Insightful Incidentals?

May 15, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Whatever passage you are preaching, there will be opportunity to make passing comments about relatively minor details. Of course, all Scripture is God-breathed and there is no such thing as a non-essential word in the Bible. But a high commitment to verbal plenary inspiration (i.e. the words are inspired, all of them), does not mean every word can become a preaching point on a whim.

So what sort of insightful incidental comments are best left unsaid altogether? Tomorrow I’ll address the potentially appropriate ones, but for now, just the baddies:

1. Distracting moralisms – For example, the preacher is working through the story of Zaccheus’ encounter with Jesus. The setup is finished, Jesus has just called Zac down from the tree and there is an interim comment before the big scene in his house. The interim comment is about the crowds grumbling. Cue preacher going off on a gentle tirade about grumbling and how bad that is for a church. A couple of wilderness quotes, the threat of excessive quail dinners and then the diversion is over, back to Zac’s dinner table. Oops. And then some. This story has nothing to do with whether people should grumble or not. Actually, if the preacher had observed more closely, it would have become clear that the comment by Luke is not wasted at all. The crowds grumbled at Jesus! Here is the key point in the story, the moment when Jesus diverts anger onto himself to free up sinner Zac. By looking for a moralistic application point, the preacher has missed the transformational gold of grace in action. Chances are, after missing that, the same preacher might go on to make Zac’s proclamation of distribution into part of his salvation negotiations, rather than the pure response that it actually is.

2. Errant critiques – For example, the preacher is working through the story of the blind man healed in two stages. In this case he hadn’t given any attention to the preceding content in Mark 6-8, which is so critical to understanding this unique story. Getting to the end of the passage, his eyes are drawn by the red ink of Jesus’ words in verse 26. “Do not enter the village.” Voila! Preaching point. We don’t do follow-up these days! We need to learn from Jesus. Jesus didn’t just heal, he also gave instruction. Don’t go back into the world. Just follow me. Etc. Etc. Meanwhile the more astute listeners have their eyes on the text wondering how the preacher missed the first half of the verse. Did Jesus ask this blind man to follow him? Or did he actually send him to his home? It is perilous to be looking for preaching points, rather than really reading the passage to understand it.

3. Personal soapboxes – I’m out of words, but you know what I mean. The slightest hint in a passage and off goes the preacher on a personal crusade.

So easy to preach in vague connection to a text. So much safer and better to preach the message of the text.

Saturday Short Thought: Seeker Sensitive Preaching

May 12, 2012May 12, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

For the past two weeks I have been blogging my way through what I think might be the ten biggest big ideas in the Bible. I’m sure there are others that should be included.

And I’m sure there are some that shouldn’t. I’ve watched a discussion on a forum where people have been posting their own lists in response to my suggesting there might be eight to ten such macro thoughts. One or two suggestions have seemed to be off-track. My concern is not to wrangle over debates between one theological camp versus another. My concern is that the God of the Bible be represented well when we preach the Bible.

I suppose I could call this seeker sensitive preaching. That is, is our preaching sensitive to the great seeker, the one who came to seek and to save the lost? He is passionate in His seeking, as evidenced in His Passion. Surely it must grieve Him when our preaching misrepresents His character, His nature, His concern, His desire, His goal.

I don’t know if you have pondered what you might include in a list of 8-10 biggest big ideas in the Bible. But if you do come up with a list, let me suggest you review it in light of this question – do those big thoughts represent accurately the character of the God who reveals Himself in His Word?

The same question should be asked of any sermon. When we preach we are not just explaining an ancient text, nor even just declaring a faith tradition passed down to us: we are representing the living God. Let’s be sure we represent Him well.

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.

Biggest Big Ideas – 7. Community

May 8, 2012May 7, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Woven through the warp and woof of Scripture’s great landscape are themes so glorious and rich that we can barely put them into words. I’m trying. What are the ten big ideas of the Bible? God, creation, sin, grace, faith, redemption. Where next? I suppose it is obvious if we pause to consider what kind of God we have:

7. The glorious tri-unity of God reaches out to both create community, and to draw us into the community of His love.

God’s passion for beautiful unity in diversity brings the unlikely into unexplainable unity to reflect the good and pleasant bond of God’s fellowship.

In the very beginning, the conversation of God led to the creation of two creatures made in His image. Male and female. United to each other and to God by His Spirit. Diversity, yet beautiful other-centred unity. The image of God. A wedding to start the story, but nothing like the wedding that will end it.

Sin drove distance like a wedge into the Edenic marriage, and the relationship with God. The apparent freedom of self-love is a destructive prison of competition, fear, hatred, as well as the deafening silence and dark terror of living as the dead, alone in the coffin of our self-defined worlds.

So God has continually moved toward His creation, promising to create community beyond our wildest dreams. He promised to bless all families through one man’s seed. He promised to establish a kingdom of righteousness, even though his holy nation resisted the privilege of priesthood.

