On Preaching Preparation

“I have a conviction that no sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as a crystal. I find the getting of that sentence is the hardest, the most exacting, and the most fruitful labour in my study. To compel oneself to fashion that sentence, to dismiss every word that is vague, ragged, ambiguous, to think oneself through to a form of words which defines the theme with scrupulous exactness—this is surely one of the most vital and essential factors in the making of a sermon: and I do not think any sermon ought to be preached or even written, until that sentence has emerged, clear and lucid as a cloudless moon.”

—J. H. Jowett, The Preacher: His Life and Work (Harper & Bros, 1912), p. 133.

“He made us face our sin”

Looking at our sin is an uncomfortable thing. Our natural impulse is to “love ourselves,” so when the preacher climbs into the pulpit to open the Word of God and to confront our sin through reproof, rebuke, and exhortation, we feel the discomfort (2 Tim 4:1-5). We’d rather not be reminded of our remaining sin. We’d rather accumulate teachers who avoid the topic of sin altogether. And they are easy to find nowadays.

But it is not hard to imagine how this itching-ears disorder effects the confidence of the Bible preacher. He feels the resistance from his congregation. “So,” he asks himself, “should I continue preaching about sin, or is it time to preach only gentler themes of the Christian life? Perhaps I have said enough, and they have heard enough, about sin?”

The notable Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte (1836-1921) wrestled with this question. He was faced with a crucial, ministry-defining, decision: continue preaching about sin, or leave the topic of sin and preach on the more gentle features of the faith? This moment of decision—a decision that would define the remainder of his ministry—is captured in G. F. Barbour’s classic biography. Listen to his description of Whyte’s struggle…

For ten days the loch and the late harvest-fields lay steeped in quiet sunshine, and the great hills towered higher in the faint haze. Twice within a week he disappeared for five hours, and on his return reported that he had walked some seventeen or eighteen miles over beautiful but mountainous roads. … It was on one of these walks—by the Strome Ferry road to where it overlooks Lochcarron, and then round by Plockton—that Dr. Whyte found himself wrestling with the question whether he should not, for the remainder of his ministry, preach more than he had been wont to do on the gentler and more hopeful aspects of Christian truth, and less on sin and its fruits. But, as he told his congregation when he returned to Edinburgh a fortnight later:

“What seemed to me to be a Divine Voice spoke with all-commanding power in my conscience, and said to me as clear as clear could be: ‘No! Go on, and flinch not! Go back and boldly finish the work that has been given you to do. Speak out and fear not. Make them at any cost to see themselves in God’s holy Law as in a glass. Do you that, for no one else will do it. No one else will so risk his life and his reputation as to do it. And you have not much of either left to risk. Go home and spend what is left of your life in your appointed task of showing My people their sin and their need of My salvation.’ I shall never forget the exact spot where that clear command came to me, and where I got fresh authority and fresh encouragement to finish this part of my work.” *

Whyte continued to show sinners their sin, in order to show sinners the saving grace of God.

Now fast-forward to a Sunday morning in 1921, just three days after Whyte’s death, and just two weeks before his 85th birthday. George Adam Smith stood in Whyte’s pulpit. During one section of his sermon, Smith recalled and commended Whyte’s imagination and creativity in describing the Christian’s ongoing struggle with indwelling sin. Smith said,

In Scottish preaching of the ‘seventies [1870s], sin had either with the more evangelical preachers tended to become something abstract or formal, or with others was elegantly left alone. But Dr. Whyte faced it, and made us face it, as fact, ugly, fatal fact—made us feel its reality and hideousness, and follow its course to its wages in death. He did this not only by his rich use of the realism of poetry, and fiction, and biography, but as we could feel through his experimental treatment of it, out of his own experience of its temptations and insidiousness, and of the warfare with it to which every honest man is conscript.**

Such a preacher like Alexander Whyte—faithful to persevere in preaching about sin until his dying breath—is, and always will be, a rarity. But if they don’t, who will? Without the reminder of our sin, how will we be reminded of God’s saving grace and who will push us each day to live under the shadow of the cross?

————-

Notes:
* G. F. Barbour, The Life of Alexander Whyte (Hodder & Stoughton 1924), pp. 531-532.
** G. F. Barbour, The Life of Alexander Whyte (Hodder & Stoughton 1924), p. 300.

Comfort and the Victory of the Cross

“True Gospel comfort never plays down to natural weakness: it lifts up to supernatural strength. There is nothing enfeebling or demoralizing about it, no flying to the drug of fantasy. It is essentially virile, bracing, reinforcing. And what gives it this character, preserving it from the risk of sentimentalism, is the Cross at the centre of it. In the last resort, the human heart is too big to find its comfort in any soothing anodyne of consolatory words. There is no comfort short of victory. And it is this, nothing less, that the preacher of the Gospel is empowered to offer to all who turn their faces to the Cross—the comfort of mastering every dark situation, and triumphing in every tribulation, through the grace of Him who conquered there.”

