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Preaching Lecture Part 2 By Jay Adams

Do you have a real audience? How many people have come to those beautiful conferences that have been here for the past few times?
What is the purpose of this book? It seems so brilliant that you may believe, that believing you may have life through its name.
John 1-12, John 3-16, John 3-36, John 14-1-8, all these great passages where people by the hundreds of thousands have come to know the Lord.
God uses preaching passages or portions for the purposes for which He gave them.
If I send that letter to you and I happen to mention along the way, oh by the way I'll do a little counseling if you want me to and so on,
you don't develop a whole theory of counseling that I believe in or teach or something else from that letter because that isn't the purpose of that letter.
You wouldn't treat my letter that way and yet people treat the Bible the way they wouldn't treat somebody's letter to them.
They treat the Holy Spirit's writings the way they'd have treated some human beings' writings.
They treat the Bible as though they can do what they want with it, make it mean what they want it to mean and use it for purposes that they want to use it for.
So in my opinion the big first failure in the teaching of homiletics in the English-speaking world has been to urge people to find the tell-off of the cross.
And to find the tell-off of everything else, to give it a chance.
Now we have to 11 for the end of this section so I'm going to start working on that just a little bit.
Well, what is the tell-off of the Bible?
What's the tell-off of the Bible?
What's the purpose of all things, what's the chief end of man?
Well, it's perfect, isn't it?
Glorified God, thank you.
All right, that's great.
Oh, I just abbreviated it right there.
Glorified God.
Well, you could preach, really, one whole message for the whole Bible act if you wanted to because the Bible has a tell-off.
You see, I'm beginning to show you something here in addition, I hope, that you preach from a Catholic person.
Andrew Blackwood, whom I studied, did my master's work as a homiletic in the space of some notes he used to read right now.
He used to say, ordinarily preach the passive, he preached the perfect, but that doesn't work, you see, in the story of Elijah.
And the prophets of Baal because you preach one paragraph and you haven't begun to tell the story yet, let alone get to the conclusion.
It doesn't work in Proverbs because rarely is there a paragraph.
So that's just kind of a rule of thumb.
One that does work, if you're wondering how the selective preaching works, it is never preach anything but a Catholic unit, a purpose unit.
Wherever there's any purpose in a unit, some purpose of the Spirit of God has you to preach it for that purpose.
The larger purpose are the smaller purposes under it, or the smaller ones under that, or the smaller ones under that.
But as long as it's a purpose unit, you can preach that unit of material for the purpose of which it was given if you discover the purpose.
Purpose may be subsidiary to some larger purpose, but it's a purpose that's worthwhile preaching because it has that value.
So, what did Jesus say about the Bible? What are smaller tele under that one tele?
What did he say? You can sum up all the pictures, hang them on two pages.
To love God, God and love your neighbor.
So we got a little bit smaller tele. Then we get down to the tele of the books of the Bible.
Let's just say in the New Testament, make it easy.
There's the Gospel of John. We've already talked about what the tele of that book as a book is.
And we said that the tele of John was to lead people to faith in Christ.
Take 1 John, however, there's an entirely different tele. What's the purpose of 1 John?
Spirit.
Right! These things are written to you who do believe in order that you may know that you have eternal life.
I once listened to a man at a Bible conference over a week go through the book of 1 John and the purpose for which he used the book was to destroy false faith.
Well, 1 John has a few comments along those lines, but it's not the purpose of the book.
As a matter of fact, he destroyed some true faith temporarily into people who were there who had to be patched up and put back and glued together again after what he did.
But the purpose of the book was totally missed by this man who turned it inside out and made it and used it for exactly the opposite purpose for which the book was written.
Isn't those curious faith go along the way in establishing assurance it does so?
He missed. The major tele of the book.
Take Jesus.
I'll put him up here, I guess. Take Jesus. What's the purpose of the book of Jesus?
Tells you what the purpose is. Remember?
Not perseverance.
What? What's that?
Yes, but more than preparation against them.
Ah, to contend for the truth once for all. Hop, hop. Delivered to the saints.
Remember? Again. Here's what he says.
Dear friends, I was making a serious effort to write to you about our common salvation.
That's what his purpose originally had been when he sat down to write.
But then word came to him. He came so long.
And wherever it was he was writing this letter to, we don't know.
But things were all over there, so he tore up that piece of papyrus, threw it into a file 13,
and then hauled out a new piece of papyrus and on that sheet wrote a quick note.
