an authoritative mastery of the book’s contents.

I was challenged by the obvious passion for the Word that showed in this series of talks. But there was more to it than that, tomorrow I’ll look at the issue of targeted applications…

Effective Bible Teaching 2 – History

May 23, 2012May 18, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday I nudged us to remember the importance of geography in our Bible teaching. As John Smith put it, history without geography wandereth as a vagrant without certain habitation. But it goes the other way too, geography without history seemeth a carcus without motion.

Our God is a God who not only created everything, including time, but He also has stepped down into this world, and into time. So, history:

Epochs and Eras – It is hard to fathom what the antediluvian world was like, it certainly wasn’t the same as after the flood. Travel for Abram was certainly different than the travel experience of Paul. Out of the swirling nations of the ancient world God called one man and began a story that has woven its way down through numerous epochs and era. The Patriarchs and the pyramids. The golden age of David and Solomon, finally a time of peace before the relentless march of empire upon empire. The age of human philosophy and wisdom yielding nothing but a blank page in our Bibles. The Greek culture and language outlasting the empire and sophisticating the Roman war machine. Roads built for enforced peace then used to transport a message of true hope and peace. And throughout it all, hints and promises and prophecies of a kingdom coming one day that will fill the whole earth.

The Great and the Small – The Bible is a masterpiece of the great and the small. The mightiest men on earth. Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar, both relying on foreign nobodies to explain their terrifying dreams. Alexander the Great…unmentioned. The great Caesars of Rome playing a very minor support role in the great drama of the coming of the greatest of all, born in the most common of places, dying the most ignominious death, and turning the world upside-down. Yet it is not just the Great-Seen-As-Small, although He is the focus of it all. There are so many small people playing their part in the narrative of God’s great plan – from the small brother with big dreams, to the youngest of eight with his harp, to the teens taken to Babylon, to a shepherd of Tekoa, a young man fleeing naked and another falling sleepily to his temporary death.

Power and Politics – The story advances through time with perpetual shifts in power. Each power figure thinking they are the ultimate and discovering they are not. The hard-hearted king with his great nation seemingly under attack by its own gods, yet all at the hand of the One true God. The arrogant-mouthed conqueror sent home in disgrace and killed by his sons. The proud-hearted emperor turned into a beast of the field until he acknowledged who is really in charge. The partying-victor brought to fearful humiliation by a finger writing on the wall. The conflicted parties of a council with restricted powers stirred to rage by a carpenter-rabbi from Nazareth, who confounded the governor with real power in the region, while ignoring the entertainment-oriented “king” given his audience with a true King. History seems to be a tale of waxing and waning powers, but actually it is the story of the only true power, thankfully with a truly trustworthy heart.

History and Geography, partners in powerful biblical teaching.

Effective Bible Teaching 1 – Geography

May 22, 2012May 18, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

There are many ingredients that go into effective Bible teaching – whether that be pulpit preaching or children’s Sunday school lessons. Two critical ingredients are history and geography. It is almost impossible to teach the Bible well without an awareness of history and geography. Haddon Robinson follows John Stott in speaking of the world of the Bible. I’d like to try and whet our appetites for study in these important fields. Work put in here will yield a real harvest in presenting the Bible to others.

John Smith, in his History of Virginia (not highly relevant here), wrote:

As geography without history seemeth a carcus without motion, so history without geography wandereth as a vagrant without certain habitation.

So true. So what are some of the elements of geography that will help our biblical teaching?

Nations and Empires – In the back of most Bibles are a set of maps. It can’t be just one. We need to get a sense of the ancient world from Spain to Iran, with Israel as a tiny place. We need to see Israel and even Jerusalem close up. But more than that, we also need to see a world changing through time. The great Assyrian Empire, so feared, then gone. The mighty Babylonians, then the Medo-Persians, the swift conquering, lasting cultural impact of Greece, the machine that was Rome. We need to see Egypt and Assyria with Israel in between. We need to see how Judea really was on the fringe of the Roman empire. Nations and empires, kingdoms and regions.

Distance and Terrain – The fertile crescent was quite some distance for Abram, or for a captured Judean king. The direct route from Babylon to Jerusalem was another story – that would need some major hill removal and valley filling if a motorway were ever to be made. The lush green rolling hills around Galilee are not out of reach of arid Judean mini-mountains, but again the direct path via Sychar was seldom travelled, many preferring the fast falling Jordan river route. Heading west wasn’t easy either – sea voyages were fraught with dangers from storm and foe (although there was the fishy option), but Roman roads and iron-fisted peace helped the spread of the gospel.

