Preparing to Preach OT Narrative – 4

August 23, 2012August 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

So I am preparing to preach Ruth. I know that all preachers are tempted to overcome the perceived lack of relevance by multiplying applications from the details of the story. Yesterday I suggested that the details are there for the sake of the plot, rather than as automatic teaching points. But there is more to be said on this matter of applying the text.

Furthermore, (2) I have to remember that narratives were not given to us merely to instruct our conduct. It is not just conduct that matters in facing the horrors life can throw at us (Ruth 1), it is also truths applied at the level of personal belief, and even affection. Ruth didn’t cling to Naomi, and give up everything to go with her, based on knowledge of “the right things to do in this situation.” She did it all because of the God that had gripped her heart.

I don’t want my listeners to have lists of behavioural applications, but untouched hearts. That would make a mockery of the force of Ruth. Relevance doesn’t have to be just a to-do list. Relevance is more to do with the impact of the text on the heart of the listener so that they leave the service as a changed person.

Finally (although not definitively), (3) I need to recognize that the relevance in the text is not on a merely human level. It is tempting to look at people interacting with people and consider applications that can come straight over into our seen world. But all biblical narratives are about the seen intersecting with the unseen. There is a God alive and yet often not seen. The narrative is about lives lived under the constant question of trust or non-trust in the Word of God. If my listeners finish with great insight into an ancient narrative, but without a greater sense of God (both then and now), then I have failed to be truly relevant.

Tomorrow I’ll ponder another practical issue in preparation…

Saturday’s Thought: Preaching for Response

June 30, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

No preacher would admit to preaching in order to fill time, or to fulfill an obligation, or to fill a pulpit. We say we preach for response. After all, what other motivation could we cite? I know, some will quickly rush to language of glorifying God. But God isn’t pleased by time filling or untouched listeners. So what do we mean?

Do we mean that preaching should get more than a polite thank you from the gathered listeners? Sure. Do we mean that preaching should get a positive or exuberant statement of reception from the listeners? I don’t think so. The Lord’s preaching certainly seemed to polarize rather than please all. Some will be stirred and drawn, others will be offended and withdraw.

This is where it gets interesting for me, and here’s the thought for the day. What is the division or polarization created by our preaching? Simplistically we might assume that it is a sorting of sinners and saints. You know, those in sin pushed away by how seriously we address sin and the godly encouraged; the culture upset and absent while the churchy folks pleased and present. But that didn’t seem to be the result of Jesus’ preaching, did it?

What if we realize that the gospel is not about preaching a message of pressuring responsibility? That is, what if we preach the glorious loving grace of God that stirs and warms and draws hearts to Christ? Instead of whipping our listeners with burdens, what if we preach the One who was whipped for them?

This kind of preaching typically offends the religious who feel responsible for their own goodness. These are the people who don’t see their own efforts and diligence and pride and self-centredness as being at all sin-stained. This kind of preaching typically draws the broken and hurting and weak.

When we switch from preaching responsibility to actually preaching for a response we may find that the polarization both switches and increases. When we recognize the difference between responsibility and response, then certainly our preaching will change. It is so easy to preach to pressure people to be good. It takes something more to preach how good Christ is, so that listeners might be drawn to Him. What is the something more?

I suppose it comes down to me on my own with my Bible and my Lord. Is it all about me? Or about Him? Is it about what I must do (responsibility)? Or about what He is like (response)?

Preaching for response requires clarity on the distinction between response and responsibility.

Word Studies 2 – Identifying Key Terms

June 20, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

This week we are pondering the specific skill of word study in preaching. Today I’ll focus on identifying key terms, then tomorrow we can consider the actual processes involved.

So how do you identify words to define more carefully?

1. Prayerfully read and study the passage. Sounds silly, but until you get some decent familiarity with the passage, you can’t start identifying words.

2. Recognize that not every word is equal. All words are equally inspired, but not all words are equal in a passage. You might assume this is obvious. After all, a weighty word like justified or righteous must be worth studying, while a normal word like in or of is obvious, right? Sometimes wrong. A “weighty” word may not be a key term in a particular passage (it may be given in the build up to the point of a prayer, for instance), while an obvious word may be the key to the whole section.

3. Recognize that your time is restricted. It would be great to do a full chase on every term in a passage. Actually, hypothetically it might be great in your study phase, if you had infinite time. But in reality studying every word equally will distract you from the force of the passage in your study, and it will certainly confuse people in your preaching. For instance, in Ephesians 1:15-23, I would cover the first 47 words fairly briefly. Why? Because I want the focus to be on the point of the passage, which is what Paul is actually praying from the end of v17 onwards. If I give detailed explanations of faith, Lord, love, saints, prayers, God, Father and glory in my sermon, people will be numb by the time I get to Paul’s actual request.

