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Posts Tagged ‘Expository preaching’

The Preacher Matters

Posted in Bible interpretation, pastoral ministry, Preaching, tagged , , , , on 06/27/2023| Leave a Comment »

One of the best and most challenging pieces of feedback I have ever received in my preaching journey is to be myself. A friend listened to one of my talks and said everything I expected them to say except this one. They thought the sermon was faithful to the text though I could have gone even further. It engaged with the audience although it could always be better. The state, point, explain, illustrate and ground the text route was followed. But they didn’t feel like the Peter who was preaching was the Peter they had spent the previous evening cracking jokes with.

Now, for most of us who recommend expository preaching that doesn’t sound like where we want to start. To counter the culture where false teaching and glorified MoGs (men of God) take centre stage my reaction is always to say preach the word brother. Let your structure and content be shaped by the text. Read it like ten times and read around it to be very familiar with it. Make sure your nose is in the text and that people leave hearing from Paul or Nehemiah not you. Better still, make sure to move out of the way of the word. We even make that prayer, don’t we? God please use me and help me not to be a barrier to your people. It, therefore, sounds almost unfaithful to say that the preacher, his unique personality and temperament matters too. To say that people should yearn to hear from the preacher not only because of the text in mind but because of their unique personality.

But the more I have thought about this the more I’m convinced that the preacher matters too. Haven’t you listened to someone preach and wondered if that was the same person you knew? You know that’s Josh but he sounds like that other televangelist. Or worse, their personality is so removed that they sound like a robot. I would say there are three boxes we need to tick off before we stand to preach. One, the word has to be in the driving seat. The word matters otherwise you shouldn’t call yourself a preacher of the word. Secondly, people matter, especially the people you speak to regularly. You need to know how they process information, what ticks them and what they are struggling with so that you can bring the word to bear in their lives. But that’s not all. The preacher matters too. The reason why God has given you that opportunity is so that you can speak his word to his people but as a person, not a robot. Your unique personality matters too.

Who is this Imposter?

My friend loved the sermon I gave. They thought it spoke to the people to some extent but he was unsure of the man behind the pulpit. To him, he was an imposter, not the man he knew. Now, you would think that’s okay, after all God’s people heard what God wanted to say. But I would actually say that to some degree the preacher is unfaithful when that happens. Why? Because he leaves the impression that we come to God’s word not as ourselves but as our imagined better or mostly boring selves. It leaves those aspiring to be preachers thinking they need to copy someone else in order to preach God’s word. And for those who know us, it leaves them confused about how to relate with us. Should they deal with me as the Peter they know who is free with them or the Peter who stands before them to preach and is all serious and inaccessible. I would think when God gives us an opportunity to serve his people he doesn’t require us to completely overhaul our personality. It needs to come out in our preaching. Yes, different passages will need us to check our tone but we never need to change our personality.

Just think about the more than forty different authors of the Bible. It’s easy to assume only God’s voice and his audience matter. That it’s all about what God has said and what his people hear. But then again he uses Moses one time, then he goes to David another time, then Isaiah, Ezra, Micah, Luke, Paul, Peter, James, Jude… Now imagine reading Paul’s epistles but he sounded like David writing the Psalms or Moses with Deuteronomy. The Bible would be one boring book. Actually, there would be no need for human authors. God could easily have spoken from heaven and had Moses record everything for all generations after him like the Quran.

Be Yourself

But no, God spoke over time using people with their unique personalities. Actually, when you read the Bible carefully you can’t help but see how the individual authors come across. You need your thinking gear when reading Romans. You prepare your heart when reading the Psalms. Your philosophy is challenged when the preacher in Ecclesiastes is speaking. Hebrews turns your world upside down and you move quickly with Mark in his Gospel. You enjoy the narratives in Exodus. You love John’s depth in his Gospel. Your mind is blown away by the prophecies of Isaiah and you can relate with Nehemiah. But none of these are devoid of the human author’s unique personality. The truth is most of the time the genre is shaped as much by the audience as it is by the author. Imagine if it was Paul writing the Psalms. Or Peter with Revelation. What about Moses writing Romans. Or Isaiah with Song of Songs. The message could still be upheld to an extent. The people would still hear something from God but it wouldn’t come across the same way. Like my friend, they would wonder who this imposter was and that would affect how they received the word. Thank God that he used these people with their unique personalities. Praise him that his own son took a human personality and he was always himself.

So as you prepare to preach do all you can to understand the text. Be faithful to the word. Do all you can to know and relate with your audience. Be faithful to the people. But as my friend advised be yourself. Yes, John Piper makes for a good preacher. Tim Keller too. Don’t you wish you could be Spurgeon or Martyn Lloyd-Jones? Maybe Dick Lucas or Philip Jensen. But you can’t and you shouldn’t be. Instead, use the route they follow but remain yourself. Be faithful to the word. Faithful to your congregation. But also be faithful to yourself. Preach the same word with vigour but as yourself. If God didn’t think the preacher matters then he wouldn’t have called you. He would have had Moses record all our sermons and our churches would merely be synagogues where the word is read but not explained or applied by unique preachers to specific congregations. Preach the word. Feed the Lord’s sheep. But do it with all you have. Be the man they know and relate with not the man you wish was their pastor. God has called you. Be yourself.