Cities and Towns – We all know that our town is not the same as the one down the road. A city isn’t just more inhabited than a town, it is different on numerous levels. So we must avoid seeing every biblical place as some sort of generic town. Nazareth was a garrison town for Roman soldiers, Tarsus was a city of some means, also well acquainted with Rome’s fast moving war machine, and Philippi had its history with Rome too. Yet each of these places was different. Tekoa and Jerusalem are by no means the same. A reading of Acts points to the strategic nature of hub cities in the growth of the church, while the most obscure of villages have a part to play in God’s plan – even little Bethlehem is graced beyond words! And what about Rome, can the gospel penetrate even Rome?

All of this, and more, lies motionless without the vivifying force of history. To which we turn tomorrow.

Biggest Big Ideas – 10. Christ

May 11, 2012May 7, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

We’ve covered a lot of ground in nine posts. A lot of threads weave through the canon. The resulting tapestry is stunning and breathtaking, but we can’t help ourselves, our gaze goes from the whole to the who…the one who reveals God to us, the Son.

10. The centerpiece of God’s great Word is His Word, His Son, our Lord, the Christ, the deliverer called Jesus, from Nazareth.

The epic adventures of God’s chosen people take more than a few posts to tell. In various times, in different ways, God spoke to them. But in these last days He has spoken to us in a son! Can we ever get beyond the wonder of Jesus of Nazareth? Fully God, fully man, fully one.

His arrival should not have been a surprise. God predicted and announced His coming, as if the enemy were so unequal that even with press releases and pronouncements, his terror attacks would amount to nothing. More than that, God showed His Immanuel-ness all the way through.

God is the kind of God who would choose to walk on two legs with His creation in the garden. But what of an unholy people, surely they could not see His face and live? He is the kind of God who would meet with such as Abraham, and Jacob, and Manoah, and let them live. He is the kind of God who would dwell in tents near His special people, meeting face to face with Moses.

And so the communication of the Father became flesh and pitched his tent among us, so that we beheld his glory! No one has ever seen the Father, but if only we could request just a glimpse? If you have seen me, Jesus would announce, you have seen the Father.

So he spoke to a gathering of the biblically trained elite, and also to a pair of hurting disciples on a road trip. To both he made it clear that the Scriptures speak of Him – by prediction, by appearance, by certain types, by fulfilled themes. Their hearts burned within. Two, in delight at the One who came for them. The others, in anger for the love of God was not in them. The Christ stirs hearts, he can leave none in some hypothetical neutral apathy.

The glory of God’s grace and faithfulness manifest in the flesh of a carpenter from Nazareth. Can anything good come from there? He was the solution to sin, the revelation of God, the forever bond between divine and human, the one who is coming, the one to be worshipped, the one who is friend, who is brother, who is bridegroom.

The greatest theme in the Bible is not our sin, our faith, our redemption or our obedience. It cannot be primarily about us, and yet wonder of wonders, it is about the One who became one of us. The incarnation, the step us-ward, the path cross-ward, the indignity of humiliation at the hands of those created in His image. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Oh yes, the only One who is good came to there, and from there.

The foundation stone and centerpiece and capstone of every good idea, promise, purpose and revelation is the Word made flesh, the ultimate revelation of the Father, His beloved Son.

Biggest Big Ideas – 9. Hope

May 10, 2012May 10, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I started this series last week with the note that Haddon Robinson had suggested that the Bible weaves together about ten bigger big ideas. I’m offering my list, feel encouraged to read the Scriptures and write your own. We’ve pondered our triune God, His creation, our fall into sin, His grace, our faith, His great work of redemption, resulting in our unity, the spreading giving goodness of God’s plan and now we have two left. The Bible is saturated with this theme:

9. A fallen world is a place of despair, yet sin cannot win against our great God, so His people always have hope.

From the very beginning God’s book is a book of hope, because God’s people have a God worth trusting. Even in the very moment of rebellion, in the sentencing phase of the first ever trial, God gave not punishment, but promise. The seed of the woman is the hope of a fallen humanity.