—James S. Stewart, Heralds of God (Hodder & Stoughton, 1946), p. 79.

Core sins

What is the core sin of the human heart? Is it pride? Is it the sin of unbelief? Theologians have debated this topic for centuries. But According to Dr. David Powlison, the sins of pride and unbelief are really “two doors into the same room.” And he adds a third door—the fear of man.

These three core sins are interrelated, and it’s not difficult to see how. Pride is the act of installing myself as the king of my own autonomous kingdom. Unbelief is the act of erasing God from my kingdom (functionally, if not deliberately). Fear of man is the act of installing other sinners as big players in my kingdom (When People are Big and God is Small).

And it’s no surprise that all of the lies and lusts of our hearts are to be found rooted in these three core sins. These lies and lusts are expressions of the three core sins.

3 questions to ask your spouse

This past week I was mostly in downtown Baltimore at the NEXT 2009 conference. The conference seemed to be a success. It was a great opportunity to meet up with friends, many I get to see in person only once a year (or less).

But the previous week we had the pleasure of hosting biblical counseling guru David Powlison in Gaithersburg. As you can imagine, the week was filled with rich biblical wisdom and applicable elucidations of biblical truth. I’ve set aside time over the next couple of days to return to my notes and to meditate further on what I learned. I’ll be posting some of these meditations.

One topic Powlison addressed: How to spark substantive conversation with your spouse?

Powlison suggested three categories of questions to ask your husband or wife. Each of these categories can be asked on a daily basis. And each of these categories are simple and broad, but certainly provide helpful reminders. Here are the three:

1. What are your present burdens? The Bible tells us that we are born for trouble (Job 5:7). So what is the trouble? A sin? A responsibility? An issue at work? A particular conflict? What weighs you down? What was your lowlight of this day? These burdens are the “heat of life.”

2. What are your present joys? What were your highlights from the day? These joys are the “dew of blessing.”

3. What is your calling? This could include the mundane tasks, or broader life-purpose questions. What are your duties for this day? What do you need to do? What are your goals for this day? For example, a parent could say, “Today, I don’t want to lose my temper with the kids.” It could be as simple as this.

These three categories are helpful in getting to substantive conversation with your spouse. And Dr. Powlison alluded to, this list can be useful in talking with your children as well. The answers to these three categories of questions will help us better know how to serve and care for those in our lives.

The preacher and the “abiding wonder”

For most of us, Friday marks the beginning of the weekend. Time to relax, hang with friends, hit the pool, take the family somewhere fun. But the weekend is not so relaxing for the men who are preparing to preach God’s Word in their churches. By Saturday night–as we are in the middle of relaxation–the preacher is beginning to feel the heavy weight of his responsibility. Aware of this, I have tried used Fridays to encourage preaching pastors who read this blog. And I want to do that today.

The following quote originates from a long out of print book on preaching, The Preacher: His Life and Work by J. H. Jowett (1912). Tom Bombadil—this blog’s most insightful reader—recently recommended this book to me. Last night I started Jowett’s book and read about half of it, unable to put it down until sleep overtook me.

There are several poignant quotes on the importance of gospel-centered preaching, the importance of the pastor’s soul health, and the greatness of the pastoral calling. At one point Jowett speaks about grandeur of the calling to preach divine mystery. Listen to how Jowett puts it:

…a man who enters through the door of divine vocation into the ministry will surely apprehend “the glory” of his calling. He will be constantly wondering, and his wonder will be a moral antiseptic, that he has been appointed a servant in the treasuries of grace, to make known “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

You cannot get away from that wonder in the life of the Apostle Paul. Next to the infinite love of his Saviour, and the amazing glory of his own salvation, his wonder is arrested and nourished by the surpassing glory of his own vocation. His “calling” is never lost in the medley of professions. The light of privilege is always shining on the way of duty. His work never loses its halo, and his road never becomes entirely commonplace and grey. He seems to catch his breath every time he thinks of his mission, and in the midst of abounding adversity glory still more abounds. And, therefore, this is the sort of music and song that we find unceasing, from the hour of his conversion and calling to the hour of his death:

“Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

“For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, if ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward!”

“Whereunto I am ordained a preacher, and an apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity!”

Do you not feel a sacred, burning wonder in these exclamations, a holy, exulting pride in his vocation, leagued with a marveling humility that the mystic hand of ordination had rested upon him? That abiding wonder was part of his apostolic equipment, and his sense of the glory of his calling enriched his proclamation of the glories of redeeming grace. If we lose the sense of the wonder of our commission we shall become like common traders in a common market, babbling about common wares.

I think you will find that all great preachers have preserved this wondering sense of the greatness of their vocation.

—J. H. Jowett, The Preacher: His Life and Work (Harper and Brothers, 1912), pp. 20-21.

Pastoral Ministry and Literature

This week Dr. David Powlison (Harvard, Westminster Seminary, U. of Penn) is in town teaching biblical counseling at the Pastors College. As many of you already know, Powlison is a gifted biblical counselor who through his speaking, teaching, and writing has really shaped biblical counseling into its present form (ie CCEF). He would be in my list of top 5 most unique, gifted, and valuable teachers in the church today.