And here's his properties.
It became necessary instead to write calling on you to contain vigorously for the faith that was delivered to the saints once and for all in a full and final way. Hop, hop.
Now, let's say you're preaching through Jews.
And let's say, now we'll get down here a little bit. Here's Jews.
Let's say you've got some sub, sub, sub tele now. All right?
And you're going to preach a series of messages through Jews.
You've got the overall purpose. You've got a glorified God.
Every one of these is under the larger umbrella which is above it.
You never, if you ever can't trace it straight back to the larger umbrella, something's wrong.
The message to glorify God by teaching people how to love God and love their neighbors better.
And it ought to be in harmony with the overall purpose of the book.
Let's say you're preaching along toward the end of Jude, let's say in verse 20 and 21,
where it says, But you, dear friend, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith, through praying by the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God's love.
It comes along to say other things, but let's just take those words.
And you see in those three messages, one on edification, building yourselves up in your most holy faith,
one on praying by the Holy Spirit, and a message on keeping yourselves in God's love.
Now somebody else may want to see the larger telos, but let's say you see three tele right there.
Here are three tele right there, and you're really down to the sub, sub, sub.
Take one of these, enlarge it, and you've got down to those and maybe a couple of others.
So you're down here to sub, sub, sub, sub, sub tele.
And God does want you to do these three things, and you see those as purposes.
But how do you keep this passage, and these, these, this portion that you're going to preach on, these three portions,
how do you keep this from being just another message like the other message?
How do you keep this message on edification from being just another message on edification?
This message on love, this message on prayer, just not another message on prayer.
Well, you don't have to do anything to make it unique.
Put the top spin on the billiard ball to give it its unique approach.
All you have to do is to recognize the telos under which this particular telos was given.
So instead of preaching, build yourselves up in the most holy faith, you're still keeping in mind the telos.
When you go out there to contend earnestly for the faith once for all given to the saints, you better know what that faith is.
So you better build yourselves up in your most holy faith so that when you go out there, the moment of the Jehovah's Witness or whoever it may be that you're working with doesn't overpower you because he knows more of his falsehood than you know of your truth.
You better build yourself up in your most holy faith.
This isn't just another message on edification. It's a message on edification as a necessity for going out there to contend earnestly with error that's creeping into the church and beginning to work on your people.
That gives it an angle, a way of approaching it that doesn't make it just another message. Do you see?
Take the next one. Praying by the Holy Spirit. Ah, it's not just another message on prayer.
It's a message that says you're not strong enough to overcome error in your own wisdom and your own strength.
You need the Spirit of God with you when you go out there so you find that he will bless you in your efforts to expound the truth to those who are teaching error and to those who are being influenced by it.
You ask God to bless your efforts as you go out to contend for the faith.
And not only that, as you go on to preach about keeping yourselves in God's love, you say, you had better beware when you go out to contend for the faith.
That you don't just go out becoming contentious and that you're out to win the argument.
To become an apology for the truth who can choke lances with anyone and pull them all off of their horses, but rather that you be someone who goes out in the love of God to lend those people to the Lord Jesus Christ.
That your heart is in this thing and you care about them.
The love of God is involved in this contention. It's not just contention, it's contention for the things that manifest the love of God and the love of God towards the people who are broadly being influenced.
Even if you can't win enough.
And so that puts a different hue over the whole thing, as you can see.
When you look for the telos for the passage, even the sub-telos or the sub-sub-telos or the sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-telos where we were in Jews.
Now sometimes a book will have more than one telos. Take Philippians for instance.
This is a long one again. I'm going to get rid of that so I don't have any more letters.
Alright. Take the book of Philippians.
I discover in that, and you might see more or less, but at least four telos in the book.
When Paul wrote Philippians he didn't just have one thing in mind like John did or like in 1 John when he wrote that or like Jude did.
Sometimes there's one purpose, but in Philippians I see at least four and they're not announced as easily and not as easy to find,
I mean as clearly and not as easy to find as these others where they are directly announced.
And so a study of the book looking for the telos is what has to be done in order to discover it.
I think Paul was interested for example in one thing in correcting an error that was in the mind of the Philippians.
And he starts right off with that. He jumps into it as soon as he finishes his words of greeting and thanksgiving he says,
I want you to know that things that have happened to me have fallen out rather for the furtherance of the gospel.