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Preaching as a New Covenant Disciple

Posted in 1 & 2 Samuel, Bible interpretation, Gospel, Jinsi ya, OT Narrative, Preaching, tagged , , , on 03/03/2022| Leave a Comment »

I grew up loving stories. I loved listening to my uncle tell funny ones of the sneaky hare and the scary ones of giants and ogres. I loved reading any story I could find in our school textbooks and would pause everything for a storybook. There’s just something in a good story that not only excites the mind but grabs the heart. Stories can teach your most complex ideas and moral lessons in a very simple and yet compelling way.

When I came to the Bible even before I could say I was a believer those Old Testament narratives always got my attention. In Sunday school they informed our training curriculum. I wonder who in this country has not been taught about Joseph, Samson, Father Abraham, Moses, David, Samuel… And I think here in the African church the Old Testament remains an important text for many pulpits today. Our preaching is in many ways storytelling and there’s a lot of merit in that when it’s done well and faithfully.

But the problem with the stories in the Bible is they don’t end up where other stories end. In our African storytelling, a good story has done its job when the moral lesson is arrived at. You can actually change a few details to make the story do the work for you. You can change character names and give it a more modern feel. In the end, people don’t stand and say that would never happen. They ask, what I’m getting out of it. There would also be more than one lesson from a good story and it’ll work for any group of people.

The Gospel interprets Bible stories

But Bible stories are to be understood a bit differently because they are not just mere stories to draw out moral lessons from. As Christians, we believe them to be historical and they are not just crafted for moral lessons. God is the one telling his redemption story to us through them and he has a specific lesson for us as reflected within the grand narrative of the Bible. But more importantly, we need to remember that we are living in a different time today to when the story happened and was first told. We are in the era of the new covenant of grace not the old covenant of the law.

Here I find the book of Hebrews is really helpful in understanding the transition between the Old to the New Covenant. This is probably the one book every preacher must read and understand though I know I say the same for a lot more others in the New Testament. This is where the preacher gets his theology right as we see right from Hebrews 1:

1 In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. Hebrews 1 NIV

This is a great place to comment on how God speaks to us today. But another implication is that teaching the Old Testament to people in the New Covenant calls for us to ask, how does this passage point us to Jesus and his Gospel? That’s a good rule for teaching any passage in the Bible but even more important in the Old Testament. A better way to put it is, what is Jesus our New Covenant teacher, saying to us today in this passage about himself and what he came to do? This doesn’t mean we ignore what the Old Testament passage had in mind for the original audience but we cannot stop there as New Covenant believers. We must always come to that point when we ask, how does this point us to Jesus and the Gospel message?

Samuel points us to Jesus

For instance, if we read the story of the calling of Samuel in 1 Samuel 3, we meet God speaking to a young boy while ignoring the old Eli who’s obviously failing in his job as a priest and parent. If we stop here we’ll get the lesson that God is about to replace the wicked priesthood of Eli and his sons. We’ll see Eli’s indifference to God and his voice. But if we stopped there in our preaching then we are likely to end up only with good moral lessons. Depending on our theology we can say almost anything at this point and there’s no way of saying some are more right than others if it’s all about our take from the story.

But if we read this story as New Covenant disciples we’ll see a lot more here. We’ll actually be amazed what Jesus is teaching us about himself and his Gospel this early in the Bible story. We’ll see that Samuel in many ways is like Jesus. We’ll remember the popular Luke 2:52 from Sunday school days. His encounter with the teachers of the law early in life will come to mind. But more than that we’ll see what Hebrews tells us, that Jesus is a better leader and high priest. He’s the one who is better than Eli and his sons who are wicked. But also better than Samuel because he won’t die. In Jesus, we have the perfect high priest who is sinless and eternal. The one who guarantees our eternal salvation and is always present to hear our prayers. There’s a good lesson for today’s leaders within the church to take away here. But even that is to be seen in the light of the Gospel and Jesus example, not from a good moral lesson perspective.

Now, I know this example makes it sound like it should be so easy and obvious, and yet that is not the case. I also know there’s a danger of reading narratives backward when we only want to see Jesus in the pages not wrestle with the details of the passage. I know the route to Jesus and the Gospel can sometimes feel too simplistic. I’m aware certain people can make sermons all about getting things theologically right and not living it out. That this can make the church sound like a theological school, not a discipleship training ground. I also know we’ll only preach specific passages better when we have the grand narrative clear in our minds. But I think this is a good place to start. We already know how to get the moral lessons out. What I am suggesting is we go an extra mile to pay attention to the story while also asking the big picture questions. To be biblical and Gospel-minded in our preaching we need to point people to Jesus and the Gospel.

Only the Gospel bears lasting fruit

The challenge when we leave people with moral lessons even good Biblical ones is that we leave it all in their hands. It’s upon them to change and become better disciples. But if we do that we are not only missing the grand narrative of scripture we actually set people up for failure. New Covenant believers know they can’t do it by their own might and grit. It doesn’t matter how committed and theologically right we are, we just can’t do it without our Father’s help. Only the Gospel of Jesus can bear the fruits we desire in our audience.

