Three Thoughts in Preaching Numbers

February 9, 2013 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

I have to admit that Numbers is not a book that I rush toward. The main reason for this is that I have not studied it in depth and so should probably preach it in order to develop my appreciation. Nonetheless, here are three thoughts from reading it through these last few days.

1. Faith does not automatically flow from the miraculous. Many people assume that if we could just see something miraculous, then we’d believe. After all, if we could just see God doing wonders in our midst then the culture would come flocking. Numbers again underlines that even God’s people don’t automatically respond in faith to observed wonders, so assuming others will is presumptuous. Water from a rock, a budding staff, the ground swallowing rebels, and consequently that generation were a people of faith? Not quite. The issue is not what we see, but how our hearts perceive what we see. If we don’t want to believe, no amount of miraculous intervention will guarantee true faith.

2. The Law’s community function did not generate faith. The nation that had started with one man, become twelve men, then seventy, then hundreds of thousands needed to be constrained and ordered. Their sin and rebellion had led to a growing statute book and legal code. By the time we get to Numbers we might assume that being a people with well defined laws meant they were ready to believe and trust God. Caleb and Joshua are the glorious exceptions. The ten spies didn’t. The people didn’t. Even Moses didn’t. In fact, rather than getting caught up in what Moses actually did wrong in chapter 20, perhaps the writer is vague on the errant action to point us to underlying faith issues. The great leader under the Law who disobeys God through lack of faith (Num.20:12) seems to contrast with the great man of faith before Law who kept God’s commands (compare and contrast Gen.26:5).

3. God’s promise plan is not thwarted even when the faithless miss out. It is important to help listeners know that Numbers sits in the flow of the Pentateuch, rather than as a stand-alone collection of stories. God’s plan to bless the world back in the beginning of Genesis was articulated clearly in his promise to Abram. By the end of Genesis the seed promise has grown into an extended family, with blessing to all families reiterated in the blessing of Judah by Jacob. That nation through which the blessing would come is born in Exodus despite the three-fold attempt by Pharoah to curse the “too numerous people.” At the other end of the wilderness sojourn we see another king seeking three times to curse a “too numerous” Israel. Again, the attempts to curse God’s nation lead only to their blessing. Thus the promise to Abraham marches on, with just Deuteronomy left: a sermonic call for circumcised hearts and love for God from the new generation heading into the dangerous place of security and peace.

Three Common Mistakes Preaching Genesis

January 30, 2013January 31, 2013 / Peter Mead / 9 Comments

Genesis is such a critical book! I suspect it simply isn’t preached enough. The rest of the Bible is built on the foundation of Genesis, and so preaching it enough and preaching it well are very important. Here are three mistakes to avoid, although many more could be added:

1. Atomistic Reading – This is where a text is snipped from the flow of the context and becomes a stand alone. Typically this leads to a Sunday School type of preaching that treats each narrative as complete in itself, and with its own “moral of the story.” Cain and Abel has to flow out of Genesis 3, and into the two genealogies of chapters 4 and 5. Abraham does not offer us a set of stand alone tales, but a sequence of growing faith, obedience and connection with God. Joseph’s brothers show consistency between snapshots, making them more than 11 faceless foils in the story of Joseph. Be careful to study and preach each unit in context.

2. Moralistic Reading – This is where a text is snipped from the artery of life that is God’s involvement in specific history, turning the text into a tale with a moral, a lesson for the day, a suggestion on how we can live better. So we should try to avoid infidelity like Joseph did, or not give away our wives like Abraham/Isaac did, or not get caught up in tempting conversations like Eve did. But actually the goal is not our independent successful functioning: that was what the serpent was pushing for. The goal is surely more God-centred than that. Eve didn’t trust God’s Word and God’s character, but God himself works the resolution to the sin problem and invites us to trust Him and His Word. Abraham was on a journey of faith as we are. Joseph lived as if God were with him, even though he had very little indication that he was!

3. Impositional Reading – This is where a text is seen, but not heard. It is where a text acts as a trigger to recall sermons heard and points previously stated. The preacher reads the text and looks for a sermon, instead of studying the text and looking for God. Impositional reading will always lead to superficial preaching. Probe, question, examine, query, ponder, mine, and wrestle with the text. Do that with God in conversation and see if the preaching of Genesis suddenly becomes a spring of living water instead of stale old picture book fables.

The Preacher’s Clock: Anticipation

January 25, 2013 / Peter Mead / 5 Comments

For the last couple of days I’ve been pondering issues of procrastination and preparation. But it is also important to consider anticipation.

