Rediscovering Expository Preaching

[A Saturday Feature of the First Road Blog]

Dr. John MacArthur’s compendium, Rediscovering Expository Preaching, is an excellent resource as a challenge to study Scripture well, to preach Scripture movingly, and to accumulate tools for the task.  It is especially helpful in overcoming the notion that expository preaching is limited to or even primarily defined as a verse-by-verse commentary on a text.

Perhaps one of the best of many encouraging sections is, Seven “Be’s” of Expository Preaching, tucked in at the end of Chapter Sixteen: Moving from Exegesis to Exposition.

The nature of the book does not suggest itself as a read-through project. However, I found it very encouraging to do so. The benefits of reading it cover to cover would be: first, exposure to different methodologies for exegesis and exposition. And, second, exposure to the efforts of several contributors to help the reader sort out theory from performance.

There is a continuum between being able to use tools and being able to read and diagram Greek and Hebrew. Some can embrace the years of study necessary to be able to do so. Some cannot; and some would crash if they tried. The book recognizes this continuum.  However, the reader who does not catch that fact may slog through some chapters and become discouraged or, worse, antagonistic.  Perhaps the best summary of the intention of the compendium could be found in the question-and-answer section at the back. In response to the question, “Do you find it easier now to develop a sermon from a passage?” MacArthur replies, “I never study to make a sermon. I study to understand the text.”

I wonder if, in a future reprint, it might be helpful to include a section on how a preacher can do the recommended study detail in an environment where he has full responsibility for church programs and no secretarial or pastoral staff.

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Five Reality Checks for the Blessing Place

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If you have a heart for the young man you take to The Blessing Place (and, I would assume you do or you wouldn’t be going there), you need to know your heart can get in the way of wisdom. In so doing you may mislead your friend and raise expectations which, when unfulfilled, can embitter him. Be alert, therefore, to this truth:

YOU CANNOT ALWAYS BE THERE FOR HIM !

So, don’t say you will be.

Help him understand your role in his life is to launch him, not to possess him. Jonathan came close to this mistake when he blessed David.

In our era where many young men have been deprived of a father figure or have had a father who reduced the role to an empty shell, your blessing can make you seem heroic in their sight. (Yes, you…heroic. Even if you don’t know a tennis field from a football court.)

Surely, it would be wonderful if you could become best buds forever; but there are five important reality checks.

First: You will not live forever.

Second: You will both move. Time, geography, and lifestyle priorities take their toll. 

Third: God actually has other people he intends to bring into his life to bless him and God has other people he intends to bring into your life to bless. This happens even on a father/son level. Each of our four boys has a list of other men who have built things into their life experience which I could never have done.

That suggests the fourth reality check: You are not all knowing, and all-gifted.

Fifth: You are capable of mistakes. I don’t suggest making any on purpose. (If you’re like me you won’t have to worry about that.) At The Blessing Place, you might want to forewarn them about your fallibility and encourage them to build a team of mentors. I am suspicious of men who give the impression of always having it all together. Their self-praise (to the glory of God, of course) can discourage people who already have a painful awareness of their own fallibility.  

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Bless for the Right Reason

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I believe the passing on of a blessing is the right thing to do. It is a part of an overall commitment to communicate God’s ways. Its spirit is found throughout Scripture, even between friends, even though it is not something which can be dissected, outlined and reduced to a set of one-size-fits-all steps.

Now, having said that, there is a caution to be understood. A blessing of this character must be done because it is a right thing to do and not as a means of manipulation. Young people with adults, like adults with salesmen, are suspicious; and young people with adults, like husbands and wives with each other, can resent efforts to change them. This moment must be a no-strings-attached moment for God to use as He sees fit. It is not something to hold over a person’s head with the typical “do you remember what I told you…”

Along the same line, it is not something to be done to put God in your debt. “I blessed my son, God; now make him shape up.” The moment we think something we have done obligates God to fulfill our agenda, be it ever so good, we enter the Twilight Zone of self-righteousness. 