We need Jesus to bear the fruit he demands in us. We need the Father to kill the sin he hates in us. We need the Spirit to remind us of the small respectable sins we overlook. New Covenant preaching converts moral lessons to Gospel lessons. It calls for prayerful action, not just a determined response. It demands careful attention to the word but reminds its audience that they can’t actually do what it requires unless the Lord works it out from inside out. Faithful preaching goes beyond moral lessons, it points people to Jesus and his Gospel, to the only one who can truly change them from within.

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Growing in Biblical Application

Posted in Bible, Discipleship, Preaching, tagged , , on 02/10/2022| 4 Comments »

Our Missions manager, Stanley teaching during Induction Workshop

We learn preaching long before someone sits us down to say this is how we should preach. We pick up things from our favourite preachers and we seek to emulate that. We might change a few things borrowing from different people but we rarely come up with new ways. It’s not just in preaching actually life itself is a copy-paste exercise. We see something good and we want to do that.

But somewhere along the line, we might get an opportunity to sit and learn that there’s a right way to do this. We might not accept it immediately or even drop everything to follow this path but slowly we are won over. I think this is what happens when we start learning Expositional preaching that seeks to let the Bible speak for itself.

The problem, however, is trying to apply here does not come easily. You spend all your preparation trying to get the passage right only to realise it’s full of good truths but little application. You see if you grew up hearing and doing problem-solving, motivational preaching that wouldn’t be a problem. You already have an application in mind and all you need is the Bible to agree with it and you have a sermon. Here you’ve got to do the hard work of getting the passage right and then wrestle asking how does this apply from them to us.

This is probably the main reason we might give up on expositional preaching. It feels too hard and academic. We feel like the church is becoming a school and we know few Kenyans loved school. We might do it but drop the ball at the end by going for the quick and obvious applications. Tell them what complex doctrine they should learn from here. Remind them to pray, read their Bibles and go to church regularly. Fix their gender and sexuality views, questions of abortion or their commitment to mission, whatever we think are the big things in the public sphere. All these are possible but mostly lazy ways of doing Biblical application. And I’m speaking about this because I’ve done it before even without realising it.

But we can grow friends as we give more time to apply and learn from others. It won’t be fixed in a day but we can grow as we remember the word has spoken to real people in the past and is for real people in the present. Here are a few things I’ve picked up mostly from others but also when I’ve paid a bit more attention to the passage in front of me and the world around me.

Aim for the Heart, not just the Head
This one I learnt from my apprenticeship years but I always need to be reminded of it. That the Bible isn’t an academic book and that fixing the head without the heart won’t do it. It should be obvious but it’s not. You look at the life of Jesus disciples, they were learning directly from him so knowledge shouldn’t have been a problem though it didn’t always come easily. But how long did it take them to believe him? Actually, towards the end these guys will desert him, betray and deny him. Peter saying he was the Christ in Mark 8 didn’t prevent him from denying him in Mark 14. And I bet Judas had a lot of good theology but his heart was somewhere else.

When we come to applying the Bible it’ll help if we ask ourselves where change begins. And we don’t need to go to psychology for this. Look at how Paul writes his letters. There are great and beautiful truths to blow our minds away but he also beckons the heart to believe and the hands to act. Ephesians chapter 1-3 is followed by chapter 4-6. His job is not finished until he persuades the heart and by effect seek a real change from the heart that brings a change in conduct. He tells them not just what they should know but also what they should believe and do by effect.

Think Culture not General
So often we forget the power and the influence of the environment we live in. We forget that the Bible speaks both to the person and the world around him. If you fix the person and keep him in the same environment there’s no guarantee he won’t go back. A lot of things we do are shaped by where and who we live with. If you want to help someone struggling with pornography you need to ask what is making it so common these days. You can’t just say stop it you might need to say change your environment and your patterns of rest. Go out and hang out with friends. Put the gadgets off.

But this is not something we bring to the Bible, actually, it’s there if we pay a bit more attention. The Bible from day one tells us we are not alone in the universe. It warns us about the world, the flesh and the devil. We need to deal with all these enemies. It teaches us to kill sin in our lives, to turn away from the flow of the world around us and say no to the schemes of the enemy. Actually, the Bible often shows us all these enemies work together like we see in Ephesians 2:1-3. To grow in Biblical application we shouldn’t ignore one of these for the other.

Go for Progress, not a Quick Fix
The worst thing about living in our consumer world is we want to fix things like yesterday. We do one sermon and expect change by the latest tomorrow morning. It’s no wonder we can get very disappointed when we don’t see results and sometimes try to cook the results ourselves. But that’s naive because if we were honest there are things we learnt years ago that we still struggle with. How do you expect your audience to change overnight?

Actually, if we were to pay attention to our Bibles we’d realise God plays the long game. How many years is he telling Israel to have no other God but him? And how long does he have to wait until he finally sends them to exile and still he doesn’t give up? How long does Jesus tolerate his disciples who simply don’t seem to get who he is when all the evidence is pointing to him? And how long does he have to wait for them to accept his mission and follow in his footsteps? When you think application think progress however messy, not a quick fix.