He is now calling out a bride for the Son He loves – the church, a temple of stones united in one God-inhabited structure of worship, a body of diverse yet valued parts united under one head, a bride of diverse peoples bound together by the captivating love of the beloved and longing for His return.

As God brought together Jew and Gentile into one body, His multi-coloured wisdom has quite literally been presented to a watching world and spiritual realm. Where else can there be true unity between people long divided? Where else can a world be taken aback by the mutual love of people so different and naturally opposed? (Consequently where else is racism, or hatred, or political power-mongering, or falsity so unspeakably hideous?)

Unity among God’s people is not just a pragmatic idea – a means by which we can avoid losing energy for our greater mission of reaching the world. Unity among God’s people is our greatest testimony in reaching the world. Our unity speaks of His character and nature. Our disunity screams a lie about God to a watching world.

So we long for the day when all the tribes of Israel and all the tribes and tongues and nations and languages of the church will reflect God’s unity and diversity in our eternal reflections on His worthiness around the throne and the Lamb. This will be no cacophony. This will be the most harmonious symphony of voices, of languages, of stories, of peoples…of one people, united in the world of God’s love.

There are not a few passages that address issues of unity among God’s people – from narratives of brotherly disunity to psalms celebrating the refreshing nature of brotherly unity. From Jesus’ foundational instruction of squabbling disciples, to epistles extolling the glorious potential implicit in the gospel applied.

Let’s not preach unity as some pragmatic ideal for the sake of some other goal. Let’s not preach unity as independent creatures tolerating each other. Let’s recognize that God’s passion for unity flows from who He is, and what He’s making us to be.

Biggest Big Ideas – 6. Redemption

May 7, 2012May 7, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

I’ve been blogging through ten of the biggest big ideas in the Bible. Somehow every passage seems to touch on at least a few of these. So far we’ve pondered God, creation, sin, grace and faith. Today’s idea brings so much together, but may we never take it for granted:

6. In God’s great plan of redemption He brings home straying adulterous hearts into the fullness of His forever family.

The story of the Bible is the story of the redemption of humanity, but this doesn’t make it a story about us. Primarily it is the story of God.

It is His promised grace that overcomes fatal sin. It is His faithfulness to His word. It is His self-revelation, His becoming flesh and His sacrifice that does what we could never do. In the end it will be His bride presented to Him by His Father, and His kingdom presented to His Father. The redemption story is God’s story, and it reflects God’s character throughout.

The salvation offered to humanity is a gift beyond compare. Doctrines weave together into the richest tapestry, like the glorious righteousness in which we are clothed, and ultimately transformed. What are the beautiful threads?

Justification speaks of the transformative conquering of sin and guilt in the gracious and righteous declaration of a hideous price fully paid. Reconciliation speaks of the broken relationship restored to more than it ever could have been without the redemption story. Adoption speaks of the gracious inclusion into the inheritance and provision of the divine family. New birth speaks of the spiritual life transforming the dead heart into a living, beating reflection of the heart of our Abba. Cleansing speaks of the inside-out purging of impurity. Sanctification speaks of a precious and careful ownership. Glorification speaks of magnificence yet unseen in the loving embrace of a giving God.

As you would expect of a triune God, the imagery of redemption’s story is saturated in relational colours. Like a lost son we are arrested by a stunning display of our loving Father’s self-humiliating grace. Like a straying harlot wife we are melted and won by our groom’s persistent love. Like an enemy wishing Him dead, we are made His friends by His laying down of His life.

The problem of sin is so profound, and the solution so beyond the creature, that the whole of creation groans in anticipation of the redemption of the pinnacle of creation. Yet how creation will sing when made new in the final answer to the question of rebellion. Is there better life to be found apart from God? Is there life at all? No. He is the life giver, and what lengths He has gone to in order to give us life!

Eternal life in the joy filled family of the truly life-giving God.

So when we preach a passage in the Bible, we preach a snapshot from the family album that tells the tremendous tale of God’s great love story. Hallelujah, what a Saviour!

15 Ways to Improve Clarity

April 27, 2012April 25, 2012 / Peter Mead / 6 Comments

This week I’ve been writing about the doctrine of Biblical clarity – the fact that the Bible may be understood. This is a cause for great rejoicing. Imagine for a moment that the Bible was absolutely impregnable. Anyway, one of the points I made the other day was that preachers are representing a God who made His book understandable, so we should model a passion for clarity in our communication.

