(Isaiah 55:6-11; Ephesians 4:11-16, 2 Timothy 3:16-17)
I wonder sometimes, as I stand up here, what it is that you think I think I’m trying to accomplish. Do you think I expect you to remember every point of every sermon? Do you imagine I’d like to test you on how much you remember? That would appeal to some pastors, I’m sure. I know one of my favorite professors in seminary, the brilliant New Testament scholar Gordon Fee, started out as a pastor; he told us he became a professor because “I got ‘em three days a week instead of one and I could give ‘em tests!” But then, that’s clearly where God wanted him, which no doubt had something to do with it. But can you see me giving tests?
Honestly, I don’t have any illusions as to how much you, or I, or anyone else, can consciously remember. Cleophus LaRue, who teaches preaching at Princeton, tells the story of going to preach one time in a church which sat right across the street from the state penitentiary. During his sermon, there was a prison break, and the alarms went off and the lights went on—the congregation, it appears, was used to this, but he wasn’t, and it quite unsettled him. As a result, he forgot to keep any record of what sermon he had preached. As it happened, he was back there a year or so later, and he began his message by noting that he might be repeating himself, because with all the commotion, he didn’t remember what he had preached about on his last visit. When he said that, someone in the congregation piped up, “That’s okay, preacher, neither do we!”
Now, some of my colleagues might be a little scandalized to hear me admit that; it’s the sort of story preachers tell other preachers, but not something I’ve often heard in church. Truth is, though, that while we might be so foolish as to consider this some sort of guild secret, I don’t think it’s anything of the sort. I’ve heard that a number of years ago, a man wrote the following letter to the British Weekly: “Dear Sir: It seems ministers feel their sermons are very important and spend a great deal of time preparing them. I have been attending church quite regularly for thirty years and I have probably heard 3,000 of them. To my consternation, I discovered I cannot remember a single sermon. I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitably spent elsewhere?”
Now, this letter caused quite a storm, with more letters flurrying back and forth, until finally another one appeared which silenced the debate. That letter read, “Dear Sir: I have been married for thirty years. During that time I have eaten 32,850 meals—mostly my wife’s cooking. Suddenly I discovered I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet, I received nourishment from every one of them. I have the distinct impression that without them, I would have starved to death long ago.”
That, surely, is the point of preaching. It’s not that you memorize what I say, or that you take notes and keep files. The primary purpose of preaching is to nourish your spirit, in the same way that food nourishes your body. I stand here to proclaim the word of God, to the best of my ability, in the confidence that when God’s word is spoken, it carries with it his purpose and the power of his Spirit. I may not always know what he intends to do—in fact, I can never fully know, because each sermon is going to affect everybody somewhat differently—but that’s really not what matters in the long run. What matters is that God accomplishes his purposes, and we may be sure that he will.
Of course, this requires a lively faith both in the value of the word of God and in the value of preaching, because it means preaching the word of God. Not every preacher has such faith any more, and so many don’t do that; some preach, but draw from things besides God’s word, while others stick to the Scriptures but have thrown out preaching. It seems to me, though, that the first approach substitutes human wisdom for God’s wisdom—and since human wisdom gave us the wars and tyrannies which marred the previous century, that doesn’t impress me much; while the second approach seeks to honor Scripture while ignoring its counsel. Paul tells Timothy, “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (that’s in 1 Timothy 4:13), and again, “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage, with great patience and careful instruction.” Why? Because “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.”
In other words, the Spirit of God breathed into—in-spirited, you might say, inspired—the authors of Scripture, and he continues to speak through the words of Scripture to us, and to all the people of God, wherever we may be and whatever issues and circumstances we might face; and as such, by the power of the Spirit in its authors as they wrote, in our eyes as we read and in our ears as we listen, these words do us good. They show us what is true, and correct us when our beliefs about God and this world are false; they also correct our behavior, convicting us of the sins in our lives, and show us how God calls us to live. The Spirit speaking through the text does the work; my job is simply to help you open your ears to his voice, to help you better understand the word of God so that you may hear more clearly “what the Spirit is saying to the church.”
There are three parts to that. First, faithful and diligent interpretation. My job is to take whatever texts we’re using and draw the meaning out so that we can see it clearly. That may mean focusing on a single passage and digging deeply into it; sometimes, like this morning, it means fitting several texts together. Both approaches are necessary, because we need to understand Scripture deeply, and we need to understand it as a whole, as a web of interlocking texts. Either way, however, my call is only to teach what Scripture teaches me, to follow where it leads and nowhere else, because only Scripture is inspired by God, and only it is sure to be useful; for anything else, there are no guarantees.
The second part is application, because if truth stays in your head instead of going to your hands and feet, there isn’t much value to that. You’ll notice that 2 Timothy says that Scripture is useful for these things “so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” Similarly, Ephesians tells us that God gave the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” God doesn’t tell us things just so we’ll know them, he tells us so that they’ll change how we live. To learn truth and never put it into practice is like eating and eating and never exercising—all it does is make you fat. God doesn’t call us to spiritual obesity, he calls us to be spiritual athletes, as teaching feeds action; the truths we learn are to be truths we live.
The third part is time and persistence. Do I expect you to memorize everything I say? No, and no pastor with any sense would, though I do hope that at least one thing of importance sticks with you as you leave here each Sunday; but over time, as I am faithful in preaching and you are faithful in listening, by the grace of God, the steady exposure to his word will cause us to grow. As we speak his truth together in love, we will, slowly but surely, grow to maturity in Christ, who is our head. The more we spend time with the truth of God’s word, the more we spend time looking through his word at who he is and what he’s like, the more we will look like him.