By Prayer not Might
It might shock some of you but it seems this has taken me longer to learn. That no real change coming from the heart comes unless God acts. It should be obvious because Jesus says it, apart from me you can do nothing, John 15:5. We should see it if we paid attention to our own lives. We just need to remember how we came to faith in the first place. How long God was beckoning our attention before we said the prayer. And still how long he has to tolerate us as we hold on to our precious little idols. But no, we keep thinking a little more hard work and commitment will do it. We can even give principles of how to overcome a certain sin and grow a certain gift in a day. I think we are setting ourselves up for failure and depression.

Dear friends, I’m learning prayer isn’t just for the beginning and the end of the sermon. Prayer is what makes the sermon work. Prayer is your main application. You need to ask God in the closet and in your preaching to change you and those people. You need to point them to him if you truly want to see change. If God doesn’t work don’t even bother preaching unless you are doing it for fun. I’m learning to ask how can we prayerfully apply this? What prayer do we need to make on this? Lord, what are you telling me to pray on this? I think this is a gold mine and it’s no wonder Jesus would drop important ministry for this. He knew if he was going to accomplish anything it’s only if the Father did it. Apart from him, we can do nothing friends. We can’t even change ourselves leave alone anyone else.

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Gospel-centred and Bible-rich

Posted in 1 & 2 Chronicles, Christian Life, Church, Gospel, tagged , on 10/31/2017| Leave a Comment »

A danger was pointed out to me recently that simply being gospel-centred is not enough – for an individual, church or ministry.

Let me try to illustrate with a few diagrams.

  1. Gospel-centred but gospel-assumed rather than gospel-explicit

Gospel assumed

With gospel-assumed there is a lot of talk about gospel but we never quite get around to defining and spelling out exactly what we mean by the gospel. So very quickly not only are we not actually preaching the gospel to others (so no-one is being converted or built up), we start to forget it ourselves.

The solution: We go back to the Bible every day to remind ourselves of the good news from all over Scripture. We need to fill in the word with Bible detail.

For example in my Bible reading this morning I saw in 1 Chronicles 11 a little vignette of the gospel – one man standing against a whole army of Philistines ‘and the LORD saved’ (v14). And I see a tiny picture of the One Man who stood instead of us and triumphed over all our enemies – Satan, death, hell. And I’m reminded that the LORD saves – the most succinct summary of the gospel – salvation belongs to the LORD. His is the victory we will praise for all eternity (Rev. 7:10). I did not save myself. I was not one of David’s mighty men, I was more like a faithless Israelite or a hostile Philistine. I didn’t do a thing to move towards God. But he saved me. The Father chose me, the Son took my place on the cross, the Spirit grabbed me and united me to Christ. Sovereign grace grabbed me.

  1. Gospel-centred but gospel-small rather than gospel-big

Gospel small

With gospel-small there may be explicit regular mention of the gospel but it is a bit formulaic and anemic. I make sure I get into every sermon ‘Jesus died on the cross for us’ but that’s about it. So before long it loses its impact on our hearers or even on our own hearts. It starts to seem like a small thing and (if we’re honest) a rather boring message. So it doesn’t change lives.

The solution: we go back again and again to the Bible – all different parts of the Bible – Psalms, prophecy, letters, stories – to see the richness and depth and vastness and complexity and multi-faceted, multi-coloured beauty of the gospel from the detail of specific Bible texts.

For example in my morning devotion in 1 Chronicles 11 I see David finally acknowledged as king by his people. I see that he is of the same bone and flesh as his people (v1), that he is the shepherd of his people (v2), that he binds himself in covenant to his people (v3). I am reminded by the mention of Uriah the Hittite (v41) that this was not the perfect King. And my eyes are drawn to the Son of God who took bone and flesh that he could be the Second Adam united to his bride and the Second David, Goliath-slaying king over his people, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11, 15) and makes incredible promises binding himself to his people (John 10:27-28; 11:25-26; 12:26; 14:3, 23; 15:7-8).

If I had longer I could try to explore the significance of the King winning Jerusalem for his people (1 Chron. 11:4-9), the pattern of taking advantage of something won for you at great cost (1 Chron. 11:15-10 cf. John 6:53), the need for a hero (1 Chron. 11:20-25. And this is all from one chapter. If we keep doing this from text after text we start to build up a rich, beautiful, big heart-capturing gospel picture.

It’s the difference between a little stick man picture and a 6” by 6” Klimt portrait.

Gospel small - pictures

  1. Gospel-centred but floating rather than rooted

Gospel floating

Gospel-floating is where we do a decent job of explaining the heart of the gospel but it is not rooted into the rest of the Bible text and systematic theology. The gospel is floating unmoored, unanchored, untethered. This is a subtle danger. We can appear to be ‘just wanting to preach the gospel’ and ‘just wanting to preach Bible’ but by failing to tie the gospel into broader biblical themes and doctrinal structures we can drift off into something less than orthodox and biblical. In times of increasing biblical illiteracy this is going to be a serious issue – we can’t take for granted the doctrine of God, doctrine of creation, doctrine of man.