Let’s have a rapid-fire list of factors that influence our clarity in preaching. I’ll start, you finish:

1. Voice. If it isn’t loud enough, and distinct enough, it isn’t clear enough.

2. Vocab. Don’t try to impress, try to communicate. Jargon doesn’t help, good word choice does.

3. Preaching Text. If you stay in your text as much as possible, it should be easier to follow.

4. Structure. A memorable outline remembers itself, there’s no need to be clever, be clear.

5. Main Idea. One controlling, dominant thought, distilled from the passage is critical for clarity.

6. Unity. Let every element of the message serve the main idea, nothing extraneous.

7. Order. Take the most straightforward path through the message, so others can follow.

8. Transitions. Slow down through the turns or you’ll lose the passengers.

9. Pace. Sometimes you really need to take the foot off the pedal to keep people with you.

10. Visual Consistency. Keep your gestures and scene “locations” consistent to reinforce well.

11. Verbal Consistency. Let key terms rain down through the message, don’t be a thesaurus.

12. Restatement. Restate key sentences in different words, less patronising, but helps clarity.

13. Illustrative Relevance. Be sure illustrative materials have clear connection to the message.

14. Flashback and Preview. Whenever appropriate, review and preview at transitions.

15. Pray. Pray for message clarity during preparation, God cares about this!

That’s a start, what would you add?

Clarity: More Than Thinking

April 26, 2012April 25, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

Yesterday I offered three implications of the doctrine of Biblical clarity for us as preachers. Since the Bible is written by a master communicator who made sure it could be understood, therefore we need to work hard at understanding, we should help others know it can be understood, and we should strive to be clear in our own preaching.

There’s one more issue that I wanted to add to the list. This might be the one we need to ponder more than the others. Clarity is not really about intellectual capacity. The brightest scholars can make the biggest mess with interpreting Biblical texts. The simplest Christian can profoundly understand God’s Word.

Intellect is a blessing, but it is not a requirement. Formal training is a privilege, but it is not the definitive necessity. Reference resources are helps, but they are not preconditions for understanding. We have to grasp the fact that understanding communication is not an exclusively brain-defined exercise – our brain, or anyone else’s.

Dr B may be a very intelligent individual. Mr S may never have finished school and struggle to read. But which of these two is most likely to understand the nuances of Mrs S’s communication? Probably the husband who loves her.

4. Preachers have to both recognize and model that understanding is not primarily a matter of intellectual capacity or formal training, but alignment of heart by the Spirit. We can so easily purvey the notion that scholarship and intellect are pre-eminent distinctives of effective biblical study. The Word of God makes wise the simple. But there is a profound spiritual and relational aspect to understanding the Bible.

Notice how Jesus speaks of the role of the soil in the parable of the good soils (Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8). In his explanation the repeated issue is their hearing. He continues on in Mark and Luke to speak of a lamp under a jar, then returning immediately to the issue of hearing. He warns them, “Take care then how you hear, for the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.”

So how is the good soil defined? In Matthew it is the one who hears and understands. In Mark, it is those who hear and accept. In Luke, it is those who hear the word, holding it fast in an honest and good heart.

As preachers we can easily give the impression that the issue is intellect. It isn’t. The real issue is the alignment of the heart, its responsiveness to the God whose word is being spoken. It is more about Spirit enlivened relational capacity than genetically transferred intellectual capacity. As preachers of God’s Word, we must both recognize and model that.

Bible Clarity and Preaching Clarity

April 24, 2012April 25, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The doctrine of the clarity of Scripture does not mean that the Bible is instantly clear, or equally clear to all, or fully clear to anyone. What it does mean is that the Bible can be understood.

I’ve often made the passing remark in teaching settings that the authors of the Bible were neither drunk nor wasteful. That is, they were coherent in their thoughts, and efficient in their writing. They didn’t waste words or papyrus, they wrote in order to be understood by their intended audience.

But their is a greater Author involved too. He is the master communicator and He made sure the Bible communicates exactly what He wants communicated, down to the very last word. Praise God that He is a communicating God to the core of His triunity! He is not a glory-hungry despot who communicates with impenetrable complexity in order to make us feel small!

This truth does not negate the necessary work involved in making sense of the Bible. We do have to cross a significant historical, geographical, political, religious, cultural and linguistic divide. It does take effort, and prayer, and time, to make sense of the Bible. But no matter how tough some parts may be, it can be understood!

So what are some implications of the doctrine of biblical clarity for preachers?

1. Preachers have to work at understanding the Bible, there is no excuse for making up our own message (ab)using a passage. When we preach our own message from a passage, we subtly give the impression that the text is not there to be understood, but abused. Don’t be surprised when listeners copy our textual abuse patterns and come up with ideas we don’t like.

2. Preachers don’t have to make every detail instantly understandable to listeners, but we should be breeding confidence that study leads to understanding. The doctrine of the clarity of Scripture does not imply that God is patronizing. We don’t need to be, either. Some parts are very tough, acknowledge this, don’t fudge. There is much more that can be understood than is seemingly impregnable – help people see this.

3. Preachers are representing a God who made His book understandable, we should model a passion for clarity in our communication. We don’t represent Him well when we make our message dense, impregnable or overly complex.

Tomorrow I will add one more aspect that is perhaps the most crucial of all.