Preaching?

Simple Teaching on Simply Preaching

Alec Motyer

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781781912669

	1
Chapter

Between You and Me

The memory is still very fresh, and still fills me with the same feeling of heart-stopping anxiety. I was at the beginning of full-time ministry, faced, as was then common even for assistants, with the task of preaching at least once on Sundays and often at the mid week prayer and Bible study meeting as well. I had done quite a bit of speaking previously, and I had looked forward to the preaching side of ministry. Indeed, from the start I knew that this was the very heart of the work of the Christian minister. But I had no idea how to go about it. Sermons and talks were things that ‘just came’, and, indeed, so it had been in my case. Usually I had been invited to speak on a subject or, for whatever reason, a subject had proposed itself, and thoughts began, usually slowly, sometimes laboriously, to gather around the theme. But that seemed no longer the case, and the old experience of thoughts gathering and forming no longer seemed to work. Saturday evenings were anticipated with increasing foreboding. If confession is good for the soul, I recall one occasion when, by 5:30 p.m. on Sunday nothing had yet ‘come’, and the 6:30 deadline gave me something of the feeling of a Great War trench awaiting the whistle to go over the top.

Looking back, it took me a surprisingly long time to learn that sermons are not spontaneous or extended intuitions but things to be worked at, and it took even longer to discover how to go about it.

My discoveries along these lines are not, I think, earth-shaking, and, I expect, in no sense novel. I recall my aunts reading aloud the inset in the church magazine with its regular feature of Household Tips – Monday’s Washing, Tuesday’s Sewing ... and the scorn they heaped, monthly, on the contributor! ‘Picture putting that in! That’s an old remedy! I remember Grandmother doing that!’ You may and probably will pour like scorn on me, but I mean well. I have a feeling that if there are any sitting on Saturday evening looking agonizingly at their Bibles, waiting for the golden words to spring from the page, then I have good news for them.

Don’t sit and stare. There’s work to be done, and here is one way to go about it.

	2
Chapter

Work to be done:
the Pursuit

Not everyone can be what people call a ‘good preacher’, but no one need be a ‘bad preacher’. That is one of the convictions which drive this little book! When I remarked on what a poor showing a local bishop made on a recent visit, my companion said, ‘Of course, our bishop is not a preacher.’ Maybe not, but he should be! It’s what he spends a great deal of his time doing, but, dear, good man, he had fallen into the mistake of thinking that being a ‘good preacher’ was a matter of ‘gift’ and either you have it or you don’t, and if you don’t there’s nothing you can do about it. Not so! No, indeed!

What makes a sermon ‘bad’?

I am going to venture an opinion here. See if it matches your experience. The majority of (if not, to a degree, all) ‘bad’ sermons are ‘bad’ because they are muddled. An elderly lady, much prized in our circle, possessed a remarkably loud whisper, and one Sunday evening during the sermon she whispered to her daughter, inadvertently addressing the whole church; ‘What’s he talking about? Is he never going to stop?’ Your heart goes out to her, doesn’t it? You’ve been there too, as, indeed I have. But the point is this: muddle is something that can be sorted out. Some people have a natural capacity for setting a subject out, and there is never any doubt what they have said, or why they have moved on to the next aspect of their subject. And in the end it is all a clear, rounded whole. Their minds work in distinct ‘points’ with precise subdivisions. For most of us that sort of thing is a matter of hard work and detailed preparation. That is exactly my point. ‘Good’ preaching, in the sense of being plain and unmistakable in the pulpit, is something that can be achieved. Once we have seen it as a target to aim at, it becomes a target we can hit, a step in the right direction to being an acceptable preacher.

Sermons and Essays

And here’s something else to consider. Another sort of sermon which ‘loses’ its listeners is the written essay more or less read out in the pulpit. My first senior minister used to take a fully written manuscript into the pulpit, because, as he would say, without it he became ‘diffuse’. But his largish Bible also served him as a sort of interim filing system, an ‘in-tray’ of letters to be answered, book references to be looked up, helpful cuttings, jottings for future use – amounting to quite a large bulk of extraneous material. Another addition would not be noticed, nor indeed its absence missed! On two occasions he got into the pulpit and, leaf as he would through his Bible, the vital pages were still at home, not there amongst the almost archaeological layers of interleaving! Diffuse or not, he turned out to be a much better preacher!