Solution: We go back to the Bible and seek to do exposition which avoids both the danger of eisegesis (where we pour our systematic framework into every verse – a rather boring and dangerous form of exposition) but also the danger of preaching things from one Scripture that assume or are even deny the truths of other Scriptures. We need to go to the Scriptures with a view that it is one story with a consistent theology that we need to seek to learn as well as we’re able (though humbly accepting that no one of us will never see it perfectly).

For example, 1 Corinthians 15:1-10 – that great gospel summary – is actually leaning on a whole lot of stuff. That’s why it says ‘according to the Scriptures’ twice. The idea of ‘dying for our sins’ only makes sense if you know a) what sin is and b) how it is possible for one to die for sins. To really understand this gospel summary I’m going to need to dig into the Old Testament for a complex biblical understanding of sin, including particularly the fact that it is first and foremost against God and calls down the wrath of God. Then I’m going to need to unpack the sacrificial system and the whole idea of a substitute being burnt up in the wrath of God instead of me. And the same is true of ‘rising on the third day according to the Scriptures.’ I’m going to need to look at what resurrection really means – the end time, the judgment day, the need for this creation to be swallowed up in an imperishable holy new creation. Without a lot of biblical undergirding the language of ‘Christ died for you and rose again’ is almost completely meaningless.

Another example: When I look at 1 Chronicles 11:1 and think through the way in which Christ shared our human nature (bone and flesh) I need to connect it all the way back to Genesis 3:16 and the promise of one born of woman who would crush the serpent. I would also need to look forward to what the New Testament says about the human nature of Christ. I would want to be guided in that by the ancient creeds and historic confessions where the church has thought long and hard and come up with very carefully considered words to express the completeness of Christ’s humanity and the wonder of two natures in one person without confusion or separation. I might also want to think of Athanasius and Irenaeus and the huge importance of the incarnation, God becoming man that we might share in his divine nature. Then I might want to think about the ascension and the importance of Christ retaining his human nature there, right now calling me his brother.

One more example: When we read in the prophets of the LORD’s yearning for his beloved people, his heart being moved, his inmost parts (KJV: bowels) being disturbed (e.g. Jeremiah 31:20) then surely we are seeing the very spring of the gospel – the passionate love of God. I’m definitely going to want to preach that to myself and others. But at the same time I’m going to have to be careful I don’t deny the orthodox definition of God. I’ll want to give full force to the biblical language of affections but also keep respectfully in mind the ancient understanding that God is immutable, ‘without parts or passions’ and the biblical material that says that God is wholly other and ‘not like a man.’ Not to say that all this has to come into a pulpit. Most of it will stay in the study, but if I ignore this theology I run the risk of teaching fluff or heresy.

  1. Gospel-centred but DIY implications rather than Bible implications

DIY implications

Here we have a good, rich, well-rooted biblical understanding of the gospel, but when it comes to working out the implications of the gospel (for my own life or for church life) then I sort of ‘wing it’ – DIY – Do It Yourself. I assume a) that God is not particularly prescriptive about exactly how I should lead my life or how the church should be ordered and b) I assume that I am able work out for myself, from the internal logic of the gospel, how if should be applied in different areas of life.

For example I see that the gospel springs from the consistent other-person-centred love of God and so I think the implication of the gospel is ‘any stable, loving, other-person-centred relationship’. Or I see that the gospel is the salvation not only of our souls but also of our bodies and indeed the renewing of the whole creation and so I think an implication is that the church’s mission is, with equal emphasis, to a) care for souls and b) to care for people’s bodies, transform society and fight for the natural environment.

I was reading a good Christian book the other day by a fine author who knows and explains the gospel extremely well. Much of the book was excellent. But, as I read one chapter where he described the implications of the gospel for church life, I started to feel something was a little bit off. And then I realised that he hadn’t quoted Scripture for several pages. We were moving into deductions from deductions from deductions – DIY implications.

The solution: We go back to the Bible and find the implications of the gospel from the Bible itself. This is particularly clear in the Apostle Paul’s letters. Most of them (roughly speaking) start with a couple of chapters of gospel doctrine then move to a concluding couple of chapters spelling out the implications of the gospel in some detail.

Ephesians, for example, lays out the great gospel of sovereign grace – the Trinitarian God grabbing a people for himself – by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in the Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone (Eph. 1-3) – then Paul starts talking about the implications of that for how we live as this new community of God’s people (Eph. 4:1-5:21). Loads of detailed instructions about the role of church leaders, every member ministry, speech, sex, work, reconciliation. But even this is not specific enough. People could take ‘submit to one another’ (5:21) to mean that there is no longer such a thing as differentiation of roles or authority or respect. So then there is a section laying out how exactly different relationships should work – wives and husbands, children and parents, slaves and masters (Eph. 5:22-6:9). In each of these relationships we can see that it is the gospel which is shaping the structure and manner of that relationship (in a beautiful way) but the point here is that God doesn’t leave us to guess how the gospel shapes these relationships he tells us.

The same could be said for the ordering of the local church (1 Timothy). Not that everything is spelled out – of course not. In loads of things we are free – it doesn’t matter what colour the curtains are. And yes there will still be lots of things where we will have to make gospel-hearted decisions about what is wisest for the advance of the gospel – how long will the sermon be? But in a lot of things – in fact all the important things – we’re actually given a lot of guidance by the Holy Spirit.

