Ray C. Stedman
I believe in preaching! The fall of 1987 will mark my 37th
year in one pulpit, and for all of those years I have considered
preaching to be my primary task. I have been greatly encouraged
in this commitment by the example of great preachers of the past
and of the present. Among the latter have been Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
Dr. J. R. W. Stott, and Dr. Stephen Olford. The fact that these
are all British preachers speaks well of the quality of British
preaching, and, perhaps, of the relative weakness of the American
pulpit. To the degree that this is so I would attribute it to
the fact that British evangelicals tend more toward expository
preaching than their American counterparts. For it is expository
preaching that constitutes, in my judgment, the only true form
of preaching!
Expository sermons are those which derive their content from Scripture
itself. They borrow their structure and thrust from a specific
passage. They make the same point that the passage makes, and
apply that point with directness and urgency to contemporary life.
What other modes of preaching often lack is biblical content.
Those in the pews are often drowning in words, but thirsting for
knowledge. John Stek, of Calvin Seminary, puts it well: "Preachers
who rummage through the Bible to find texts on which to hang topical
sermons are often guilty of substituting their word for the biblical
Word."* This soon results in an unconscious trivializing
of preaching.
Proof of this trivializing is found in the widespread biblical
illiteracy that exists today. Many persons in the average congregation
do not know the meaning of terms like justification by faith,
or sanctification, or the kingdom of God, or the new covenant,
or the walk in the Spirit, the flesh, or even faith, love, and
peace! Worse yet, because they don't know the biblical meaning
of "flesh", for instance, they do not know how to recognize
it in themselves, and the flesh therefore rages in unrestrained
destructiveness throughout their thinking and living. Because
they know nothing of the nature of the new covenant, they live
continually in the legal bondages of the old. Because they do
not understand the wisdom of God, they succumb constantly to the
pompous pretensions of the wisdom of the world. Because they do
not know how to use the shield of faith, they are besieged daily
by the fiery darts of the wicked one.
What is essential therefore in preaching is, first of all, content!
It is what Paul calls "the unsearchable riches of Christ."
In a verse that has meant much to me personally, Paul calls himself
and other first century preachers: "stewards of the mysteries
of God," (1 Corinthians. 4:1). He sees himself as entrusted
with a fabulous deposit of truth which he is responsible to dispense
to others. It ought to be the supreme business of a preacher to
discharge that responsibility with utter faithfulness. Paul adds:
"It is required of a steward that one be found faithful."
So he says, in another place, he sought always "to declare
the whole counsel of God."
In my opinion, much of the present weakness in preaching is due
to the failure of preachers to understand the uniqueness of what
they are to preach, and its remarkable power to change a congregation,
a community, a city, or even a nation. When Paul came to Corinth,
as he tells us in 1 Corinthians 2, he came "in weakness and
fear and much tembling." He was, in actual fact, intimidated
by Corinth! He knew these Greek cities well, and they frightened
and discouraged him. He saw the terrible degradation of Corinth
and it looked incurable. Sexual depravity, centered in the temple
of Aphrodite perched on the AcroCorinth overlooking the city,
was so widespread and so popular it seemed impossible to oppose.
Paul knew the superstitious fears of the masses in Corinth, he
was aware of the devious dishonesty of its politicians, and the
shameless injustice of the city courts.
He had often himself felt the tyranny of Rome in its iron-fisted
control of the whole known world, especially evident in Corinth
because of its past history of rebellion. He saw daily the hopeless
despair of the citizenry: one half slave to the other half and
living in misery and near starvation. Yet, in contrast, he felt
the pride of Corinth in its beautiful location; the arrogance
of its philosophers as heirs of the great thinkers of Greece;
the wealth which the city's commerce brought; the acclaim it enjoyed
as one of the chief cities of the Empire. How could he reach it?
How could he change it? It looked impenetrable, unassailable!
But then he remembered his message---and his resource! He began
to preach, "not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but
in demonstration of the Spirit and power." That demonstration
derived from what, in the subsequent verses, he describes in some
detail as "the wisdom of God." It is also that which
in chapter 4 he terms, "the mysteries of God." It has
several outstanding characteristics, of which I now take but three.
1. The wisdom of God is in sharp contrast to the world's wisdom:
"Not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age,
who are doomed to pass away," (NIV "coming to nothing").