So how to identify key terms?

A. Look for repeated terms. In Ephesians 3:1-13, the term mystery is repeated and seems important. (Dynamic equivalent translations may hide repetition of terms, prefer formal equivalence for focused study.)

B. Look for structurally important terms. Down in verse 8, grace was given to Paul with the results being the rest of verses 8-10.

C. Look for key connections or little words. In this passage, the as, of verse 5 feels significant when the passage is read carefully (even better, when the passage is broken down to a phrase by phrase structural outline, or disagrammed if you have that skill from Greek). Incidentally, once you start looking at the structure of epistle text like this, a good formal translation needs to be the working text, not a dynamic equivalent text.

D. Look for key terms in the wider context. A term may only be used once in the passage, but be critical in the flow of the book. For example, stewardship in verse 2 is important in the flow of Ephesians 1-3.

E. Look for key terms that are missed by the other guidelines. Here’s the catch all. It forces you to keep looking and observing the text. In this case, it allows you to notice that glory in verse 13 is massively significant. Doesn’t look it structurally, but actually Paul digressed in verse 1, so completing that thought in v13 is a big deal here.

Heartfelt Explanation – Preaching to the Heart

June 15, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

A common mistake is to assume that the explanation of the text will be dull, but the application should make up for this by riveting relevance and powerful personal punch. An alternative, but sibling error, is to think that the illustrations will be the source of heartfelt energy, while the text explained remains dull.

Some preliminary thoughts on preaching to the heart:

1. The text is a heartfelt composition, it makes no sense to sterilize it. Sometimes we need to re-tune our theological ears so that we hear inspired human communication, rather than just theological proposition transfer embedded in inspired packaging. If you don’t hear a heart beating in the Psalms you are really in trouble. And what about narratives written by someone who cares deeply that the story be heard? And even the epistles are far more rich in tone than we tend to make them sound.

2. The text communicates to the heart, don’t neutralize it. Epistles don’t just inform, they were written to stir, to encourage, to rebuke, etc. Poetry, almost by definition, is meant for pondering and heartfelt response. Narratives, by nature, will captivate, characters drawing us in to identify, or causing us to disassociate, tension in the plot gripping the listener for more than just a statement of truth, but for truth dressed up in real life. We have a habit of disengaging truths from the packaging in which they come. This is not to minimize the importance of truth, but to recognize that God’s choice of genre packaging was intentional and effective for life transformation.

3. God reveals His heart in the Word, don’t hide it. The Bible is, supremely, God’s self-revelation. But we’re often too quick to cover over that self-revelation. Oh, that’s just an anthropomorphism (using human form descriptors to communicate about God who is Spirit and absolutely nothing at all like us), or worse, an anthropopathism (same again, this time removing any possibility that God might have any passions at all)! Really? God only pretending to have emotion? Our theological assumptions can quickly override the plain truth of Scripture and leave us with a God so distant and uncaring that he might as well be the god of the Greek philosophers, and a Jesus only feeling and loving and dying “in his humanity,” and other such confusion.

Preaching to the heart is not primarily a matter of homiletical technique. It is an issue of our theological assumptions and the accuracy of our exegesis. Tomorrow I’ll add another three thoughts.

The Four Places of Preaching – 2

June 6, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

After spending significant time in the study, without company, yet not alone, the preacher needs to move to the second location. What comes out of the study is a deep awareness of the passage, its meaning, its intent, its contours and details, all summed up in a single sentence summary, and all held as a treasure in the heart because of the work of God during the time in the study. Now to the next place:

Place 2 – Stop and Pray (The Prayer Closet)

In his very helpful book, Deep Preaching, J. Kent Edwards urges the preacher to take God’s Big Idea into the closet and allow the Spirit to work there for the sake of deeper preaching. So true.

This place doesn’t need to be a closet (it’s hard to find one humans can fit in in some cultures!) It does need to be a place without study resources and Bible software and shelves of books, not to mention phones and email and satellite whatevers. It might be an extended walk in the woods, or a chair in the lounge, or even, one of my favourites, the empty church where the message will be preached.

What is the goal here? The goal is to spend focused time in fellowship with God concerning the preacher, God, the passage and the listeners, in order to be able to then prepare a targeted message for them from that passage.