Why the detail? Because I cannot be trusted to work out all the implications of the gospel for myself. I will naturally use the right doctrine in the wrong way. Like people in Paul’s day I will take the grace of God and make it a license for sin (Rom. 6:1) rather than a spring of good works (Rom. 6:2-23). I need to be taught the right out-working of the gospel and the specific good deeds I need to do. I need both the gospel at the centre of everything that teaches me to say know to ungodliness (Titus 2:11-14) and I need someone (God) to draw the lines out from that centre to show me what true godliness looks like in detail (Titus 2:2-10).

 

Maybe this is all just another way of saying, let’s be expository. Let’s be gospel-centred and Bible-rich – getting our gospel from the Bible – a beautiful, big, detailed, rooted, worked-out gospel of Christ Jesus who came into the world to save sinners of who I am the worst.

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Expositional Preaching [Review]

Posted in Preaching, Uncategorized, tagged , on 09/09/2016| Leave a Comment »

Kenneth Irungu, second year iServe Africa apprentice who blogs excellent stuff at Gospel Insights, reviews David Helm’s 9Marks book Expositional Preaching.

helm-expositional

In a generation of prosperity preachers who use the Bible, as Helm would put it, the way a drunkard uses a lamp post, more for support than for illumination, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today is of much relevance. We greatly need such a book that exhorts every preacher, the beginners and the experienced, to bring out of Scripture what is there and not to thrust in what they think might be there.

In a small book, which one can read in one sitting, Helm points out that all preachers should commit themselves to a preaching that rightfully submits the sermon’s shape and emphasis to the shape and emphasis of any given biblical text. He shows how preachers can declare God’s Word with clarity, simplicity and power always, as Simeon put it,

  • humbling the sinner,
  • exalting the Saviour and
  • promoting holiness.

The book has four chapters, with a well-crafted introductory chapter introducing Charles Simeon, a man who returned the Bible to the center of church life in England, and a conclusion chapter calling upon every preacher to hope that some good will be done by their preaching .

The first chapter of the book points out three common mistakes we make as a result of our attempts to contextualize biblical texts. It shows how we preach without doing an exegesis of the text (paying attention to biblical text’s original audience and its purposes) or having any theological reflection on the text (seeing how a bible passage relates to the saving acts of God in Jesus).

The other three chapters highlights approaches for preparing sermons that enable preachers to join Charles Simeon and other solid expository preachers in the faithful and fruitful work of biblical exposition. These steps include doing a biblical exegesis on the text, having a theological reflection of the text and then applying God’s word to today.

Helm argues that leaving a sermon at exegetical step makes it purely intellectual and imperative. He also notes that preaching a sermon after theological reflection without applying it to today ends up having spiritualized and dehistoricized preaching.

The author notes that prayer is key in expositional preaching. He urges preachers to pray in advance of preaching, in the act of preaching and after preaching is done. He calls us to be ever desperate for the power of Holy Spirit to attend our preaching for the power does not rest on us.

Helm concludes the book by warning every preacher from looking for more creative and artistic ways to make the sermon relevant. He calls the readers to see preaching as a duty bound to the text. He adds that the preacher should keep the eyes open and face planted in the text to be able to articulate the theme of the text and the aim of the author. He also gives an appendix of helpful questions that every preacher should ask during sermon preparation.

Another nice feature of the book is the line drawings throughout. These make it easier for the reader to understand the key points. He also uses his example and pitfalls to help the reader learn from his mistakes. Helm does so well in connecting one chapter to the other, with each new chapter having a recap of what has been learnt so far. He also repeats the key points to note as he concludes every chapter.

I highly recommend the book to young preachers, like myself, who are trying their teeth in preaching. It is a relevant book too to experienced preachers who want to remain faithful in their work. It is unfortunate that I can only say this little about this impacting book that should be on the shelf of every Bible preaching preacher.

 

AH: I agree with Ken and very much appreciate this book. Just one concern would be that it is very much from and to an American/European context so some of the language and a number of the illustrations sound very strange reading it in an African context. E.g. “Contextualization is a good dance partner, but she should never be allowed to lead… It’s like we want to spin her out away from us in exciting circles, showing off her long legs and high heels.” (p.40-41) As I said to Ken, we desperately need someone to write an African book on preaching Christ faithfully from the Scriptures.

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Proclaim Conference 2016

Posted in Church, Preaching, tagged , , , , , on 03/31/2016| Leave a Comment »

We were very excited when Emmanuel Baptist Church ran the first Proclaim Conference in 2014. Now we’re particularly excited that the focus this year will be on Bible-driven preaching. If you can make it, get it in the diary and we’ll see you there. Here’s the invitation to pastors:

sponsor

Dear Friend/Church Leader,

Greetings from Emmanuel Baptist Church. We are writing this letter to invite you to our annual church leader’s Proclaim Conference (www.ProclaimConference.org). This year’s theme is: The Primacy of the Proclaimed Word | Handling and Hearing the Word of God and is focused on addressing the great need for biblically grounded preaching in our country.