When he speaks of the rulers of this age he means more than government
officials. The phrase refers to the leaders of thought in any
age, the movers and shakers, the mind-benders--not only statesmen,
but philosophers, thinkers, scientists, educators. "Doomed
to pass away," describes their transient character. Their
plans and ideas are in a constant flux. They swing from one extreme
to another, or flow in cycles of acceptance like fads in fashion.
Everyone knows that no science textbook more than ten years old
is worth owning today. Economic theories change like the tides,
ebbing and flowing with the Dow-Jones averages. Educational policies
come in cycles, alternating between extremes of permissiveness
and heavy control. Political programs, all promising boundless
prosperity, appear every election year. (I have now lived through
the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, Camelot, Peace
with honor, the Camp David process, and now Reagonomics, all promising
much, but delivering little).
This constant change gives rise to much of the rush and restlessness
of modern living. It is all "doomed to pass away" or
is "coming to nothing". Perhaps its effect has been
best caught by a modern jingle that reads:
This is the Age of the Half-read Page
And the Quick Bash, and the Mad Dash
The Bright Night, with the Nerves Tight
The Plane Hop, with a Brief Stop
The Lamp Tan in a Short Span
The Big Shot in a Good Spot
And the Brain Strain and the Heart Pain
And the Cat-Naps, till the Spring Snaps
And the Fun's Done!
In sharp contrast, the Word of God remains unchanged and unchangeable.
Always relevant, always up-to-date, always perceptive and penetrating--eternally
accurate!
2. The truth of God's wisdom is unique and unrivalled: "We
impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before
the ages for our glorification." The paramount glory of the
gospel is that there is nothing like it anywhere else. It is without
rival, either in the scientific laboratory, in the psychologist's
office, or the philosopher's study. It is this factor that constitutes
the supreme value of preaching. It simply does what nothing else
can do! Here in this chapter, Paul calls this truth, "the
deep things of God," "the thoughts of God," "spiritual
truth," and "the mind of Christ!" Since it originates
in God alone, it stands in sharp contrast with the thinking of
men.
When Jesus came he told his disciples that he "would utter
things kept secret since the foundation of the world," (Matthew
13:35). He said, "Many prophets and righteous men have longed
to hear what you hear, but did not hear it." In 1 Corinthians.
2, Paul declares these truths have now been revealed to us through
the Spirit, and he sums it all up in the arresting phrase, "the
secret and hidden wisdom of God." Since I preach in a university
community, this has always meant to me that when I open this Book
on a Sunday morning, I am offering to the physicists, the scientists,
the high-tech engineers, the doctors, lawyers, bankers, and captains
of industry present, as well as artisans, secretaries, plumbers,
and many others, essential knowledge about themselves and about
life, which they never learned, nor could learn, in any secular
college or graduate school! I am privileged to give them an understanding
of reality unattainable from any other source.
It is the business of preaching to change the total worldview
of every member of the congregation; to dispel the secular illusions
which are widely believed around, and to identify and underscore
the concepts and practices that are right, and to do this for
each member. Perhaps the most amazing statement of all in this
amazing verse is that this hidden truth is "for our glorification!"
The Westminster Confession properly states that the chief end
of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. But this verse
declares that God plans and works "for our (that is, human)
glorification."
To glorify anyone or anything is to make openly manifest the hidden
values within. God glorifies himself when he reveals himself to
us. John says of Jesus, "The Word was made flesh ... and
we beheld his glory." What was that glory? John tells us
precisely, "...full of grace and truth." That was the
glory of Jesus: grace and truth!
What, then, is the glory of man--of ourselves? It is to display
outwardly all that God made us to be! To be (to use a modern term)
a whole person! The truly fascinating thing is that this is what
every person, without exception, wants to be! Listen to people
talking and you will hear it expressed everywhere. "I want
to be me!" "I'm looking for fulfillment." "I'm
trying to get my act together." What we are sent to preach
is clearly what everyone everywhere desperately wants to find!
But right here is the tragedy of much modern preaching. Preachers
have lost sight of this great fact. They actually have come to
believe that the average person no longer has any religious interest.
They seek to reach him or her by appealing to their respect for
knowledge or science or philosophy. If this lack of religious
interest appears to be true, it is because preaching has failed
to make clear that what men eagerly want to find--the secret of
human fulfillment--is what God is lovingly offering to give! True
preaching, the preaching of "the secret and hidden wisdom
of God" will result in human glorification, the actual fulfillment
of man's deepest desires.
