Blog Archives - Grace for Law

Grace for Law

Talking to Myself

8/12/2011

I am clearly getting older and, not surprisingly, I find that I have increased in my tendency to talk to myself.

I remember that, when I was young, I was kind of amazed at how old men would talk to themselves, but now I do it. I am not yet so far gone that I talk out loud with others around, but I find myself vocalizing my thoughts to myself when I am alone (or think I am alone).

I wonder why we do that. Why, when our minds are clear, do we nonetheless talk out loud to ourselves, just repeating orally what we have already thought.

In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf explains that he talks to himself because it is a good decision to speak to the wisest person who is present. That sounds nice. I talk to myself because I am smarter than everyone else. Yeah, I kind of like that.

But, maybe, it is something else. Maybe it is just that I want to share my thoughts and do not feel I have anyone to share them with. This was the Red Green theory. His view was that people are right when they say that we need to express ourselves, but husbands know that there are some things which ought not be heard, even if they need to be said. That is why men have garages.

But I think that, perhaps, it really is a function (for me) of my frequent teaching and preaching. I grow accustomed to speaking my thoughts out loud. When I preach, I do not write everything out, so that what I say is heavily dependent on what I just said. By speaking out loud, I hear my thoughts and respond to them.

Ultimately, though, I think it is difficult to know why a man speaks to himself. The Bible does not say, but it gives an interesting warning: "A fool gives full vent to his spirit,but a wise man quietly holds it back." Pro. 29:11. If we speak to ourselves because we lack control, it is not a sign of wisdom, but of foolishness. Quiet is always more suitable than noise, unless one is speaking wisdom.

Having heard myself often over the years, I think this is something to keep in mind.

Getting to Know You

8/11/2011

Having had a nice summer of preaching at some different places, I am impressed again with how very diverse our churches are. Unlike the world, I do not mean "how many different colored people are present," but how different they are. Seriously. We often think of "all those churches" and just assume they are all the same. But they are not.

Some churches are pastor-centered, for example, while others are deacon-centered or even committee-centered. Some churches have strong lay leadership while others have almost none at all. Some churches are perceived as friendly, while others are perceived as unfriendly, but who really knows? Some churches have lots of activities and some churches have almost nothing going on. But they all survive.

My children have been an interesting barometer for measuring churches. Some churches they love the moment they walk in, others they cannot stand. Sometimes, they tell me, they can just feel the friendliness. Other times, they cannot wait to get out. The key is not whether there is some assigned greeter at the door (the current idea of how to "be friendly"). The key is something else, but they don't know what it is. They only know that the feeling is real.

In every church, there are strong personalities (often among the women), but they seem to play out in very different ways from church to church.

What have I learned? That I know almost nothing.

Seriously, when it comes to a church, I come in as a stranger. I don't know anything. I don't know who is sound and who is unsound, or who is a troublemaker or who is a peacemaker. I don't know what traditions the church has (some are really odd) or why they have them.

So, as a new pastor, the first test is to get to know them. Do not come in and just start changing everything, because I don't know who they are. Some pastors just want to walk in the door and "take over" and make everything fit some plan they brought with them, but that is a foolish arrogance. Get to know them before you start telling them what to change.

Years ago, a young pastor I knew took a church which had always been a "typical" church, with deacons chosen for popularity. After he had been there for several months, the church year ended and it became time for deacon elections. He preached on the biblical standard for deacons. The next week, the entire deacon board came to him and said that they were convinced that, during their election, the people had not known the biblical standards, so they all wanted to face the congregation for re-election. The whole church joined in returning to a biblical view of the office of deacon. Not because the pastor told them to, but because they saw the truth in his preaching.

The pastor never suggested that the deacons needed to be changed. He just preached soundly and consistently and allowed his people to come along and learn.

Get to know people. That is what a new pastor needs to do. Once you know them, and they know you, then you can start correcting things that need correction.

"Boring" Preaching

8/9/2011

We have been thinking a lot about preaching lately, so let's go all the way. What are we to make of "boring" preaching?

First, we have to admit there are many boring preachers and many boring sermons. There often is a tendency to defend boring preaching as being "sound, just not fun," but this is a false concept. Soundness is crucial and no unsound preaching is good preaching or worth hearing, but soundness is not enough.

But preaching is not a natural ability for far too many "preachers." Put simply, a lot of people just are not "apt to teach" and ought not be preachers. Preaching requires a special skill, an ability to be interesting, to be accurate, to be comfortable, to be consistent. A good preacher must be able to think clearly and express things clearly. But a lot of really good men just aren't good at preaching. They should work to develop the skill or, if they cannot, they should stop being preachers.