Anticipating Future Preaching – The whole issue of preparation cycles is important. Robinson taught us that a five-day cycle was not long enough and he was right. This is only exacerbated by delays as you can end up with a message on Saturday night that has one night and one breakfast time to be embedded in your life as a preacher. That is hardly long enough to scratch the surface of personalizing experience of the message or forming any sort of conviction. You may know the material, but only in the head. A longer cycle allows for the Bible passage to do some work in you and on you, the preacher. But it could be argued that even a 10-day cycle is not really long enough if the goal is to let the message become part of your own life and experience.

This is why it is helpful to anticipate preaching for weeks or even months. Obviously you can’t be preparing months worth of sermons in any detail at all. However, knowing that a series is coming ahead of time does allow for an initial reading, some initial prayerful pondering, etc. I am considering preaching through Colossians later in the year. Awareness of that series, even without any sort of extensive study, can influence my life and thinking now. By the time the series comes, there should be some deeper rootedness in my heart and life.

Anticipating Future Interruption – Any talk of schedules and delays must also lead us to ponder the possibility of future interruption. Could there be a pastoral crisis, family illness, broken kitchen appliance, car trouble, unexpected guest or excessive administration between now and the sermon. I suspect there might be. That is why we need to build in margin to the schedule, rather than cramming things into every corner and relying on a smooth run through the week. This isn’t easy for most of us, especially when it means saying no to ministry invitations, but there is no other way to avoid seasons of overwhelming stress than to say no to things before the crisis emerges.

Preaching & Application 5

November 16, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Here’s the end of the list. Probably the most important post of the series . . .

17. Be wary since not every application is biblically legitimate. That is to say, a potential application in a passage may not be the intended application of that passage. For example, to make a big point out of the problem of grumbling from Luke 19:7 is to entirely miss why the reference to the grumbling crowd is included in the story of Zaccheus. You might point to the verse as support, but you don’t have the support of the passage standing with you.

18. Be careful that an application from here may not be consistent with the rest of Scripture. We are quick to talk about the value of comparing Scripture with Scripture in our exegetical phase of bible study. I think there is massive value in this principle coming to bear at the level of application. Stay where you are during your study (for the majority of your study), but be careful to check your application is consistent with the whole of Scripture. Be a shame to start sacrificing animals in obedience to Leviticus, right? We can fall into less obvious mis-applications too for the same reason.

19. Be wary of biblical application that is sub-biblical in its goal. Let me give one, probably the most common, sub-biblical application. “In light of this passage you need to . . . ” or “let us . . . ” Any application that focuses on listeners becoming self-starting or independently successful individuals should set off alarm bells all over our theology. Remember where the “you can be an independent self-starter” came from? Let the spiritual radar hiss when you hear this serpent-like implication, even when you are quoting Scripture to support your point (I suspect you won’t be quoting it accurately in its broader context!)

20. Be an on purpose “match-maker” in your application. Maybe this isn’t the best phrase for what I mean here, but it is a vital point. If your goal isn’t independent self-moved successful individuals, then your goal must involve some relational connection. The gospel changes lives. God changes lives. When you preach, please don’t beat us up and tell us to try harder. Instead, offer us the Father revealed in the Son by the Spirit and watch our hearts melt, our motivations stir, and our lives change.

Preaching & Application 4

November 15, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Part four of this series on application . . .

13. Be servant-hearted, not the model of perfection. It is so easy to come across as if you have already been mastered by and have already mastered the text. It isn’t about understanding. Be better at that every time you preach. But it is about whether you stand with the listeners as one who is also receiving from God’s Word, or are you just a dispenser of instruction, always? The servant-hearted part comes in when we realize our task is to serve others, not to impress them. Look to equip and enthuse, don’t look to show off so they feel obligated to you.

14. Be accountable to the text, not a red phone to heaven. Sometimes preachers come across as having a unique and Moses-like access to God. They seem to have spent the week face to face with the angel of the presence of the Lord, but it doesn’t stir the heart like Moses might have. Somehow it can instead be a bit intimidating. A bit of a spiritual superiority vibe that leaves others feeling spiritually inadequate. Don’t couch everything in terms of direct revelation if you actually prayerfully considered what to say and this felt right. That is very different than the red phone flashing on your desk and Gabriel passing on a direct message. Let your authority come from the Bible well-handled, rather than from an implied super-spirituality that may over-imply in places.

15. Be willing to describe the application. Don’t just preach truths and then leave them hanging in the air for people to grab and apply personally. They won’t. They will affirm you, but they won’t be touched themselves. Instead seek to spell out the difference this biblical truth might make in a life. They will translate that application to their own situation, but only after they see that you are offering more than just a nice spiritual thought.

16. Be specifically descriptive in applications. As you describe what it might look like to live in light of the passage, be specific. What does the truth of the Incarnation mean when I am struggling with my boss’s attitude tomorrow at work? What does it look like to trust God’s providence when everything seems to be conspiring against my marriage? What would be different if the peace of God gripped the ethos of our church with its grapevines and back-biting festivals?