As time allows, I have poked my head in on the classes to learn from his 30+ years of biblical counseling wisdom. If you follow me on Twitter, you know the classes have been rich. I’ll be back in class today.

Last night C.J. and I enjoyed dinner with Dr. Powlison. And for about 20 minutes I had an opportunity to ask him more about something he mentioned in class today, the value of literature for pastors as they seek to discover and better understand the chaos and messiness of the human experience. Theology, Powlison says, is the compass that points to true north as the storm of life swirls around us. Studying theology is essential, but we cannot neglect studying the realities of human experience of this world. You can tell Powlison has a burden for pastors to become familiar with the storm of everyday life for the purpose of informing pastoral labors and helping connect biblical promises to the contours of life. Scripture makes sense of the chaos.

To this end, he recommends pastors become familiar with the arts. Over coffee and crème brûlée, Powlison recommended a number of books, drawn from required reading he assigned in his class on ministry and literature. Powlison recommended psychological novels like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, a book that details many sides of human experience—anger, shame, fear, passion, guilt, shamelessness, suffering, child abuse, adultery, reconciliation, etc. He also recommended two titles that illuminate life reality but also feature simple pastors as their heroes—Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

In his class, to encourage pastors better understand the messiness of life, Powlison also assigned readings from a number of dark and despairing, but thoughtful, books. He categorizes them as “dark realism”—Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Anton Chekhov’s Short Stories, The Stranger by Albert Camus, The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Conrad, he said, can see straight into the pit of human darkness, and writes with an unalleviated cynicism. Checkov is equally pessimistic but with a degree of common grace and palpable love and respect in the way he presents the characters. Each of these authors value honesty, an honesty pastors can learn from.

I hope to elaborate on our conversation and these recommendations soon. But I am aware that this week is the time to record and document. I can elaborate later.

See you later today on Twitter for more updates from the classroom.

stream o consciousness

What’s on my brain at the moment.

Anticipating: Returning to some favorite places this spring—Harper’s Ferry National Park, downtown D.C., Great Falls, etc. Beautiful weather of late has me thinking about hiking.

Writing: I wish I had Malcolm Gladwell’s hair. I could write better.

Jazzed: To see Dr. David Powlison next week.

Thankful: For a great book that cost a small fortune—Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams (2009). Best book on writing I know of. So good it’s worth getting ripped off.

Death: No, not my death, death in general. Is death natural or unnatural? The world thinks death is natural. Scripture teaches that death is not natural. Life and immortality are natural but death is a foreign thing brought into God’s creation. Death is unnatural. What exactly does this mean? That’s why I’m thinking about it, silly.

So what are you thinking about right this minute (besides lamenting that you paused your day to read this post)?

Redneck Portrait

Once the roar from my little iPhone speaker echoes throughout the house the children descend. I don’t call for them, because there is no need to fill them in on what I’m doing or where I’m at. They know and they will find me. The first to sprint into the room is my oldest son who jumps in tight for the best view. My daughter follows on his heels to grab the second best seat in the house. My little son follows a moment later, clutching the toys he didn’t think of releasing before running. He jumps on the dog pile and usually accepts the least favorable view in the house. And there, laid out on the bed, all four of us focus on the small video screen, and watch a successive stream of YouTube clips featuring the boisterous tricks of monster trucks.

The Greatness and Misery of Man

From Herman Bavinck:

…The conclusion, therefore, is that of Augustine, who said that the heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father’s heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place. They seek Him down below, and He is up above. They seek Him on the earth, and He is in heaven. They seek Him afar, and He is nearby. They seek Him in money, in property, in fame, in power, and in passion; and He is to be found in the high and the holy places, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa. 57:15). But they do seek Him, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Acts 17:27). They seek Him and at the same time they flee Him. They have no interest in a knowledge of His ways, and yet they cannot do without Him. They feel themselves attracted to God and at the same time repelled by Him.

In this, as Pascal so profoundly pointed out, consists the greatness and the miserableness of man. He longs for truth and is false by nature. He yearns for rest and throws himself from one diversion upon another. He pants for a permanent and eternal bliss and seizes on the pleasures of a moment. He seeks for God and loses himself in the creature. He is a born son of the house and he feeds on the husks of the swine in a strange land. He forsakes the fountain of living waters and hews out broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13). He is as a hungry man who dreams that he is eating, and when he awakes finds that his soul is empty; and he is like a thirsty man who dreams that he is drinking, and when he awakes finds that he is faint and that his soul has appetite (Isa. 29:8).

Science cannot explain this contradiction in man. It reckons only with his greatness and not with his misery, or only with his misery and not with his greatness. It exalts him too high, or it depresses him too far, for science does not know of his Divine origin, nor of his profound fall. But the Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed. Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God. (Our Reasonable Faith, pp. 22-23)