preaching

Back to John's Fulminating Majesty

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Tomorrow, Lord willing, we will return to our study of John’s gospel.

I will tackle the disputed text in John 7:53-8:11, the woman caught in adultery (pictured along side).

Though a questionable text for reasons I will explain, I do believe it should be preached for reasons I hope also to explain. And nonetheless, it bears the marks of the rest of John’s gospel in what John Calvin called its fulminating in majesty. He used the phrase in the Institutes of the Christian Religion in his argument for the authority of Scripture in the face of detractors who would deny, as the catechism puts it, the heavenliness of its doctrine. Webster defines fulminate as to flash or strike with lightning. Here are Calvin’s words:

John, again, fulminating in majesty, strikes down more powerfully than any thunderbolt the petulance of those who refuse to submit to the obedience of faith. Let all those acute censors, whose highest pleasure it is to banish a reverential regard of Scripture from their own and other men’s hearts, come forward; let them read the Gospel of John, and, willing or unwilling, they will find a thousand sentences which will at least arouse them from their sloth; nay, which will burn into their consciences as with a hot iron, and check their derision (chapter 8, section 11).

Oh that God might grant an anointing from heaven upon the preaching of His word from John’s gospel and the hearing thereof that arouses from our sloth and burns into our consciences with a hot iron, not to check our derision hopefully but to advance His glory and our joy!

The Need for My Pastoral Best

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Apparently I need to do better at ducking snowballs. We woke up to the white stuff this morning. Before Bible study we slipped outside for some fun and frolic. One of the sheep got a little frisky and pelted me in the noggin. Good thing I had my hat on.

But I’m not referring to my need to move with greater quickness in this post. Rather I have a far more serious matter of required excellence in mind as it pertains to the role of the pastor of a local church. Paul speaks to it in 2 Timothy 2:15.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

The Lord brought this verse to mind this morning as I heard yet another teacher here at Urbana handle the Scriptures in a less-than-tidy manner. Frankly, it has alarmed me how loose so many have been in their handling of their presenting duties. We have heard good things (this morning’s presentation of the gospel hit a doctrinally sound home run), but some of the ways the text has been manipulated at times to serve a foisted agenda in this conference has left me shivering in my already cold boots.

At that moment this morning I quietly heard the Lord say, not audibly, but intuitively, Curt, do your best as a teacher. Work hard in the study. When you stand in the pulpit for Me, do so prepared to drive a straight furrow through the field of any given text that I might may be glorified and each listener may have joy.

Lord, you make me want to be a better pastor.

Take Care Then How You Hear

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The Bible has a lot to say about how preachers are to preach (2 Tim. 3:16-4:4). It also has some things to say to those who listen. In Luke 18:8 Jesus bids His hearers to take care then how you hear.

Tim Challies has grappled with how to take care in listening to preaching in a blog post entitled Being a Diligent Listener. He writes:

We set high expectations for our pastors, and rightly so, I think. Ministers of the Word have a high calling before God to be his mouthpiece, to bring his Word to his people. We expect that every Sunday we will sit under the pastor’s teaching and learn sacred truths from his mouth. We expect that he will spend his week studying Scripture and digging deeply into God’s Word so that he can teach us something on Sunday that will change our lives. We expect him to be true to Scripture, to make a good presentation of it and to keep us engaged all the while. It is a difficult and often thankless task.

What we consider less often, I think, is that while a pastor bears great responsibility in preparing for and delivering the Word of God each Sunday, the listener shares in the responsibility. The church has no place for an audience. We are all to be involved in the preaching, even as listeners. We may drive home on Sunday muttering about the pastor’s lack of preparation after a less-than-engaging sermon, but how often do we drive away reflecting on our own lack of preparation? How often should we trace our lack of learning or our lack of engagement right back to our own lack of preparation?

You can read the rest of the post here.

As I give myself to preparation for tomorrow’s message in John 7:37-52, may you as well give yourself to the kind of preparation Challies commends. I will meet you somewhere in the middle tomorrow morning, Lord willing.