Application & Preaching 2

November 13, 2012November 13, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Carrying on with more thoughts on application in preaching…

5. Be aware of the specific people to whom you preach. Just because a church is in a neighbourhood, this doesn’t mean the people in the church are typical of the people in the neighbourhood.

6. Be aware of the people whom the church is trying to reach. Here’s where number 5 becomes tricky. You may be preaching to one group of people but trying to reach a quite different group of people. Application is about targetted preaching – aiming vaguely is never wise when trying to hit a target. So do you preach to those who are present, or to those you’d like them to feel comfortable bringing? Both is a good idea. Neither seems ludicrous.

7. Be applicationally authentic. While it is easy to throw stones at post-modernity with all its relativizing of truth and denial of absolutes, let’s not miss the underarm throw that sits up invitingly before us as if to taunt us. This culture craves authenticity. It doesn’t get excited by authority or formalized religion or establishment stuff. But it does crave authenticity. Where else but in the community of God’s saved people can people go to find authenticity? But will they find it with us? Honesty, vulnerability, transparency, authenticity. We need to find a voice that is personally real, rather than offering application at arms length and so coming across as tipsters from a bygone era.

8. Be courageously bold. Paul told the Ephesian elders how he did not hesitate to proclaim the whole counsel of God. Do we? Do we apply the truth of God’s Word to the quirks and distinctive corporate personality of a local church? This takes boldness. You’ll get praise for critiquing the sins of others, but don’t go touching local sin if you want an easy life! At the same time our culture needs a sensitive, yet bold, propheticc voice to speak out. This is where preaching from personal proof texts doesn’t look good. But preaching through books or sections can allow a greater freedom since the agenda is coming from the text.

Application & Preaching

November 12, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Our task as preachers is not only to explain, but also to apply the Word. How can we improve as “applicational” preachers? Let me throw some thoughts your way over the next days.

1. Be responsive to the Word. This means that as you read it, and as you study it, you respond to it. Rightly handling the Word involves work. Some of us are diligent in our exegetical processes, but light when it comes to personal response. Others are quick to respond, but weak on understanding it first.

2. Be convinced by the Word. We live in an age that is increasingly unconvinced by “well, the Bible says so!” Ok, I’ve understated it. Almost nobody is convinced there is a link between Bible and ultimate truth. So we must be increasingly convinced. This isn’t just about accurate handling of the text, with well-infomed awareness of historical, archeological and cultural backgrounds. It is also about living a life marked and shaped by the Word. It isn’t just explanation that must convince us, also lived application.

3. Be aware of the world. We don’t need to feast on sin to know how it tastes. But we can’t hide in religious ghettos and simply throw stones at the world around. Loving people means knowing people. It means finding out what makes them tick. Do we understand the shifts in thinking and communication between modern and post-modern worldviews? Do we know the difference between the modern Boomers, the hinge generation – Gen-X (who were raised modern but live in post-modern world), and the truly post-modern Millennials? Do we think through the shifts in communication, how in an electronic and virtual reality world there is a shift away from printed page communication, almost back toward an oral world, only now with overwhelming noise hitting both eye and ear?

4. Be in touch with your local context. Churches aren’t simply islands in the large ocean of contemporary culture. They sit in local contexts. Some urban, others suburban, still others very rural. These are all different. Local contexts are regional, with all the prejudices and blind spots that come within a region. People in an area tend to have similarities, perhaps in education, perhaps in outlook. Don’t go preaching urban sophisticated application in depressed rural regions.

Don’t Just Get the Idea!

November 9, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

The Big Idea approach to preaching is birthed from an understanding of the nature of communication. That is, when we communicate, we are not just firing words out into nowhere. Rather, we are seeking to have the other party get the idea of what we are saying. Communication is about ideas. We want the other to say, “I see what you are saying.”

Ideas change lives. People give themselves to ideas. Christianity is a content-based faith. Which is why a very high view of Scripture tends to resonate with a commitment to expository preaching. That is, bringing out from the text the meaning that is there and seeking to effectively communicate that truth to others with an emphasis on why it matters to them.

But I don’t just want to extol the virtues of a “big idea” approach to preaching. I also want to highlight a couple of potential misapplications of it. Let’s use a very simple “communications” model:

WRITER > MESSAGE > RECIPIENTS

1. It is not just about the writer to the original recipients. It is possible to be committed to discovering what the writer meant by what he wrote to the original recipients, and then to preach that. Just that. This can come across as textually accurate, but distant and irrelevant. It can lose sight of the present and living nature of God’s Word. We can become lecturers in ancient manuscript interpretation, even if we add on application by extension. It is important to not lose the accuracy of original intent, setting, context, etc., but also to give a very clear sense that this is for us today.