I have a list of several young men who are not where I would have envisioned. I pray for them. I am sad. But, I do not see either them or God as having let me down. It is not about me. As for God, He may not be finished with them yet. He blessed Jacob twice: first when he was a scoundrel; second after a miserable fourteen years of unpleasant consequences of his scoundrelhood. The Blessing Place is not a place to own someone. It is a place to give them a memory of good words from a man who loved them. Period. 

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The Look of the Blessing Place

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So, exactly what does this “blessing” look like?

On the way to the hilltop I explained blessing itself (to speak good to someone or on their behalf) and its relationship to one generation encouraging another. This was not a time to talk about problems and give projects.

“What I want to do as your pastor, (older friend, father) is let you hear a man’s voice tell you why he is glad you exist and what God has brought into his life through you.”

With that background I parked, got out of the car, and talked about what I admired in the young man. In the process I pointed to the road before us and named it the first road of the rest of your life. I described hills beyond as places the road would take him to intersect with people whose lives would be blessed by his life.

I also explained that my praise was not naive. Young men think we don’t know they have struggles. They are sure we would not say good things if we did. Therefore, they need to hear us say that their struggles are part of the adventure of God’s champions. In Christ the path is not about measuring up but growing up. That is why I tried to dream for them about developing courage and wisdom on the battle fields of their soul.

Then I prayed a prayer of thanksgiving to God for them after which I drove down the road. In the stillness a guy would find his voice to say, “thank you,” in his own moment and in his own way. I never heard it said flippantly, and frequently I discovered they had more to say if I gave them time to get the words out.

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The Blessing Place Remembered

It was a spur of the moment thing. On the way home from a meeting I took a young man to a hilltop, parked on a connecting road between two plowed fields, and surveyed the valleys and the parade of hills beyond them. There I told him the good things I saw God doing in his life.

Over twenty years later I returned to that area to serve my final pastorate. By then the young man had grown older and had become a leader in that church; and almost as soon as we met he asked if I remembered the visit on the hilltop. 

Not long afterward I revisited that spot; and from that visit came a tradition. Over the next fourteen-years I took many men, young and old (including my four sons), to the road between the fields. 

The idea came from a general presence in Scripture of "blessing" others, and especially the blessing of a vision to those of the next generation. Jesus himself practiced it. Therefore, as a member of the older generation, or because of my pastoral position, or as a serious friend, I sought from the Lord the ones whom I might take to, “The Blessing Place.” I did not work from a list. Each trip was uniquely the result of a focus God brought to my prayers. For the most part it was for those who showed signs of the hand of God on their lives. Some were struggling, because they could not see what I could see.

Over time several have reminded me of the event. One afternoon I brought a friend to the hilltop and discovered a car parked a little farther ahead. A man whom I had brought there years earlier approached. Beside him walked a smiling girl with a sparkling ring on her finger. His purpose that afternoon was to use that venue to ask the girl one of the most important questions of his life. 

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We Were Warned

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As we draw nearer to 2017 there should be a celebration for the sixtieth anniversary of Vance Packard’s book, “The Hidden Persuaders.” For at least a year it should be included as required reading for every high school American History course and every Seminary course on ministry. It is still in print, and in the lengthy fiftieth-anniversary introduction by Mark Crispin Miller we find this recommendation:  

The book is frightening in its prescience. Studying the national bazaar, and some of its chief planners, half a century ago, Packard saw the start of trends and practices that have by now wrought terrible destruction on our lives, our minds, our politics, our culture and our planet…. a nation built for shopping cannot possibly endure as a democracy.  

We cannot say we were not warned. 

Among several for-instances, Miller includes the use of marketing research to fill churches and sharpen sermons.

I have no quarrel with courses designed to help churches evaluate themselves biblically in hope of church growth; and I have ideas for biblically enhancing sermons; but the key word is “biblically." There is, however, the subtle nuance of a problem in the expression “in hope of church growth.”