Seriously. Just stop. If you cannot do something well, then God did not call you to do it. It is not God's will to bore His people into holiness. God has given the church elders (pastors and teachers) in order to teach his people, not to bore them. He also did not give your church a pastor just to have him read someone else's sermons or parrot someone else's ideas. Did you ever wonder about the dozens of books of sermon outlines you can buy? There are enough preachers buying these books to keep them being published, and those preachers are just re-preaching someone else's sermons.

When you hear preachers talk about "boring" sermons, you often hear two responses. First, some people will claim that no sermon "should be" boring if it is sound, but this is nonsense. A person can speak truth and yet be boring. Second, they will attack the audience, claiming that there really aren't any boring sermons, just "disinterested and cold" people. This is just not true.

I have preached in a number of churches and have found that they are, for the most part, filled with people who love Christ and want to hear the word. They want to know the truth. They want to love the truth. They want sermons that engage them, that keep them alert, that meet their needs. But they do not get them.

Boring preaching is a serious problem. It is a shame that a man who has a chance to address the most important issues in people's lives cannot find a way to do it effectively. It is a shame that a people who want to hear the truth and grow in their love and service are forced to hear nothing but cliches and boredom.

Preaching ought not be boring. Preaching ought to be life itself, embodied in the words of the preachers, who proclaims the Word of Life.

Boring? Never.

Teaching and Talking

8/8/2011

I love to teach. That's a little warning. I had four chances to teach this weekend, which makes for a grand weekend.

Anyway, I promised to follow up on the Sovereignty of God presentation. Things went well. The presentation I had prepared included a lot of citations, with the goal of making very clear how much scripture teaches us about the sovereignty of God. You can find the presentation in PDF form on the General page of this website.

I wanted it to be clear that he is sovereign in regard to doing all he pleases (Psalm 115:3), to being pleased at all he does (Psalm 135:5-6), to accomplishing all his purpose (Isa. 46:9-10), to being able to do all things (Jer. 32:27), and to being limited by and answering to no one (Daniel 4:34-35). I wanted to make clear that nothing is impossible for God. Luke 1:37.

He is sovereign in natural things (Matt. 5:45, 6:26-30, 10:29). He is sovereign in human history (Acts 17:26, Daniel 4:17). He is sovereign in human decisions (1 Kings 12:15, 2 Chron. 25:20). He is sovereign in human birth and death (Jer. 1:5, Psalm 116:15). He was sovereign over the death of Christ (Acts 2:23).

He is sovereign over evil people (Pro. 16:4), over the plans of men (Pro. 16:9, 19:21), and over our sanctification (Philippians 2:12-13).

He is God, after all.

The group with which I met was a group of very serious young people (college age) with some adults (also very serious).

After the presentation, we had a break time and then a question time. They asked very good questions and, I think, manifested more surprise than I had expected. I also tend to think that any group of serious people has seriously considered the sovereignty of God, but was reminded that this is a truth preachers really don't address as often or as thoroughly as they should.

Everything went well, I believe. The people were very interested and asked very good questions.

So it's the day you are to teach.

8/6/2011

Okay, you have been working on the whole "sovereignty of God" material and tonight is the night you teach. What do you do today?

Because you are using a PowerPoint presentation, you start by going over the presentation. You need to see, again, how you are using this material and make sure the order in which you have the material will really work. This is a very important presentation. All of the students there will have heard arguments about "how sovereign" God is. Some of them have heard people say that God is not sovereign, or that He has, in some way, "abandoned" some portion of His sovereignty. Some have heard of Open Theology, which denies that God either knows or controls what is going to happen next. How will they think about all this?

It is important that you take into account how modern college/career age young people think. They are not Puritan children from the 1600's, after all, but are raised in an age that is highly technological (therefore less personal in a traditional sense) but also highly reactive. They are used to thinking in small bites, not large bites, and to reaching conclusions quickly on very little data. They bore easily.

So, as you go through the presentation, think about how quickly you will move from topic to topic, from slide to slide. You can use more slides, with less information on each slide, more effectually than using fewer slides with more information.

And hit them hard with the truth. They like hard truths. They like to be confronted into knowing the truth more than they like being smoothed into knowing the truth. You do not teach college/career the same way you teach older people. They want the whole truth, in smaller bites.

So, how does it all look? For me, I will present the truth as it is, explaining sovereignty (what it means) and establishing that God has such sovereignty. Then, we are off to the races, with verse after verse of His sovereignty in different areas of life.

I will let you know how it goes.

Stock Market Down.

8/5/2011

Okay, so the stock market is down again. We all know the economy is bad (whatever that means) and we cannot be surprised at this news, but it still bothers us.