This hidden wisdom, as Paul declares plainly in verse 2, is: "Jesus
Christ and him crucified." In chapter one Paul terms it,
"the word of the Cross." It is a message so totally
different from the thinking of the world that it constitutes,
"the offense of the Cross." It declares that until man
is changed by a gracious act of God, his highest efforts and most
clever schemes for self-improvement will not only prove ineffective--they
will actually make things worse! By trying to control his own
destiny and run his own world, he will end by not only destroying
himself, but his world as well. Do we need anything else but history
or the newspaper to confirm that? On a recent visit to Stanford
University, Malcolm Muggeridge summed up the approaching end of
Western civilization in this remarkable quote from an American
critic, Leslie Fiedler.
"The final conclusion would seem to be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions and providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense.
Thus did Western man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down. And, having convinced himself that he is too numerous, labors with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer, until at last, having educated himself into imbecility and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keels over, a weary, battered old brontosaurus, and becomes extinct."**
Though brilliantly stated, this is scarcely hyperbole. It is
happening all around us, and is an inescapable result of "human
wisdom."
3. The wisdom of God exposes the incredible blunders which human
wisdom makes: "None of the rulers of this age understood
this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord
of Glory." Here were keen, intelligent men, priding themselves
on their ability to govern, to make decisions, and to understand
men. Yet when Truth himself appeared before them they could not
recognize him, totally misunderstood and mishandled him, and ended
by nailing him to a Cross. That tendency to commit terrible blunders
is characteristic of the wisdom of the world. It is the reason
why we live on a polluted planet today, torn by strife and schism,
and threatened by violence and meaninglessness on all sides. It
is the business of preaching to identify such blunders and to
give help to those who fail to see these unrecognized errors in
society today.
Listen to any television news broadcast and in the course of it
you will be exposed to 15 or 20 commercials, urging you to buy
a product, to take a trip, or to spend your money in some other
way. Note how many times you hear the word, "deserve."
"You deserve this---you've got it coming to you---you're
the kind of person who has a right to expect this." "You
deserve a break today!" Gradually listeners begin to believe
this subtle propaganda. The end result of it is to remove all
possibility of gratitude. You don't feel grateful when you finally
get what you feel you have long deserved---you are only angry
that you didn't get it sooner, or you didn't get as much as the
next fellow. And if you don't get it at all, you can only feel
resentful and abused.
What the media is unknowingly producing is a nation of angry,
resentful people, dissatisfied with all they have. And since gratitude
is the chief ingredient of joy, we find ourselves in the midst
of a joyless people, seeking fun continually, but unable to know
joy. And this includes thousands of Christians! It is the business
of the preacher to point out these effects and direct people to
the true sources of joy. The truth is, we do not deserve any good
thing! We belong to a race that deserves to be eliminated from
the earth. Because we live in continual enmity against God, and
in rebellion to his laws, we deserve death. But that is not what
we are given! By the grace and mercy of a loving God, we are given
life, often long lives,--and we are given beauty, and family love,
and food and shelter and many, many other blessings. Even more,
we are given opportunities to learn the truth, and if we follow
them, we are given forgiveness, and acceptance, and love and peace---and
joy!
Because of these undeserved gifts, everyone's normal attitude
should be one of intense gratitude. This is why Scripture exhorts
us continually to thanksgiving. Every good gift, and every perfect
gift, for which men are properly thankful, comes, as James tell
us, "from above, from the Father of lights, with whom is
no variableness, even the shadow of turning." Even those
gifts we call trials, are from the same source, sent to make us
do what we don't want to do, in order to be what we've always
wanted to be!
When Paul began to preach this message in Corinth, in dependence
on the power of the Spirit, Corinth began to change. Acts 18 says,
"Many of the Corinthians, hearing Paul, believed and were
baptized." There sprang up in that pagan city a group of
changed people. They lost their fears and their despair. Under
the impact of new life from within, they were gradually changed
into loving, caring, wholesome people. Some still struggled with
the residues of their past, but the city was never the same again.
And because of that, the history of the world has been changed
as well.
There is much more I could say, but perhaps this is enough to
help us see the enormous consequences of true preaching, and the
terrible blight that falls upon a congregation or community which
is deprived of these "unsearchable riches of Christ."
My plea is, let preachers stop feeding people with moral platitudes
and psychological pablum. Let us say once more, with Jeremiah,
"Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your Word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart."
_______
* From an article published in Christianity Today, 1986
** Quoted in The Trousered Ape by Duncan Williams.
Scriptural quotations are from the Revised Standard Version *