The conference will be held Thursday 9am through Saturday 5pm, the 26th and 28th of May 2016, and the venue is Emmanuel Baptist Church (EBC), King’ara Road, Lavington, Nairobi.

Our vision for the Proclaim Conferences is to equip church leadership to passionately and accurately minister the Scriptures to the churches they serve.

We are purposed to serve and strengthen the Church in Kenya by promoting robust God-­centered evangelical theology by: preaching from the Scriptures expositionally, modeling  healthy church life, providing quality biblical training resources, and by providing opportunities to develop ministry relationships and build healthy gospel-centered church networks.

For this year’s conference we will be examining the topic of expositional preaching. Dr. Mark Brock, Crossway Baptist Church, Bakersfield, California, and Pastor Ken Mbugua, Emmanuel Baptist Church, will be preaching the six general sessions. Other able and gifted men (lecturers, pastors, etc.,) will be teaching over 25 different workshops that address expositional preaching, discipleship in the church, theological training, and more.

Dr. Brock will also be conducting a separate pastor’s track on how to do expositional preaching in your church where Dr. Richard Ramesh’s book, Preaching Expositional Sermons will be given to all registered pastor’s track attendees on a first-registered, first served basis.

Please join us to learn, share, interact, and fellowship with these gifted pastors and careful theologians for three full days of workshops as they explain and explore the importance of faithfully preaching from the Scriptures.

The cost of the conference is Kshs 750/= per person if registered by 15/4/16. Otherwise, registration is 900/= per person; 1,500/= per couple for the entire conference (includes conference materials, meals during the day, etc) and can be paid at the entrance gate.

Finally, it is our desire to serve the churches of Kenya and their leaders, and we will be distributing the following resources to all registered attendees on a first-come, first-serve basis.

  1. Proclaiming a Cross Centered Gospel, various authors
  2. Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God’s Word Today, Helm
  3. ESV Global Study Bible, Crossway Publishers
  4. Prosperity: Seeking the True Gospel
  5. Foundations Discipleship Booklet II (tool for one on one discipleship)

In addition we will have a large displays of new and used theological books for purchase. We will have very good prices on these books, so don’t miss out!

We look forward to serving you at this conference. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to call 0708 802 375 or email: conference@eabst.org. You can also visit our Proclaim conference website, register for the conference, and check our Facebook page for more information.

Praying with you for the Priority of the God’s Word in our lives and ministries,

Kenneth Mbugua

Pastor, Emmanuel Baptist Church
King’ara Rd, Lavington, Nairobi

Entrusting the Word
eabst_logo

 

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7 measures of our confidence in the Word as preachers

Posted in Preaching, tagged , on 03/14/2016| 2 Comments »

Many of us would want to say, as preachers, that our confidence is completely in the Spirit-breathed Word to do a genuine, lasting work in people’s hearts. It is the seed of the Word which brings the great harvest. It is the Word of God that is living active. It is the Word which is sharper than a two-edged sword. That’s why we spend hours and hours labouring to get our understanding right (knees on the floor, nose in the text) before we work on how to get it across. But how can we tell if we are putting our confidence in the Word when it comes to Sunday morning? A few suggested measures:

  1. Ratio of amount of Bible read to length of sermon. Paul calls Timothy first to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture. In the 1662 BCP service of Morning Prayer as originally conceived, there would have been 7 or 8 chapters of Scripture read in the course of the service (including set Psalms and Scripture in the liturgy). That would be at least 30 minutes every Sunday (and possibly more with total Scripture length sometimes over 4000 words). In contrast the average length of the Homilies prescribed by Cranmer is around 3200 words (though some in the later second book of Homilies are considerably longer). Again, around 30 minutes. Compare that ratio of 1:1 with our more normal modern practice of a short reading immediately before the sermon.
  2. Placement of prayer. Is it before the reading or between the reading and the sermon? If I pray for our hearing of the Word before it is read then that implies that it will be speaking even as it is read. If I always pray immediately before the sermon then the implication could be that we’re only going to hear God really speak when I unpack what would otherwise be rather unclear and hard to understand.
  3. Ratio of introduction to body of sermon. How long does it take me to get into the passage itself? Introductions can be helpful in many ways but when it gets over a certain length then questions may be asked about whether I am really confident that the Bible is a) clear and b) gripping.
  4. Speed and expressiveness in reading the Scriptures versus speed and expressiveness in the delivery of my words in the sermon. For one thing we need to make sure that whoever is reading the Scriptures in the public gathering does it really really well. But even in the sermon itself there is a danger – that when I as the preacher refer back to a verse or quote Scripture in the body of my sermon, I read it very quickly, rushing through it as a footnote or a parenthesis, while in contrast, when it comes to my own words and phrases and headings and points, I go more slowly, with much more emphasis. What I am subliminally communicating is that the Scriptures are my launchpad – and a rather dry and dusty one at that – while the thing you really need to take away is my carefully crafted rhetoric or 3 points beginning with P. What if I reversed (or at least equalised) the equation and gave great attention to how I read the Scriptures – with real force and authority and expressiveness – stressing the key words that make the point? What if I aimed to have the congregation go away with God’s words ringing in their ears not mine?
  5. Number of cross-references, particularly corroborative and thematic. There is a place for cross-references, particularly Biblical theological ones connecting a passage into the big salvation story of Scripture, but generally, once the number goes beyond two or three cross-references there is an inverse relationship between number of references and our focus on and confidence in the text in hand. Particularly troublesome are the ‘this makes me think of…’ type of cross-reference or the ‘as it also says in…’ type. In contrast, a tight focus on one text communicates that there is plenty here; each passage of Scripture is clear and rich and solid.
  6. Relying on God’s words to do the cutting versus relying on additional illustration or application to do the cutting. It’s important to illustrate and apply God’s Word. It’s important that things are grounded in real life. But there is a danger that, as one brother put it, “we use the illustration to do the work and make the turn.” In other words the thing that brings the energy or twist or punch in the sermon is my story that I have made up or my clever incisive application. It’s a form of preaching that people love but the warning sign is when you get feedback like “That was so powerful. I would never have got that.” or “It was so clever what you did with that passage. You made it so relevant.” Another warning sign is it people are nodding off as you go through the text but then sit up for the second half of the sermon when it gets to ‘application time’. Let’s labour to preach God’s Word with the clarity and relevance that it innately has, but let’s make sure that it is the Word that is cutting to the heart and not my elaborate application bolted on the end. Let application be flowing throughout, straight from the text itself.
  7. Physical distance from the Bible. This is perhaps the easiest one for the observer to spot because you can literally measure it with a tape measure. I remember watching Dale Ralph Davis preach and his head never moved more the 30 centimetres from the Bible (which was incidentally his Hebrew Bible) as he passionately wrestled with and preached the Scriptures to us. I can remember another time with another preacher when the Bible was left on the pulpit as the preacher moved further and further away, and the further he moved physically, the further he moved in terms of content, until he was spouting complete nonsense. Certainly there’s nothing magical about the Bible and being close to it but if you want to ‘reason from the Scriptures’ (Acts 17:2) and if you want to show that your authority is the Word and you have nothing to say apart from this book, then it would make sense to stay glued to it.