So to tweak the model:

WRITER > MESSAGE > RECIPIENTS

including the message to Us

2. It is not just about the human writer, it is part of God’s self-revelation in the Word. This is where I’ve seen Big Idea preaching misapplied and fall short. Understanding, distilling and effectively communicating the main idea of a passage is not the whole deal. We are not trading in brilliant information transfer, back then or today. We are handling the inspired Word of God, given to us to reveal His heart to us. When the text becomes opaque, when the personal nature of the Trinity grows distant, then all our meticulous accuracy and sermonic craft is wasted. We don’t just preach the written word, we preach Christ. Our preaching must be theocentric, for the Bible is all about God.

Final tweak?

The Revelation of God, who inspired the .

WRITER > MESSAGE > RECIPIENTS

including His message to Us

True preaching happens in the present. As Donald Sunukjian puts it, in his shortened definition of biblical preaching: “Listen to what God is saying . . . to us!” Let’s preach so that our listeners can meet the God who still speaks through His Word today.

Get the Idea!?

November 6, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

As a child I would ask my Dad for help with various projects – fixing the brakes on my bike, getting the scalextric set up, getting the lawnmower to work. Invariably he would show me and then say, “do you get the idea?” I usually did and that was that.

Then I studied preaching at seminary. All of my teachers (thankfully) were proponents of “Big Idea” preaching. So now, as I prepare to preach, I am haunted by the question from years ago – do I get the idea? If I don’t, I’m not ready to preach. However, finding the main idea in a passage is usually not as easy as fixing the brakes on my bike.

It seems like a disproportionate amount of time can be spent trying to formulate a single sentence in the preparation process. But this single sentence is so important that it is always time worth investing. The payout is always sermon-wide. And the fallout should be church-wide and beyond. So let’s spend some days chasing the issue of the main idea, or as Haddon Robinson would put it, the Big Idea.

1. Ideas are the building blocks of communication. We communicate in ideas. Not words. Ideas. It is possible to get across a message without speaking a word – just think of advertising on the television or a billboard that uses imagery rather than words, just think of your mother when you came up with a creative activity as a guest in somebody else’s home. Words matter, but ideas communicate. So with any biblical passage – it consists of a set of ideas, some bigger, some smaller, all interrelated, and ultimately, all serving the main idea that drives the whole passage. Our job as communicators is not to parrot words, but to grasp and give out the main idea of a passage.

2. Ideas are made up of two parts. I tend to call it the single sentence summary. Somehow that feels easier to grasp than the full explanation of an idea. But let’s go to the full explanation, it isn’t that bad. What is the passage about? This is the subject. What is the passage saying about that? That is the complement. Put them together and you have the idea. Sounds easy. Sometimes it helps to ask, “what question is this passage answering?” (subject-question), and “what answer does it give?” (complement-answer). Or just summarize the whole passage in a single sentence.

Whatever it takes, let’s be sure we get the idea!

Spaces: Thinking, Reading, Work

October 23, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Over the past few days we have been rearranging bedrooms in our house. This has meant that I have a new study. What a blessing! It also means I have been thinking about the kind of space needed for preachers. Some thoughts:

1. Space does not have to be literal. Over the past few years I have worked in the corner of our bedroom, in a tiny room, in a larger room, on my netbook in my car parked in the Surrey hills (think Gladiator opening scene, only without the war raging), in a cold church room with a fire pumping out heat, and so on. Often we don’t have the physical space we need, but it is still worth thinking through the space we need to create for different aspects of ministry.

2. There is a difference between an office and a study. A while back I read the comment that pastor’s have replaced their study with an office. This weekend a good friend of mine noted the difference between a study in the home and an office in the church – largely in terms of interruptions that tend to come in the church, but can be avoided at home (people there understand the need for space!) He told me how he’d put his phone in a cupboard. It can ring, but it doesn’t always feel immediate and urgent. Nice approach. Anyway, the fact remains that there is a difference between an office and a study. Whether they are in the same space or not, they serve different functions. My experience of combining the two is that the office tends to win. I’ve had to leave the office to get to the study, if you see what I mean?

3. Don’t let the business of life and ministry drown out the eternal work that occurs in the study. Emails and phone calls and administration and distractions abound in the office. If we aren’t careful, the prayer and reading and thinking and study that takes place in a study can be forfeited. I now have a bigger study. Solution? I’d pondered a separate desk for study purposes. Instead I’ve gone with a huge leather chair from a second-hand store. I love it. At least, I will, once I get the room organized enough to reach it! And if I don’t? Then it will be a daily reminder that the office work at this computer and filing cabinet are stealing me away from what I claim to be most important.