We will return to this matter later, but the point is this: unlike the muddled, or ‘ball-of-wool’, sermon, the essay-sermon is very well prepared indeed, and very orderly, but it is of the essence of an essay to pass imperceptibly from one point to the next. We were taught at school to end each paragraph of our essays in such a way that it prepared for the next paragraph. This made for a coherent flow of thought – on paper (where an essay belongs) – but as a spoken exercise it leaves the hearer behind, wondering, How did we get here? For preaching is a speaker-hearer relationship, and the preacher has to learn to give the hearer space to listen. A man said to his fast-talking minister: ‘Vicar, you must learn to go more slowly. I am a slow listener.’ Up to a point we all are slow listeners! In a sermon there have to be pauses, repetitions. Movement from one aspect of the topic to the next has to be ‘flagged up’. The essay type of preaching can, then, for the hearer, fall into the category of the muddled. But, again, this is a matter which will concern us in more detail later on.

How to think of a Sermon

A sermon is like baking a cake. There is, first of all, the objective. It is a madeira cake, or a sponge cake or a fruit cake – or whatever. Then there is the gathering of all the ingredients – not any old ingredients but the ingredients essential to producing that particular cake.  You need fruit for a fruit cake but it would be out of place for a plain madeira cake. You need jam for a sponge cake but not for a currant scone. And finally the ingredients have to be put together in the proper order – look at any cookery book and you will see this insistence on proper order: it is the section headed ‘Method’, how to put the ingredients together. Should we pursue the illustration further? The period in the oven is you in your study, sweating over the huge responsibility that is yours!

But, enough! A sermon is also like dressing a shop window. When we first lived in a remote village, the window of the village shop was just an extension of the stockroom. Everything the shop had on offer was there! In fact, there was so much in the window that no one ever bothered looking in it; there was so much to see that the passer-by saw nothing. Contrast window dressers who know their business! They put into the window what they are, at that moment, setting out to sell, and if they include other things besides (so that the window has an eye-catching variety) they position them in such a way as to lead the eye step by step to the central feature. Sermons are equally selective. Maybe we would not wish to put it this way, but a really important question is ‘What are we intending to sell?’ Bible in hand, we have a stockroom full of the most amazing collection of goods to offer – real bargains too! So what shall we put in the window this Sunday morning or evening, this Wednesday ‘mid-week sabbath’? Everything must lead the eye to that central truth. There must be no doubt what is on offer. The extraordinary Calvin Coolidge, the silent, or at the most, monosyllabic President of the United States, returning from church, was asked by his wife what the sermon was about. He replied, ‘Sin.’ ‘Well,’ urged Mrs Coolidge, ‘what did he say about it?’ ‘He was against it,’ said the President. Hmm. Well ... yes!  But the sermon had made its point, hadn’t it? The product for sale was unmistakable, and, to say the least, it had been taken home on appro.

There is no more arduous task!

I must beware of making personal experience into a universal truth. The fact is that I find sermon preparation such hard work that I actively ‘back off’ from starting!  Sure, this is not true of everyone. There must be those to whom sermons come more easily. I hope so, but I have a feeling (though it may be no more than a reflection of personal experience) that if preachers are not finding sermon preparation hard work they are not giving their sermons a fair crack of the whip. Of course there are other sides of the picture: it is a privilege of privileges to be driven to such involvement in the Word of God, to be required to buckle down to the precious Scriptures. Yes indeed, but it is also demanding, frequently burdensome, rarely easy – and always, in the event, endlessly delightful! One part inspiration, nine parts perspiration.

	3
Chapter

The Heart of the Matter

I hope you are convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the task of the preacher is, as we have just said, to get deeply involved in that Word, the Holy Scriptures, and preach it. This book, at any rate, rests on that conviction.

Jesus, Head over all things to the Church

The supreme kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ must ever be our most sensitive concern, and nothing must usurp His authority. The reason for pointing this out is that those who exalt the Bible to its proper place and high dignity are not infrequently accused of ‘bibliolatry’, putting the Bible in the place of Jesus. Not so! Rather we exalt the Bible because we want to give Jesus His place ‘high over all’, and we exalt the preaching of the Bible because, in principle, this is the way to make Him known, and it is He who has commanded us to do so.

No Christian finds difficulty with Matthew’s portrayal of the Risen Lord. Matthew operates with a narrow focus – to get us without delay from the empty tomb (28:6) to Galilee (28:10, 16) where we will hear Jesus proclaim that ‘all authority … in heaven and earth’ belongs to Him (28:18, NKJV). In this way, Matthew voiced the common testimony of all who profess the name of Christ: He is Lord; all authority is His. But Matthew, in leaving it at that, fails to answer a vital question: how does our Lord exercise this authority? How does He make His authoritative will known to His earthly people? How does the Lord exercise Lordship?