We live in a world that seems immensely complex. We listen to news about Greek debts and Italian debts and Spanish debts, to go along with our national debts. We worry about how Japan's currency change will impact our exporting industries.

Wait a minute. I don't have any exporting industries. Seriously. I don't.

I also do not own any Greek debt instruments. I am neither a taxpayer nor an investor in Italian or Spanish stock. I do not even own any American government debt. Why am I so worried about Greece and Italy and Spain and whatever may be an exporting industry?

Because I am told to be worried. That's what media does, it tells me to be worried. Mark Twain described it well in Tom Sawyer Abroad: " the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal most all the time, and it's such a heavy load for a person." We tend to think that by worrying about things that are far away (Greek debt? Really?), I am somehow preparing for what is going to come. We think we are being serious and adult.

Ecclesiastes knows better. "Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot." Ecc. 5:18. Every moment of my day that is ruined by worrying about Greek debt is a wasted moment.

Every moment I spend worrying about "what life will be like for my children" is also wasted, as compared to a moment actually doing something. Earning a living or spending time with them is better than reading a dozen articles on foreign trade issues (unless you work in foreign trade).

God has given me a scope of activities in my life. My family. My work. My church. My neighborhood. The people with whom I come into contact. Their debts matter to me, Greek debt does not.

Let me spend my time on things that matter in my life.

The Sovereignty of God -- Again

8/4/2011

So, you have thought a little about the sovereignty of God. You have always believed in it (in some sense), but how do you explain it?

One problem is that there is no natural example you can use. One of the reasons I think people really like using the "he made it, he owns it" argument is that it seems to resonate with something in our own lives, although, as noted yesterday, it really doesn't. None of us are sovereign over anything except in the most trivial of matters. Where I live, I cannot even burn the leaves in my yard without government permission.

So, we have to begin by explaining what it means to be sovereign at all. It means, in one sense, to be ultimately free. A sovereign person is a free person in every sense. He can and will do all that he desires and no one can prevent him (by strength) or block him (at law) or condemn him (in words) because he is sovereign. He can do all things.

We see part of this in some very old stories. When Abraham goes to Egypt, the pharaoh (king) can take Sarah to be pharaoh's wife, without asking. Pharaoh is sovereign in his kingdom and can do as he pleases. Of course, God stops him, because pharaoh's sovereignty is limited, but God's is not limited.

I think what makes sovereignty hard for people is not the concept (we like the idea of God as sovereign) but the working out, because the working out of His sovereignty hurts our feelings. To learn, as we must, that He is so much greater than we are is humbling. To realize that every moment of His existence is so much greater, so much freer, so much truer, than any of our moments, bothers us. We want to be sovereign. We want control over things and over our lives. We want our children to be what we want them to be, for example, not what God wants them to be.

The difficulty, for modern people, is to accept the sovereignty of another. We Americans are prideful, difficult people. We think of ourselves as free, as independent, as powerful, but we are not. God is sovereign over us as He is over all things.

So, step two in teaching about sovereignty is not just to declare but to embrace God's sovereignty. We must accept that He not only rules and reigns, but rules and reigns in all things. We must be willing to live the life He is giving us and to enjoy what we have, without moaning over what we do not have. In short, we must accept the truth we are taught in Ecclesiastes:

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find
enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from
him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

Ecc. 2:24-25.

The Sovereignty of God

8/3/2011

Okay, so you have been asked to make a presentation at your church. How do you prepare to teach? Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you have been asked to speak on "God's Sovereignty" to a group of college and career adults. Where do you start?

Oddly, most sermons I have heard on this issue begin with "God owns everything because He made it all." Then, we get a bit about creation and how "the guy who makes it owns it" and "therefore he can do what he wants with it." This has always seemed kind of backward to me.

After all, my wife and I "created" my son, but we do not own him. We cannot kill him. We cannot make him be what we want him to be. Even things we make are not fully our own, in any sovereign sense. George Lucas can keep messing up his original Star Wars movies with "extended versions" and such, but he cannot come into my home and take the copy I purchased and do anything with it. He does not own Star Wars in the sense of having sovereignty over it. So the "He made it" argument is not really convincing, because it misses the point.

The creation argument is about "why" God is sovereign, but arguing "why" regarding the nature and characteristics of God does not get us anywhere. Think about it. God is love. Why? Because He is. That is all that matters. His name is "I AM," because He is. There is no explanation of "why" He is what He is.

The Bible does not argue for God's sovereignty; it declares God's sovereignty. For the writers of scripture, God's sovereignty is a given. God is sovereign. He is sovereign because he is God. Sovereignty is of the nature of being God.