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Nose in the text

Posted in Ministry, Preaching, tagged , on 09/17/2013| Leave a Comment »

noses in the text

We often quote the old advice for sermon preparation (from Dick Lucas?): “Knees on the floor, nose in the text” (cf. 2 Tim. 2:7). As we did a taster day for the Utumishi wa Neno preaching course on Saturday we were really trying to say that this is not rocket science. The Bible is essentially simple, sacred, saving and sufficient (2 Tim. 3:14-17). We just need to hear it telling us how to preach. We just need to read it carefully, read it in context, read it and read it and read it again, humbly praying for light, and we will hear the living voice of the living God speaking and telling us wonderful, surprising things about Jesus.

After Fidel, Harrison, James and I had spent the day with a lovely group of brothers and sisters from a new church plant on the outskirts of Nairobi, the most encouraging feedback was: “You have taken us very close to the Word today.” That’s exactly the idea. That’s where the answers are.

For those who were there on Saturday and wanted the notes from the taster, you can download them here.

If you’d like iServe to visit your church and do a taster day, get in touch with the office here.

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MORE EXPOSITORY PREACHING PLEASE!

Posted in Preaching, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on 09/16/2013| 1 Comment »

Yesterday’s Church service was quite encouraging; not because the preacher had a Rhema word that spoke to my current prevailing situation or because we sung praise and worship until the heavens came down but because there was some faithful Bible teaching from the pulpit! In a country where we get less and less of the Bible being preached but more and more of preachers expressing their own agenda and using the Bible as a back-up, it’s only prudent that we marvel and rejoice when we see the Bible being taught faithfully!

The O.T text was Genesis 11:1-9 (The Tower of Babel) and the N.T text was Matthew 19:1-30 (The Rich Young Ruler). The ongoing series for this month are on ‘Discipleship’ and on this particular Sunday, the topic was ‘Misconceptions of Discipleship.’ The first good thing is that the preacher stuck to the texts given, he didn’t jump about from one thing to another.

From the Genesis passage, there were two main points that were drawn out;

  • Humanity seeking Self-Praise- All men uniting to build a tower whose top reaches the heavens with one aim of making a name for themselves!

This is what man-made religion does; seeking glory and praise for man instead of giving praise and glory to God. It was helpful here for the preacher to draw out some relevant illustrations from the contemporary scene where we see so many false teachers whose aim is nothing but making a name for themselves! The application being we need to be weary of seeking to make a name for ourselves and that every effort we make in trying to ‘reach heaven’ by our own means apart from Jesus Christ are only but futile.

  • Humanity seeking Self-sufficiency & Security- Here, they built a city in order that they won’t be scattered/dispersed in the face of the earth.

The problem with their thinking is that it is exactly in contravention of the command that God had given to ‘go and fill the whole earth.’
They have forgotten that this is the duty of man and now want to have a city of their own where they can be secure from the dispersion. And oh, how often we seek our sufficiency and security from other things apart from God! It could be our finances, our wealth, knowledge, education, family or even church. We easily drift off the purposes God intended for us and form our own goals that we seek to achieve.

He was clear and precise and in 25 minutes or so, he had driven his point home.

Can we have more of this please?

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