In the marvellously dovetailing testimony of the four Gospels, it is left for Luke to take up where Matthew left off. With Luke, we join the pair (surely husband and wife?) who walked to Emmaus (24:13). Their story is of fundamental significance: they were barred from seeing Jesus in His risen glory until they had first seen Him in the Scriptures (24:25-27, 31, 32). Furthermore, under Luke’s guidance, we are privileged, next, to enter the upper room. Jesus comes (24:36), and when He has, at last, convinced His gathered disciples that it is indeed He, Luke tells us (24:45) that He ‘opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures’ and He said ‘thus it is written … that repentance and remission of sins should be preached’. The significance of these events is clear: we can neither know the risen Lord, nor know how and what to preach about Him to the world except through the Scriptures. They are both our teacher and our task; our education and our message. Note, in particular, the sequence: the risen Lord, the written Scriptures, the command to preach. If we are to be faithful to Him, the risen, exalted, supreme, authoritative Lord Jesus Christ, then we are to be Bible people and preaching people. This is all the authority and direction we need!

Peter’s Retrospect: God’s fourfold Choice

But to move on. In Acts the entrance of Gentiles into the Church was a matter of controversy – whether they should be there at all, and, if so, on what terms. At the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:7) Peter contributed a lesson from Church history. He believed that what he said was common knowledge and commonly agreed: ‘You know that a good while ago (lit., ‘from original/primitive days’) God chose … that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.’

Have a go at analysing that verse. God, said Peter, made a fourfold choice: he chose preaching (‘by my mouth’), hearers (‘the Gentiles’), the subject matter (‘the gospel’), and the result (‘and believe’). It is an extraordinarily full statement in such a few words. Look at it. The Church grows by preaching; the preaching reaches those God intends; its content is the gospel; and the result is responsive faith. All chosen by God: His will, His method, His message, His results.

In the late 1960s the local clergy where I was working seemed to be gripped by an enthusiasm for closing churches! We had inherited far too many buildings, they urged. There were far too many empty seats on any given Sunday, they used to say, ignoring the fact that since those churches were built the population of that area had increased maybe a hundredfold! It was a real spirit of defeatism and retrenchment – though usually cloaked under the heading of ‘slimming down for advance’. Every time a church fell vacant, they affirmed, it should at once be closed! But, to the great indignation of the church closers, when St X fell vacant the authorities – in Anglican terms, the ‘patrons’ – got in first, and made a new appointment, and, adding insult to injury, under its new minister St X bucked the trend, and began to grow in every department – Sunday congregations, Sunday schools, youth work, the elderlies, the lot! Indignation overflowed! ‘Perhaps Mr Y would be kind enough to tell us, at our next meeting, how he has managed all this!’ Dear Mr Y could not but agree, but, as he left he whispered to me: ‘Is it enough to tell them that it is all a matter of praying and preaching?’ But that’s it. God’s method of church growth is preaching the Word, watered by believing prayer.

Acts, a Manual for Church Growth

Here is a principle to ponder: that which makes the Church a distinctive company in the world is the Word of God – or, putting it more concisely, the Word of God is the constitutive reality at the heart of the Church. It is what makes the Church what it is, and it has always been so. What, for example, made Noah and his family a distinctive, separate entity in the world? Hebrews 11:7 says Noah was ‘divinely warned’ (chrymatistheis, ‘having had a revelation imparted to him’), and was ‘moved with godly fear’ (eulabytheis, ‘urged on by spiritual sensitivity’). Likewise, Abraham was one to whom the Lord spoke (Gen. 12:1; 17:1); ‘the word of the LORD came to Abram’ (15:1). That is what marked him out. As soon as Israel had emerged from the isolation of the wilderness years to become a nation among the nations, they were meant to excite this admiration from the watching world: ‘What great nation is there that has such statutes …’ (Deut. 4:8), i.e., their distinctiveness was that they possessed the Word of God. Over the centuries the volume of inherited revealed truth increased until, for us, it has become the completed Bible, and just as we can look back and say that our forebears – right back to Adam (e.g. Gen. 2:16, 17) – were people of the Word, so we, their inheritors, are people of the Book.

What we call ‘the Acts of the Apostles’ is a case in point. In its twenty-eight chapters there are about thirty-seven references to the growth of the Church. Indeed ‘The Growing Church’ would be a more suitable title than ‘the Acts of the Apostles’. Of the thirty-seven or so references, six associate growth with the quality of church life and of Christian character, seven link growth with the evidence of ‘signs and wonders’, and twenty-four link growth with the preaching of the Word of God – indeed in 12:24 the growth of the Church is actually called the growth of the Word, as if they were so closely related that they could be identified one with the other.