Some people have gotten the idea that God had goofed.
That Paul's being sucked away in prison all these years and now put into a, with a manacle on his arm, into a dark prison.
Not just that kind of a hired house where he was in house arrest, but now in a real, honest to goodness, prison dungeon.
They thought maybe God had made a mistake.
And Paul says no he hasn't made a mistake and I want you to understand what he's really doing.
He's making a whole new mission for you.
Sixteen thousand men in the imperial army here at Rome.
The Caesars own personal guards, the cracked troops of Rome.
I think they spread the gospel throughout that array of men.
Not only that, but everyone else in Caesar's household, the cooks and the shoemakers and everybody else.
What a wonderful new mission for you.
And there are saints now in Caesar's house.
So that's the first thing he does to correct that notion.
Second thing he does is in this letter to deal with Epaphroditus he says,
Hey look, I want to thank you for sending him and I know that he has, has been ill and you've been concerned about him,
but he's okay now and he's risked his neck for the sake of the gospel and I want to commend you and commend him.
And he gives these warm words about Epaphroditus.
And then he has a concern about that split in Philippi that was occasioned by two women who were heads of factions.
Some people call them odious and soon touchy, but you know who it is.
And he wants to heal that split and he tells them and gives them precise directions as to how to do so.
And then finally he wants to thank them for the gifts that they sent and tell them, even though he's thankful,
nevertheless he can operate with or without gifts because God has brought him in every state wherein he might be to be content.
And so he's not, he doesn't want to skip the idea, he's begging for another gift even beyond this.
And now there may be other purposes. Some people see a whole purpose in joy.
I just think that that runs through all of these purposes, but sure enough, whatever purposes you see.
But check out the purposes of the book in some cases where there's more than one.
And then in those sections where he's talking about Epaphroditus, remember that's the purpose.
And preach everything within that section in the light of it.
Or the section concerning the split in the church, everything in that section ought to be preached in the light of that overall purpose.
Or the section about the gift or about this misunderstanding of his imprisonment.
Take, for example, Philippians 2. We're going to do the kenosis period, the kenosis story here in five minutes.
In Philippians 2, you have in verse 12 something very interesting.
He says, So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed before, not only when I am present but even more so when I am absent,
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
And some people have problems with that and so they say little cute little things like what God worked in you must work out.
Or little things like God put the seed in and you must now water the seed and cultivate it so it develops into a flower and so on.
All these nice little things to get around the problem of working out your own salvation.
Which, of course, doesn't teach that you're to be saved by works because he's writing to people who are already saved. He called them saints in the first verse.
So obviously we know it doesn't mean that. But what does it mean?
Well, it's in the section, the first section regarding the split where he's talking about unity.
Later on he names the people in chapter 4 but he's laying groundwork now and talking about unity rather than talking about the division which he talks about only after he's laid the groundwork for unity.
And it goes back to chapter 1 verse 27 where the section begins and the chapter headings are well diverse as you understand and are not inspired.
The chapter headings were written by people riding around on horseback in Europe and sometimes the horse would step into a pothole and the pen would slip and the chapter headings got in the wrong place.
At any rate, on verse 27 here we've got to the beginning of this section where he says much the same thing.
Whether I come and see you or continue to be absent, I may hear that you're standing firm in one's spirit, struggling shoulder to shoulder with one's soul for the face of the good news.
So unity becomes the note there. Right straight through chapter 2, if there's any motivating power in love, verse 1.
If there's any fellowship that comes from the spirit or any feelings of affection and compassion that make my joy complete by thinking alike, having mutual love, being united in soul, thinking as one.
All the stress of unity through here sometimes is developed as I'm watching that clock.
But he gives two rules for developing unity, two principles which if followed clearly will develop unity in the church.
First, verse 3, do nothing out of selfishness or vanity but rather in humility consider others better than yourselves.
That doesn't mean get out of work and give it to somebody else.
But it means where honestly somebody else has better gifts than you, promote the other person rather than hanging onto that past yourself.
You were a little church, you had fifteen families and you were just getting organized and you had somebody who could play about every five notes correctly on the piano and then the next six wrongly but it was the best you had.
But now a concert pianist moves into your congregation and you are now fifty or sixty strong and this concert pianist is there and the original guy still holds on to the piano clonking out the right and wrong notes simultaneously sometimes.
And everybody sits there and groans because there's this concert pianist who could be up there doing this job.
