What We Need

“It is imperative… to acknowledge and remember… that when we gather together as companies of God’s people, it is not to enjoy preaching eloquence or to criticize the lack thereof, but it’s to hear and to heed the Word of God.  We come to be exhorted, not to be entertained.  And if churches or their pastors begin to think of the place from which messages are delivered to a congregation as a stage” we will conjure countless substitutes for Christ and Him crucified as proclaimed in the Scriptures. “And sadly, I want to suggest to you that that is precisely what has taken place… Scripture has been eclipsed by a variety of sad substitutions.” 

Substitutes like, firstly, “the cheerleader… A good Sunday for the cheerleader is one where his people laugh a lot, are affirmed and affirming, and they go away more self-assured than when they arrived. Whether they were confronted by the truth of God’s Word or humbled by God’s presence is largely lost sight of in a quest for wholeness that replaces a concern about holiness…. He simply feels that his task is to “pump them up” and to prepare them for the daunting week that awaits them as soon as they leave the building. So consequently, you find the sheep leaving the building stirred without being strengthened. And when the sugar fix that has been provided by the milkshake sermon has worn off, those with any kind of spiritual appetite find themselves in search of more substantial food for their souls.”

“Secondly, the conjurer. When we hear the congregation declaring, “Wasn’t it amazing what he got out of that?” we should not immediately assume that the news is good. For the little I know about magic, I’m forced to conclude that the rabbit was in there before he pulled it out of there, and the reason it got in there is because he put it in there so that he could pull it out. And there are some tremendous sermons where the reason he “got it out” is because he had previously put it in. Unfortunately, it was not the Spirit of God that put it in; it was himself… if a man does not have a solid conviction that the Word of God is powerful in and of itself, he’s going to be forced to do something with it to try and overcome the consumer resistance which he feels is his task… he has a product; it’s the Bible. He has a consumer; it’s the individual. And his ability is going to be seen in the way in which he can make the sale.”

“Thirdly, the storyteller. This man has convinced himself since everyone loves a good story and since people tend to be less inclined to follow the exposition of the Bible, he’ll just develop his gift for storytelling to the neglect of the hard work of biblical exposition. Now, clearly, stories were part of the teaching of Jesus. His parables, as we all learned in Sunday school, were earthly stories with heavenly meaning. But the fact that Jesus used earthly stories with heavenly meaning does not grant the contemporary preacher the license to tell stories devoid of heavenly meaning that are of no earthly use.”

Fourthly, “…the entertainer. Instead of the preacher, he decides he’s become an entertainer.” When this is fostered in the mind of the preacher and in the congregation, it “makes him something of a performer rather than a pastor, makes him something of a star rather than a worshipper, and I think it fosters an environment in which the people come to sit back and relax and to assess the performance.”

Fifthly, “The systematizer. …the preacher who views the text of Scripture merely as the backdrop for a doctrinal lecture, who simply wants to take the Bible and use it to explain something that he just read in a fat book somewhere that really gave him a jazz…. While we recognize that one’s theological framework obviously affects our view of the Bible, we need to work very hard to make sure that the Scripture rules our framework and not the other way around.”

Sixthly, “The psychologist. …many contemporary pulpits are increasingly filled with pseudopsychologists, who have decided to become purveyors of ‘helpful insights,’ most of which can be—and often are—delivered without reference to the Bible. … And you go amongst those congregations, and you find them crying out what they were crying out on that day in Nehemiah chapter 8, where they shouted to Ezra, ‘Bring out the Book.’ ‘Bring out the Book… For goodness’ sake, let us have the Bible, would you please? Because everything you just gave me, I got in the US Airways magazine… We must have been on the same plane, because you just gave me the same stuff. And don’t you fiddle around and lace it with a few Bible verses and make me think that you’re teaching me the Bible. You’re not teaching me the Bible.'”

Seventhly, the naked preacher. “Naked preaching is… the way in which the pulpit has become a place for pastors to share their faults and their foibles. As if they needed to make that discovery! We’ve got our hands full proclaiming the gospel, pointing to Christ, telling the story. And I want to suggest that it’s not advisable to use the time to point to ourselves and to use it to share our story.”

It was once said, “preaching is in the shadows. The world does not believe in it.” “Today… the situation is graver still. Preaching is still in the shadows, but this time much of the church does not believe in it.”  I want to be strengthened, not stirred. I don’t need a sugar fix on Sunday mornings, I need a steak. I don’t need to be pumped up; I don’t need ten ways to be a better me, or helpful insights on life; I don’t need people’s personal stories; I don’t need man made theology; I don’t need a rock concert or a rendition of Shakespear’s “Much Ado About Nothing.”

I need my Savior! And so does everyone else. So please, bring out the Book so that I can see my LORD God, Jesus Christ. And leave the rest to the Spirit.

All quotes from and thoughts on Alistair Begg’s sermon, “What Happened to Expository Preaching?” It is a truly excellent sermon, and I would commend it to just about everyone.