The Day of Pentecost

In Acts 1 the Church is ‘under starter’s orders’; in Acts 2 the Starter’s gun is fired. The promise of Acts 1:5 is fulfilled, and the programme of Acts 1:8 is set in train. The vital topic of Bible analysis will concern us later, but here is a preliminary example, an analytical survey of Acts 2:2-4, the four things the Holy Spirit did on the Day of Pentecost:

• ‘Filled the whole house’ (v. 2). The Holy Spirit came first to the place where His people were. This is the fulfilment of what Jesus spoke of in John 7:37-39 (cf., John 16:7): the New Testament full flood of the Holy Spirit, flowing from Jesus, granted to believers. In an act just as ‘once for all’ as the work of Jesus on the Cross, the Holy Spirit came into the world: He is now everywhere we are.
• ‘Sat upon each of them’ (v. 3). This represents what other Scriptures call the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each believer; or what is spoken of as the ‘seal’ and ‘guarantee’ (‘down payment’, or ‘deposit’) of the Spirit (Eph. 1:13, 14), the ‘baptism’ promised in Acts 1:5.
• ‘Filled with the Spirit’ describes some special enduement with the Holy Spirit granted for a particular time and task – just as Peter was ‘filled’ with the Spirit on two subsequent recorded occasions, enabling him to meet special needs at a special time (Acts 4:8, 31). This corresponds to the ‘episodic’ filling with the Spirit experienced in the Old Testament (e.g., Judg. 6:34), and represents, for us, the readiness of the Holy Spirit to leap to our aid.
• ‘Speak with other tongues’ is the particular ‘gift’ of the Spirit granted on the Day of Pentecost, the gift of intelligible communication (‘everyone heard them speak in his own language’, 2:6) of ‘the wonderful works of God’ (v. 11).

On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit clothed Himself in visible form, and His choice of ‘tongues’ established the special focus of the day: He came with the particular purpose of making the Church a speaking church (John 15:26-27), a communicating body, and Peter takes this theme up in his quotation from Joel 2:28-32. The outpouring of the Spirit is given for the particular purpose of creating ‘prophets’ – sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants all alike recipients of the Spirit and gifted for prophecy – that they too may speak intelligibly to the world the ‘wonderful works of God’.

Paul’s Prospectus

‘Preaching’ – in its broad sense of telling the good news of Jesus, and in its narrower sense of individual, formal proclamation – is a point, then, at which many lines of New Testament testimony converge. Let Paul add his word. With 2 Timothy we come to one of the most important moments – and documents – of the New Testament. This lovely little letter sits on the significant dividing line between the apostolic and the post-apostolic church (2 Tim. 4:6-8), and in it Paul offers Timothy (and us) a prospectus for the days ahead. It is surely telling that he does not define the Church of the post-apostolic future in terms of an ‘apostolic succession’ of people holding this or that office in the Church, nor, indeed, does he see the future marked by ongoing and fresh revelations of divine truth through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the one unmistakable reference to the Holy Spirit in 2 Timothy points to Him as the Guardian of truth already possessed (1:14). This is the hallmark of Paul’s thinking as he commits the future to Timothy. The Church is not a body in pursuit of the truth, but already possessing it (1:13), and called to share it:

• Timothy’s task is to lay hold of the power of the Holy Spirit to ‘hold fast’ what he already possesses (1:13, 14).
• His duty is to work at the Word of Truth (2:15).
• This Word of Truth is both the inherited ‘sacred writings’ – i.e., what we call the Old Testament – (3:15), along with the apostolic teaching – i.e., the New Testament – ( 3:10, 14), which, together, form ‘all Scripture ... given by inspiration of God’ (3:16), sufficient for perfecting ‘the man of God’ (3:17).
• Timothy’s task, in the light of coming judgment and the coming of the Lor...

Table of contents

• Testimonials
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• 1. Between You and Me
• 2. Work to be done: the Pursuit
• 3. The Heart of the Matter
• 4. Faithful Teachers
• 5. ‘This Came Out’
• 6. Getting to know you: Examination
• 7. Rightly Dividing: Analysis
• 8. Finding the Pole Star: Orientation
• 9. Gather Ye Rosebuds: Harvesting
• 10. The Window and the Cake: Presentation
• 11. So what? Application
• 12. Behind the Scenes: Spirituality
• 13. The Last Lap
• 14. The Tenderest Word of All
• Appendix 1: A Thought a Day for Six Days on Death and Heaven for the Christian
• Appendix 2: A Thought a Day for Six Days on Our Task of Sharing the Gospel
• Appendix 3: A Thought a Day for Six Days on The Glory of Jesus in His Life
• Appendix 4: A Thought a Day for Six Days on The Church as the Bride of Christ
• Appendix 5: A Thought a Day for Six Days on The Church as the Temple of God
• Appendix 6: The Story of Gideon in Seven Daily Portions
• Appendix 7: Isaiah’s Portrait of the Messiah
• Appendix 8: Seven Daily Readings in Isaiah
• Appendix 9: A Seven-Day Reading Scheme on Malachi
• Appendix 10: God Our Father A Thought for Five Days
• Also available from Dr Motyer
• Christian Focus