Well, that's what this is saying, promote people to a position rather than hang on yourself when they really do have better gifts for that particular task and find your gifts where they can best be used.
And then each of you should not only look out for his own affairs but also for the affairs of others.
When's the last time you prayed that Bill and John and Tim would get a raise or I think you called it a rise, don't you?
I never know, you know, it's terrible to be in a place like this, the British call it, sometimes I don't know what you people, you take, you're with us in some things and not with us and with them and others, I never know.
But get a rise out of you, I'll talk about a raise.
When's the last time that you prayed that these other guys would get a raise, not just yourself, and then they all got it and you didn't and you rejoiced?
That's pretty tough, you know, that's pretty hard, and yet that's what he says, put their affairs before your own.
It's easy to weep with those who weep, it's not so easy to rejoice with those who rejoice.
And then he goes on to say, you must have this mind, start thinking about yourselves that was in Christ Jesus.
All right, now the whole overall thing here is unity, that's the telos, that's the umbrella, I want you to be unified, here's how you're unified, by putting others in front of yourselves.
And Christ is the prime example of that, he says.
And you're to have a mind in you which was in Christ Jesus.
Now you're going to preach four or five sermons in this section because nobody understands the kenosis without a careful understanding, but always you're going to preach it in light of the purpose, unity.
Not just preach it as raw doctrine, hung out on the line to flap in the breeze or something like that, but it has a purpose.
Bring people to unity to see what kind of mind Jesus Christ had, what kind of attitude he had, you see.
And then when they understand what kind of attitude he had, they can develop the same kind of attitude, they can have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus.
Well, what was his mind like, what was his attitude like?
By existing in the form of God, he didn't consider his equality with God, so he'd be graspingly held onto at all costs, that's the way I think it ought to be translated.
But instead he emptied himself, not of his deity, but of the manifestation of it, and taking the form of a slave became like a human being.
And not only a human being, but found in inhuman appearance, he humbled himself, became obedient to the point of death, death by a cross.
Down he came in his humiliation to become a human being, one who would die, one who would die the most ignominious death of the cross, down, down, down.
And why? Because he put us before his own welfare. He was willing to lay aside the manifestation of his deity and become like a sinful human being, though without sin.
But God highly exalted him, gave him a name above all names, so that this name that he gave Jesus, every knee of heavenly beings and earthly beings and beings under the earth should bend, and every tongue should confess that Christ is Lord.
That's the name he gave him, to the honor, where is it, to the glory of God the Father.
So then, then comes our verse, Luke 12. So then, my friends, just as you've always obeyed before, I'm in prison now, I can't come and tell you what to do, so you listen to what I'm saying here on paper.
Not only when I'm present, but even more so when I'm absent. Work out your own salvation. It doesn't mean eternal salvation, it means solution to this problem, this split, this division.
You have to work out this unity on your own. Work out your own solution to the problem with fear and trembling.
But you're not really alone, since it's God who is producing in you both the willingness and the ability to do the things that please him.
So when you look at that passage in the light of the telos, the umbrella, the purpose that Paul has in mind, then you begin to see that you don't just add little nice little things like what God worked in, you work out.
Water the flower that he put in as a seed and turn it into a flower. You begin to deal with it for the purpose for which it was given, and you tell people there's division in this church or there's possibility of division in this church.
And I want to tell you what you've got to be doing instead. You've got to have a mind that says, Christ Jesus, and you develop what that mind is in a series of sermons and texts and what it's like.
But never letting your people lose the overall purpose of it all to bring unity and joy and wonder into that church.
They address the ball in a certain stance, but not their congregation.
In the lecture stance, which I believe we've been taught in most of the books and most of the homiletical dictums that have come down through the years, in the lecture stance, here's the way I picture it.
Here's the preacher, here's the congregation, and here's the Bible over there.
And in the lecture stance, the preacher speaks to the congregation about the Bible.
The preacher speaks to the congregation about the Bible. So the Bible's over there and he's speaking about it.
He tells you about the Amalekites. I'll work on them almost exclusively.
And he tells you about the Israelites in relationship to them.
And he tells you about Peter and James and John. And he tells you about Jesus over here as a historical fact.
In no way do I want to play down the historicity of Scripture to understand.
I believe in it and believe that it's essential that we do believe in the historicity of the biblical accounts.
However, if we look on the Scriptures merely in a historical fashion, as this lecture stance tends to do, we put everything into the long ago and forth way mode.
