Preach

Theology Meets Practice

Mark Dever, Greg Gilbert

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781433673177
• eBook ISBN: 9781433675928
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Mark Dever, senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and president of 9Marks, is widely respected for his efforts to build biblically faithful churches in America that will impact the nations. In this book about one of the practical distinctives of that work, Dever and his former student Greg Gilbert offer a theological and practical guide emphasizing the centrality of expositional preaching -- sermons intentionally rooted in a specific Bible text.Dever and Gilbert clearly explain how God exercises His divine power through the Word, making it the basis of any relationship we have with Him. Thus, preaching directly from Scripture should be at the center of church life. Toward that goal, the authors give practical advice on how pastors can decide what texts to preach on, how to prepare and outline their sermons, and how to deliver and review those presentations.Pastors will especially appreciate the book's final section: transcripts of past sermons from Dever and Gilbert augmented by insightful conversations between them about how each sermon was planned and whether or not is was effectively implemented.

[ PART ONE ]

Theology

[ CHAPTER ONE ]

God Speaks

I haven’t read many twenty-three-volume novels. In fact, I haven’t read any twenty-three-volume novels. But if I did, I’d expect to find an author who had a lot to say. I’d expect insight or at least an ambition to insight. I’d expect character development and an exquisite plot, surprises, tragedies, and hilarity. In short, I’d expect to find meaning somewhere in the course of reading a twenty-three-volume novel.

If that’s your assumption, too, then you’ve probably never read and enjoyed anything by Nigel Tomm. In 2008, Tomm managed to convince a publisher to print his twenty-three-volume novel, The Blah Story.1 It’s a work of magnificent ambition and sweeping aspiration—that aspiration being to write an 11.3-million-word story without saying anything at all. Don’t believe it? Here’s an excerpt from volume 16 of Tomm’s work:

As no one was blah any blah to blah, and no one blah needed blah, blah quietly blah blah away into the little blah where the blah were, and again blah a great blah of blah when blah saw the blah, the little old blah pressed blah to blah something, and blah agreed; after blah a blah with blah and talking to the blah of their blah, blah, not blah to blah back to the blah, where it blah all so blah to blah, proceeded to blah through the blah, the blah were blah of blah blah blah, blah over the blah and blah not to blah a blah word of what blah being said blah with the blah were blah and blah smart blah, high blah in blah, and blah.

The publisher made a sporting attempt to get people to buy the books, touting them like this:

Overwhelmingly creative, Nigel Tomm demolishes the barrier of words and meaning, giving vitality and expressive strength to the pattern of his most exclusive novel—The Blah Story. It is a new way of conceiving text that frees the imagination, allowing you to personalize each and every word by your own creativity.

Allowing me to personalize each word . . . well, yes, that’s one way to put it! Apparently the publisher’s gamble didn’t pay off too well, and readers weren’t overly excited about having to write the whole story for themselves. All volumes are currently out of print!

God Speaks, and That Sets Him Apart

Nigel Tomm is not the only person to poke fun in recent decades at the idea of words and speech having meaning. In fact, entire worldviews claim that language—our communication with one another—is really not much more than a game and that each person invests whatever meaning he desires into the words he reads or hears. It’s all a bunch of “blah blah blah,” and we fill in the “blahs” with whatever best suits us, our needs, and our wants.

That’s not how the Bible approaches words. Not even close.

From the first page of the Bible, words are enormously important to the God who made the universe. In fact, one of the most interesting themes of the Bible, as you read through it, is the argument it makes over and over again that it is precisely God’s words—His power to speak, to command, to be heard and understood—that sets Him apart from the false gods His people are always tempted to worship. The God of the Bible is utterly unique, utterly singular, and utterly worthy of our worship; and one of the most important evidences for that is the fact that God speaks.

We Christians tend to take that fact for granted today. It’s no big deal, really, for us to affirm that God speaks because we are so used to it. “Of course God speaks!” we say. “What kind of God would He be that couldn’t speak?” So we read our Bibles, which we understand to be the Word of God; we read the stories of God speaking to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. We quote the prophets with their ringing cry, “Thus says the Lord,” and we blithely affirm with John that Jesus was “the Word made flesh.” And it all washes over us without ever our giving it a second thought.

It wasn’t always that way. For the Israelites the fact that their God spoke to them—actually talked and communicated with them—wasn’t so easy to take for granted. “Gods” were common in the Ancient Near East; every tribe and nation that surrounded Israel had their own gods and their own ways of worship, and all of them believed that their gods were real and that they acted. But one way those pagan gods never acted was in speech. They never talked. Only one God talked, and that was Yahweh, the God of Israel.

One of the most sarcastic, cutting passages in the entire Bible comes in the book of Isaiah where God unleashes a withering denunciation of the false gods His people have begun to worship. Instead of loving Him and trusting Him, the Israelites have turned to the idols of their pagan neighbors, and God makes a case over four chapters that they have made a monumentally foolish decision. Only He has the power to save them.