Eve thought she had him in the joy of a son born. The generations passed, but God is not slow in keeping His promise. The promised one was coming in the line of Shem, of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of Judah, of Jesse, of David – of the unlikely, of the unholy, of the ordinary people in the line of an extraordinary promise.

The prophets told of the coming servant who would suffer, the coming King who would reign. Generations ticked by, but for those with hearts aligned with God’s, hope only grew stronger. Each father potentially in the line and gazing into his little Jewish boy’s face would wonder. Finally it was a step-Dad’s little boy, a tiny bundle of life that he carried into the temple courts to be gazed on by two sets of faithful hope-filled aged eyes.

Now we live in light of His coming, and yet we look forward. Almost every book of the New Testament speaks of the future return of our Christ, the groom coming to take us home to the Father’s house prepared for us. We live in the shadows between two great spotlights, the appearing of the grace of God, and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. That is our blessed hope.

Some suggest such a hope is a crutch for the weak, or an anesthetic for the hurting. The truth is we are so weak we need more than a crutch, but this hope does not dull our senses. It enlivens us to live this life with hearts beating after His, with eyes to see His faithful loyal love, with ears to hear His word that stirs faith. Hope transforms the darkest vale of tears, not by a temporary fix, but with the perspective of His forever plan.

The hope of the people of God is not a hope restricted to manageable circumstances or changeable situations. It is a hope that holds in the face of hellish opposition. It is a hope that stirs when death seems to own valley of the shadow in which we walk. It is a hope that steps forward to pay even the greatest price, knowing that it is not we that stand on a slippery slope.

This earth has nothing we desire besides Him. So we live on this earth gripped by the hope that only a good God would offer.

And we will not be disappointed. We wait, we live and we die still anticipating a city whose maker and builder is God. We hail home and do not shrink back, as those looking forward to the homecoming of those bought and washed in precious blood, a community with no trace of sin and its effects.

Yet our hope is not really the city with its perfect architecture and untarnished building materials. They are as asphalt compared to the real glory of that city. For our hope is not merely the place, nor even the privilege of participating in the gathering of the rescued people, our hope is the Person himself in whose presence we will know the fullness of joy – we will be forever with the Lord!

The hope God gives has always gone beyond the where, to the who.

God, who has called you into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

Biggest Big Ideas – 8. Spreading Goodness

May 9, 2012May 7, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I suspect there is something of a story even in the sequence of big thematic ideas I am pondering in this series. God, creation, sin, grace, faith, redemption, community, and building on last time:

8. God’s character is marked by a certain spreading goodness that moves outwards to us and to all nations, rather than the self-oriented glory grab we might expect.

It is strange that we have expectations of God. If it weren’t for His self-revelation we would know nothing. Yet somehow we can easily assume we know quite a lot, even apart from the Bible. So we take the speculative notions of the classical Greek theologians and voila, a bank of knowledge about the supreme being.

If we would just listen to the Bible we would surely hear something different.

God is not a self-oriented glory hunter. He is not some sort of power-obsessed despot creating and playing for his own amusement. Even though a god made in our image would be self-concerned, the God of the Bible is anything but.

There is no more glorious glimpse into the eternal experience of God than the Son’s prayer in which we discover that the Father and Son are completely concerned with the other, not with self. There is glory, but it is a far more glorious glory, the glory of a loving giving kind, the biblical God kind. And even the prayer is a prayer for others to share in that eternal experience!

It is the outward moving motivation of God’s love that makes sense of creation rather than non-creation. It is the spreading goodness of God that makes sense of mercy triumphing over judgment. It is the overflowing and giving character of God that makes sense of His missionary mindset – in the sending of His Son, in the Son’s sending of His followers, and in His going with us.

It is the revealing, speaking, good God of Isaiah that wants witnesses to get to the ends of the earth, and His Son, His ultimate revelation, speaking to His followers with a commission in the same language.

So God’s character is reflected throughout the canon of Scripture. God is a giving God, a going God, a to the ends of the earth kind of a God. There is nothing grabby about this deity, other alternatives should be set aside in response to the great theme of God’s spreading goodness.

We may have consumed a diet of divinity teaching from the world, or even in the church, that somehow hasn’t felt quite consistent with the Bible. We need to preach His Word so that others can taste and see that the Lord is good.