Long ago and far away. So the Amalekites then, and the boys in the back row, don't get together very well.
Because it has little interest to them what happened to the Amalekites and where they lived in what period and what their background was.
And then the long ago and far away stance is usually accompanied by abstract language and presentation.
It's abstract. We read about the nature of, the purpose of, the results of, all this abstract language that gets into these major points that we announce.
As a matter of fact, you can become so astute at wringing all the juice out of the passage and leaving nothing but the abstract husk for your people to feed upon.
That you could actually make up a list of abstract terms on, let's say, index cards and just shuffle them around for a given sermon.
The nature of, the purpose of, the results of, or whatever, and maybe you have various other kinds and you haven't used some of these cards for a while so you throw those into the pot.
But abstractions fill almost any message. There's nothing particularly keen about putting this word with this message and that one with another.
Long ago and far away, abstract, and then it's usually third person.
And I'll get a lot of flack on this before I'm through, but I'm going to justify it later on, I hope.
Nevertheless, it becomes third person where it's a he, she, it, they.
So we get statements throughout the message predominating in the message like this, the Amalekites, they.
That's the tone of the message to all this past tense, long ago and far away, abstract third person preaching.
Or lecturing, really, as it turns out to be.
Now I think that's what's killed English-speaking preaching except for the people who either purposely or more often unconsciously break out of that mold and become real preachers.
Because this is lecturing, it's not preaching. And you notice I don't use the word teaching.
I use the word lecturing because I believe real preaching always involves teaching and I don't think much of teaching that doesn't get preachy as well at some places.
So I don't mind your brother responding here, even a little bit. That's very encouraging. Very encouraging.
All right, so we've got a preaching stance here that I'm going to set over against this lecture stance with which we've all been trained.
I grew up in this and fought and struggled for years in this kind of thing and never knew why I was having problems until I began to sort a little bit of it out after I came to the place where I was supposed to teach preaching at an institution.
And poor students who went through the first six years, you know.
Nevertheless, as I see it now, here's the problem. It's a problem of stance.
Let's look at a preaching stance over against that. Here's the preacher. Here's the congregation. Notice it's grown?
And here's the Bible.
All right, now the preacher speaks to the congregation from the Bible about God and
himself.
Now I just want you to let that filter down a little bit into your thinking. Let it filter down through things for a moment and notice the difference.
This has a here and now quality about it as over against long ago and far away.
It tends to become, when done properly, concrete rather than abstract, and it is largely second person rather than third person, and it sounds something like this.
God says you instead of the Amalekites say.
I don't know whether you can see around this or not. Can you?
I'll lean it over here for a minute for those of you who are having trouble. Does that help any at all?
Well, maybe it doesn't, but there it is anyway.
All right, I've got all kinds of new pens up here since the first lecture. I'm going to put those on the side before I try to write with the paper around them.
All right, now I hope this sinks in because there's a great deal of difference between these two stances.
A stance toward the Bible and a stance toward the people. That's what I'm talking about. How you relate to each.
And in this kind of a format, this stance, a person really preaches.
He talks to people about themselves in relationship to God and their neighbors through the Bible.
The Bible is there and he's saying God says you.
Whereas the other becomes largely a historical lecture on what God used to do way back when, when he was doing things in the biblical days.
And oh, by the way, he tacked on the end or at the end of each point, if you want to have a little variety, here's what that means to you.
Or if you're one of these exegetical types, expository types, so-called, who just goes down and says here's what it's all about and along the way he tacks on little applications as you go.
But the stance is the first thing we're talking about. In all of those approaches, regardless of the varieties, there's still lecture stance approaches.
We're looking at the Bible and talking about it. We're talking about David, characters in it, or Paul or somebody.
That's the overwhelming impression you get when you come to the service that you're going to get information about the Bible.
We're going to learn more about the Bible. Don't misunderstand me, you should learn more about the Bible.
But only so that you can learn more about yourself and your neighbor in relationship to God.
And it's that note that's missing in the lecture stance.
People ought to come to the service saying, what has God to say to me today about my life in relationship to him and my neighbor?
That's the overwhelming impression that they should get in coming to a service that God is going to speak to me about my life from his word.
As it's proclaimed by his herald, his servant, he has a message for me, and I come to get God's message. I come to hear his word.
Of course I come for other reasons when I come to worship, but we're talking just about the sermon right now.