Where is the focus? God was certainly involved in the study, at least, He should have been. But it is important to recognize that the preacher is not primarily a purveyor of ancient wisdom. The preacher is, or should be, in fellowship with the Living God. So the step isn’t from commentary to outline, but from study to focused prayer.

1. Preaching should involve enthusiasm for the text and what you have discovered, but it should be driven by who, rather than what. Prayer closet time allows that personal connection and responsiveness to the God who reveals Himself in the Word to develop and drive the preaching.

2. Preaching should involve awareness of the meaning and impact of the text, but it should be sealed on the heart and experience of the preacher, not just held at arms length as new discovery. Time in prayer allows God’s Word to be driven deep into our hearts.

3. Preaching should involve a message carefully crafted to communicate effectively to a specific audience, but for that to be an act of real love, then God’s heart for the people needs to be our heart for the people. Bringing the people before God, alongside the passage, is thus critical to forming and delivering a message as an overflow of God’s love for them.

More could be written, but let’s leave it there. Study. Then stop and pray. Then? Some people will be very excited by the next location!

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!

10 Biggest Big Ideas – 5. Faith

May 4, 2012May 4, 2012 / Peter Mead / Leave a comment

So what are the biggest recurring ideas underlying the whole sweep of Scripture? I am enjoying tracing out a few thoughts on ten of the biggest. So far I’ve pondered our triune God, His wondrous creation, our profound fall, His glorious grace. Now to the mechanism of our restoration:

5. Every person in every situation stands at a fork in the road, free to trust God’s good word or to orient their hearts after the words of another – for the just shall live by faith.

In that garden the first couple were presented with a lie. It was a lie about God’s character: He cannot be trusted to determine what is best for you. It was a lie about human status: you can be like God. And in God’s apparent absence it was a battle of words: His word versus the lie. It has been ever since.

Every person in every narrative of Scripture stands at a fork in the road. We stand continually at that same fork in the road, whatever the situation. The question remains the same. Will we trust the good word of God, or the forked tongue of the serpent. The truth versus the lie.

What is God’s solution to the great problem of sin? It is His grace. Yet it would be no solution if that grace were forced on people. They freely chose to love another. So God offers His word and invites us to trust, drawing our hearts from the magnetic captivating grip of self-love to respond to His self-giving love. Faced with the lie, gripped by the lie, saturated in the lie, we are invited to trust His Word.

Faith? Seriously God, will you make it all dependent on fallen ones trusting in your Word? Yes. The word of God’s promise can be trusted. The Word of God’s presence calls us to trust. Just as the serpent skewered and lifted up was a solution for snake-bitten sinners, so the snake crushing elevation of Him who knew no sin becomes for us the focus of a trusting gaze.

So faith is absolutely the antithesis of works. Works can never be a ladder out of death. Only God can raise the dead, so He calls humanity not to work, but to trust. Faith is not the answer to what must I do? Faith is the answer to the cry, I can do nothing!

God is God, we are not. God is good, we are not. And God is ours, if we will trust Him, His word, His provision, His grace. Faith is trust in His Word. Faith is gaze on His gracious provision. Faith is the bond that brings us into the fellowship of our Triune God.

May our preaching of His Word offer opportunity to trust in His goodness, both for those dead in sin, and for us who now having been made alive are delightd to do the good that He prepared beforehand for us.

10 Biggest Big Ideas – 4. Grace

May 3, 2012April 30, 2012 / Peter Mead / 1 Comment

This week I have been pondering what might be the overarching, biggest of big ideas in the Bible. These ideas pervade so much of the canon and are reflected in the specific main ideas of individual passages.

So far we have pondered God, creation and sin. Now to the continual surprise of the Bible:

4. God’s solution to great sin is the greater power of His glorious grace.

God’s right to rule has been profoundly challenged by the rebellion of Lucifer and humanity. Surely if God is God then the response from above must be the crashing fist of divine judgment?

Surprisingly, yet unsurprisingly, God’s solution is grace. Surprisingly because in our power-hungry corruption of the divine image, we naturally would judge all sin in a self-serving display of divine wrath. Unsurprisingly God is not like the fallen us, but He is just like Himself – that is, self-giving, generous, the God who is love.

Yet surely this is to deny another side of God, another mood of His? Surely we must balance God’s love with God’s wrath?

No, we do not honour God by offering a schizophrenic portrait of a two-sided God. Nor do we help by making the Father angry and the Son kind. We must instead seek to present God as He does in His Word. God’s love spurned leads to wrath, but this shows the fullness of His love, not the reining in of love.