So we do not start with creation, or "He made it," or George Lucas messing with Star Wars, we start with God is sovereign. He is, in fact, "the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see." 1 Timothy 6:15-16.

God Is Sovereign.

Debt Ceiling Talk and Preaching

8/2/2011

Watching the recent news about all the debt ceiling drama was very interesting. The print media was filled with articles about the debt ceiling. Radio talk shows were filled with talk about the debt ceiling. Television pundits shared hours and hours of opinions about the debt ceiling. And on street corners and in restaurants and bars, common citizens talked about the debt ceiling. Now that a deal has been made, everyone wants to talk about what the deal means or doesn't mean.

And none of us really understand it. In a week, no one will care. Interesting, isn't it?

I wonder how much of our preaching is like all the debt ceiling talk. It is easy, as a preacher, to get people "all riled up" with a powerful sermon and dynamic illustrations. It is easy to convince people that the one thing you are talking about is the key to everything in their lives. "Have more faith," we say. Or, "have more passion." Or, "have a daily quiet time." Or, "read through the Bible in a year." Or, "memorize these verses." And people will sit in our churches and applaud us and go out saying how powerfully we preached.

But, you know what, they don't walk out with more faith, or more passion, or daily quiet times, or reading commitments, or plans to memorize. By Monday, they have forgotten Sunday morning (except that it was a "good sermon"). A week later, they don't have the slightest idea what we said.

Preaching is much more important than debt ceiling talks. We are presenting the word of the Living God, empowered by the Omnipotent Spirit, testifying to the Eternal Son. We have so much more to teach them than little snippets of ideas. We have truth.

As preachers, we need to get away from all the little gimmicks and get back to teaching truth. Allow God's word to change lives by preaching God's word in faith. Get away from our "three-point sermons" to a one-point sermon. Get away from our indulgence of our own desires and back to teaching what people need to know.

Like listening to all the talk about debt ceilings, people will sit under almost any preaching, week after week, thinking something good is happening. But we know the truth. If we have preached for years to a group that is not changing, we know that the problem is not God's word, which always works, nor is it God's people, who are subject to its power. The problem is with our preaching.

Preparing to Preach

8/1/2011

Well, my two weeks of "no preaching" is over with a vengeance. This week, I get to preach twice (on Sunday), plus having the usual Sunday School and a Saturday night presentation to a college and career group. So, I am sure you have wondered, what do you do to get ready to preach?

What you will find, if you ask, is that many preachers won't tell you. There are lots of ways to get ready to preach. Some men have a system where they work a set number of hours on every sermon, others are less organized. What do I do?

Well, I think a lot. No, seriously. Preaching is really, for me, the outgrowth of what else I do in my life. I seldom consciously sit down and say "hey, let's do a sermon." Instead, I think about various things at various times and, eventually, sit down to work out what I want to say. (This drives committees crazy, because they all want to know "how long" I spend preparing sermons.)

Once I have a good idea what to speak about, I sit down with a program that includes many translations and commentaries, to look over the text I have settled on. I read the text in several translations and, having come to a conclusion about what I am doing with it, I look at some commentaries as well. The sermon grows as a work of oratory more than draftsmanship. I am much more interested in how it sounds than how it reads and, in fact, I never actually write out a sermon at all. I seldom even have notes, preferring to use a sheet with cross-references.

For Saturday night, I have been asked to speak on the sovereignty of God. Pretty big topic with lots of places to go, so the first thing is to decide what I want to accomplish. Do I want to speak about sovereignty in general, or about sovereignty in specifics, or about sovereignty in salvation? Given the context of the presentation, I think we will do them all. This means a sermon of many cross-references, taking off from a solid ground in scripture and showing how each type of sovereignty relates to (and flows from) general sovereignty. Once I have that basic text, the rest comes pretty naturally (although it may take a few hours).

Sunday morning is a First Sunday, where people ask questions in Sunday School, so I do not have to prepare a lesson. Then, I get to preach at Sweetwater Baptist Church in Thomson, where I served a very pleasant interim period some time ago. Those should be very pleasant presentations, but I do not yet know what they will be about.

So, three sermons this week. Lots to do, but, because it flows from what I naturally do (think about God's word a lot), it is really not so much work. It is really more of a journey, taking thoughts and ideas and wrestling with how to explain them to people in a way that will benefit them. Ultimately, of course, what matters is not how much I prepare, nor how well I think I am saying something, but how well people hear me. Communication is not really about what I say as much as it is about what they will hear.

And, I think, this is the real key to preparing to preach. I must think of what will be heard, of how everything will work for people who do not spend their weeks as I do. I cannot preach to myself (as preachers sometimes say they do), because my duty is to preach to them.