God’s assault on the idols comes from a few different directions. He ridicules them first for being pieces of metal or wood or stone that had to be carved by craftsmen. Isaiah 41:7, for instance, has the amusing picture of one craftsman complimenting the work of another who has just made a god and then the even more hilarious image of the two of them working together to nail the god to the table so it doesn’t topple over! In chapter 44, God invites His people to consider—in detail—exactly where their “gods” come from. First someone plants a tree, then he waits for the rain to nourish it, and eventually the tree is big enough to be cut down. “Then it becomes fuel for a man,” God says (v. 15). “He takes part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread.” And then He comes to the punch line, its abruptness only adding to the ridiculousness of the scene: “Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes an idol and falls down before it.”

You can almost hear the incredulity in God’s voice there: “Seriously? You’re going to cut down a tree, saw it in half, grill a steak over half of it, and then bow down and worship the other half?” The ridicule continues over the next couple of verses:

Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, “Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!” (vv. 16–17)

For all the obvious stupidity of it all, though, the worship of idols points to a deeper and sadder problem. Those who worship these false gods are not just ridiculous; they are blind and ignorant and dark hearted. Here’s how God ends the passage, not so much with ridicule as with a lament for His people’s deluded hearts:

They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (vv. 18–20)

All by itself the argument against the idols as being nothing but “blocks of wood” was devastating. But there was more to be said. It wasn’t just that the idols had a humiliating origin; it was that they couldn’t do anything. More specifically—and here we come to the most important point—the idols were unlike the God of Israel precisely because they couldn’t speak.

Look at how God addresses the idols in Isaiah 41:21–24. He calls them, as a judge would call a defendant, to present proof of their reality, evidence of their power. But notice specifically what He asks them to do:

Set forth your case, says the Lord;

bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob.

Let them bring them, and tell us

what is to happen.

Tell us the former things, what they are,

that we may consider them,

that we may know their outcome;

or declare to us the things to come.

Tell us what is to come hereafter,

that we may know that you are gods;

do good, or do harm,

that we may be dismayed and terrified.

Behold, you are nothing,

and your work is less than nothing;

an abomination is he who chooses you.

God challenges the idols to speak. “Tell us!” He demands. Say something! Tell us what has happened in the past or what is to happen in the future. Do something so we can know that you’re really gods and therefore worthy of our fear. But what does He get from them? Nothing. Just silence. So He hands down His judgment on them: “Behold, you are nothing, and your work is less than nothing.”

The God of Israel, though, is the God who speaks, and that sets Him utterly apart from the idols:

Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel

and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:

“I am the first and I am the last;

besides me there is no god.

Who is like me? Let him proclaim it.

Let him declare and set it before me,

since I appointed an ancient people.

Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.

Fear not, nor be afraid;

have I not told you from of old and declared it?

And you are my witnesses!

Is there a God besides me?

There is no Rock; I know not any.” (Isa. 44:6–8)

There is no other god besides the God of Israel, and do you see what proves it? It is that He and He alone has spoken. He has told His people from old what is to come, and if anyone else would claim to be god, he too must speak.

The Primacy of God’s Word

God’s polemic against the idols in Isaiah 41–44 is not the only place in the Bible where God’s speaking has priority. Over and over, the Bible’s story holds out God’s Word as that which sets Him apart and that to which human beings ought to give special attention.

In Genesis 1:1, God creates the heavens and the earth. And how does He do it? By speaking. In Genesis 2, He gives life to the lifeless body He’s created from the dust. Again, how does He do it? By the breath of His mouth. When He reveals Himself to His people after rescuing them from slavery to Egypt, what does He give them? A picture of Himself? A terrifying look at His face? No, He gives them the Law; He speaks to His people and tells them who He is and who, therefore, they are to be.

Even in the way God commanded His people to design and build His temple, the primary way His people were to know Him was through His word, and that was utterly different from the pagan gods around them. Do you remember what was at the center of the temple, inside the holy of holies? In a typical pagan temple, at the center of the temple, in the most holy place where people came to worship, stood an image of the god. That’s what people expected to see when they made their way into the presence of the god. They expected to see him. But that’s not what the God of Israel told His people to put at the center of His temple. Instead, when a person walked into the holy of holies of Yahweh’s temple, what he saw was not an image at all but rather a golden box. And inside that box were the tablets on which God had written the Ten Commandments. You see? The God of the Bible would be known by His people not primarily by sight but by sound. They would hear His Word, not see His face. They would know Him as the God who speaks.

The prophet Ezekiel learned this same lesson w...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part One: Theology
• Part Two: Practice
• Part Three: Sermon Transcripts
• Conclusion
• Notes