The holiness of God is His perfect, untainted, uncorrupted love. This profoundly loving God has a purity about all He is and all He does. So the prophets presented both the muscly arm of divine recompense, right alongside the arm that tenderly cares for the sheep that have young. And the climax of that prophetic vision is not the crashing down of the fist of divine judgment on sinners, but the outstretched arms of the Lamb upon whom that fist would fall. All sin will be judged, the wonder is that mine is judged already.

We should always be surprised by grace since it is by definition undeserved. We should never be surprised by grace since it comes from the core of who God is.

There are glimpses of grace in every corner of the canon, whispers of love when screams of vengeance would fit. Threaded from the fall in one garden to the rising in another garden is the ribbon of God’s great promise:

In a fallen world there is hope in the coming seed. There is to be blessing for all the families on earth through the seed of one man. There is hope for the firm and forever establishment of the kingdom of the seed of another man in the same line. The ribbon of God’s great promise threads through sinning kings and trusting prostitutes, through flawed heroes and unknowns, showing grace on its journey to grace made flesh in the single seed of the woman, of Abraham, of David. The seed that must fall into the ground and die, yet in humiliating death demonstrate the depth of God’s glory.

The great corruption of sin marks every passage, and the super-abounding solution is not raw justice, but unjust grace. God in His goodness moves toward his harlot creation in love, giving of Himself, so that the greatest of sins pale before the greater glory of God’s goodness and grace.

If we preach the Bible with a pounding fist of self-righteous indignation, what are we doing? Surely the Bible preached should lead to a pounding of the hearts of those captivated by God’s extravagant grace.

10 Biggest Big Ideas – 3. Sin

May 2, 2012May 2, 2012 / Peter Mead / 2 Comments

The 10 biggest ideas in the Bible? We’ve considered God and His creation. Now we need to probe the problem.

3. Our profound capacity for love has been perverted into a self-love that drives a charade of independent divine status, in mockery of and in sickening rebellion against the loving leadership of our good God.

Within three biblical chapters God’s perfect creation is corrupted to the core. It is corrupted from the core. And the story of God’s resolution to our relational rebellion takes the whole canon to fully resolve, leaving only two chapters for the briefest glimpse of a post-fall new creation. This is the great tension in the grandest of meta-narratives.

Lovingly created for relational interdependence and trusting dependence, the human race is marred by love perverted and trust destroyed. The manifestation of the fall, the fruit, if you will, was in the eating of the forbidden fruit. Yet the core of the event was at the level of the heart, not merely a matter of rule-breaking. The corruption was caused by a love turned inwards, by a rebellious spurning of God’s right to rule in love, and by a fatal distrust of His good Word.

A God-given capacity to love another, delight in another, live for another, trust in another and give to another was twisted, perverted and corrupted. It became the horrific reorientation of the power of divine love into a love of divine power – shamefully manifesting in a love for self, delight in self, living for self, trusting in self and giving to self.

Now the god of a human heart is the perceived good of that same human heart. Instead of lovingly trusting a loving and trustworthy self-giving God, the default wiring of humanity is to hate and despise Him, performing the charade of god-hood as if that is really about self-concern, independence and power. Even the pathetic performance shows a profound corruption of God’s true nature.

Believing the lie, we present a lie. Every person a theologian by birth, and every person profoundly wrong. God is not self-concerned and power-obsessed – it’s not just the “who is God?” question we answer so badly, but also the “what is God like?” question.

Sin re-orients the heart, taints the mind and manifests in broken behavior. Some shake their fist at heaven in acts of overt rebellion, demonstrating the horrific and grotesque nature of sin by the evil that they do. Others shake their fist at heaven in an act of apparent goodness, diligently demonstrating their ability to do good in a self-loving independence from the God who alone is good. Even righteous deeds are as filthy rags. Whatever is of independent un-faith is sin.

Sin is the tension in every biblical narrative, and every personal narrative. It isn’t a question about whether we can do good, or whether we can be empowered to do good. It is a question about what or who can ever recapture our hearts and draw our incurved souls from addiction to self, to gaze on the truly lovely, the genuinely loving and the profoundly trustworthy God who made us for participation in His love.

So as we preach the Bible we must never miss the fallen condition focus of every passage, the context of sin in which every text swims. Neither must we offer any sense of instruction for independent goodness, for that was the root of the issue. Sin is pervasive and profound, and God’s solution is glorious beyond words. Yet we preach. We preach . . . you finish the sentence: “we preach . . . and Him . . . .”