God has no problem growing his church. First century Jerusalem and twenty-first century China attest to the fact that He is very capable. The issue for any local church is whether it is walking with Him in such a way as to be available for Him to use in their community as He sees fit. That availability has to do with being a light (doctrinal truth) and doing good (which the Bible identifies).  This is important to understand in the throes of a "christian" culture driven by the idea that church growth and good preaching have to do with satisfying the demands of a “consumer base.”

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INDEX FOR THIS SERIES

NEXT: The Gospel Is Not A Product

A Remembering Task

Today I have found one of those “round tuits.”

When Judy and I retired in 2012 we also downsized. That required finding a way to consolidate three filing cabinets into one-and-a-half. That meant culling many folders and either pitching the contents or creating easily packable and storable heaps. Among the victims to be heaped were my sermons. Now, at last, as a part of my growing writing discipline, I begin the process of re-organizing the stack of message notes which reach back over fifty years.

I smile at the transition from standard type (remember typewriters?) to IBM Selectric type to DOS print styles to Microsoft Word to non-hardcopy notes stored on my “Study” flashdrive. There are even handwritten notes (remember handwriting?).

Psalm143:5 speaks of remembering the days of old. It refers to Israel’s glory days as a nation led by God. However, if a person has remembered his Creator in the turbulent years since the days of his youth, it is not out of the ballpark to look back to see how he and God have walked together as revealed in the contents of messages preached.

I look forward to this trip down memory lane. Already I discover thoughts which can be brought forward again and tailored to future sermons or devotional thoughts. I look forward to re-acquaintance with things forgotten. Occasionally I lift notes from the pile and hold my breath. How many messages will I find over which I will shake my head and hope nobody remembered them within five minutes after they were preached?

Of special interest is the development of my study and preaching style. As the years progressed I found my own voice and lost the tone of commentaries.

It has been a good adventure so far (three hours), and the review is both humbling and invigorating. 

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A Must-Have Book If You Talk With People About Problems

It took me awhile to overcome an antipathy to counseling. I envisioned it as a full-time profession which would compete with pastoral ministry. I also thought of it as Christianized secular psychology. And, honestly, I wanted to think all problems would be resolved by preaching, thus eliminating face-to-face guidance. Once I analyzed Jesus' ministry and understood that making disciples was a lifestyle of counsel, I was able to adjust my thinking to the biblical model for both preaching and shepherding.

To help along the way was the annual Biblical Counseling Seminar at Faith Baptist Church in Lafayette, IN. There I learned more adequately to interface biblical theology with biblical ministry. This program gives tools for listening, guiding and coaching others (and oneself) through the process of growth in Christlikeness in the arena of real life struggles. It does so with a humble yet driven spirit and offers the resources of many men and women successfully involved in various counseling formats in local churches. While it focuses on person-to-person interaction, the training enhances the pulpit ministry by forwarding the biblical role of expository preaching in its confrontational and coming-alongside roles.

The reason I say all of this is to recommend for your consideration John MacArthur’s anthology on Counseling:How to Counsel Biblically. Part of the “John MacArthur Pastor’s Library” series published by a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers, this book is excellent for those who cannot attend a training seminar such as the one in Lafayette. On the other hand it is a magnificent review resource for any who have been to such a seminar. Contributors such as David Powlison, Robert Smith and the late William Goode are or have been heavily involved in the Lafayette ministry.

A significant contributor, Dr. Wayne A. Mack, has an impressive resume in both pastoral and counseling categories, having studied under Dr. Jay Adams at Westminster Theological Seminary. He also was responsible for developing and supervising the Master of Arts in BiblicalCounseling department of The Masters College in Santa Clarita, CA.

The authors take sharp aim against the quasi-Christian formats of secular psychology wearing a mask of biblical vocabulary; but their effort is more constructive than polemic. They help the reader see what biblical counseling can look like in the home, in the church and on the tennis court. (Well, maybe not the tennis court.) It is an important read for any serious disciple of Jesus Christ.