And as we sit before that word as it's open and expounded, it is open and expounded to us so that our hearts burn within us as we see our Lord and what he has to say to us from any given passage.
There's a difference. There is a great difference between these two approaches.
I would say that the difference is tremendous, makes all the difference.
And over a period of time, if this is the approach, people will begin to look at the preaching of the word, which is really lecturing on the Bible, as an exercise in learning information.
Some will take notes, put them on the shelf, and that's all the good it does in their lives. They're never transparent.
But if people get this kind of preaching week by week, they will begin to say, I won't have it. It means too much of a radical change in my life.
And they'll rebel against it, or they will be transformed. But they must respond.
Because this is direct. This is speaking to them about themselves, not about something they can easily look at and debate in an abstract and unattached way.
And this is preaching. This is not.
Now, along with that, I would like to show you what these things, what these stances turn out to be in terms of a format for a sermon.
Give the people over here a little bit of space.
Here's a lecture, can't reach any higher, I'm sorry. Lecture format.
We don't use the word outline anymore, it's just computers, we use formatting.
And the preaching format. Trying to get as high as I can at this point. There's space underneath.
Alright, now along with that stance comes a format.
And here's how it looks.
I took this particular sermon outline from what is called Zondervan's Annual, 1983.
You know Zondervan's Annual over here? Shame on you.
Zondervan's Annual, for those who do not know, is 52 morning and 52 evening messages in outline, usually with illustration.
By the way, we've had those kinds of things as the earliest books on preaching that are extant.
All the way through the history of preaching, those things that have been around. Not by Zondervan, but by various people.
And this is the outline that was preached all over the English-speaking world on a given Sunday.
I take this because so many people follow these kinds of things. Back in 1983, shame on you if you do.
But some of you may recognize it, I don't know.
It's on 1 Corinthians 12.31, and I don't want you to think about the exegesis.
Of course you don't have to think about exegesis if you use Zondervan's Annual.
And I know a lot of people do because Zondervan doesn't publish anything that doesn't sell.
But here is what hundreds and hundreds of English-speaking pastors preached on one given Sunday in 1983.
Or perhaps even still. 1 Corinthians 12.31.
The title was, oh yeah, The More Excellent Way. Who had that?
It's all love, a sermon on love. The More Excellent Way.
Here were the points. 1. It's ministry of healing.
2. Just to give you the major points. There were 4, believe it or not.
It's simplicity of language. Don't write this down. I don't give it to you to use.
3. It's competency of problem-solving.
4. And finally, it's superiority of value.
Now you think about that for a moment. That fits the lecture outline. It's a lecture on love.
You see that? This is the subject, love, the way, it's the way, the more excellent way.
It's what we're going to talk about. We're not going to talk about the people in front of us.
We're not going to talk about God or our neighbors. We're going to talk about love.
We're going to give a lecture on love from this passage. Do you see the difference?
And we're going to say, it's, it's, it's, it's loves. We're going to talk about love.
This is an analysis of love. And look at the abstraction, ministry, simplicity, competency, superiority.
Do you see? Very interesting how that works out.
Now suppose we were to get a hold of this, this other method. We use a preaching format.
Let's say we translate this into a preaching format. And this is an exercise I hope you'll enjoy.
I hope you'll go home and take some of your old lecture outlines which you were taught to use at Theological College, not here of course,
that you were taught to use, and translate them into preaching outlines.
You can preach them all over again. People won't even recognize them. Just change the illustrations. That's all they remember.
All right. This is kind of fun to translate these things. Now let's translate this into a preaching outline.
Well, we won't love it yet. We'll just take a look at it. Your love can heal.
Don't worry about the exegesis, whether this is what the passage says or not. Just look at the format.
We're just talking about format. Your love can heal.
Now, there's a difference there. I think you see it. I hope you can see it immediately.
You're talking to people from the passage about themselves and what God says to them from this passage about their love.
Your love can heal. Did you know that?
And I'm starting out talking to people, and my outline talks to people. I don't have to tack something on at the end.
That would be redundant in this kind of an outline. This sort of an outline is application all the way through. Do you see?
It is application. You don't have to apply it. All messages application.
I just wrote a book on application, and that's the thrust of the book. The whole message is application.
To be published by Zondervan, by the way.
Now, look at the difference there. See, one preaches, the other just lectures on love.
This one gets to you right away and says, you know, you have love. The kind of love this passage is talking about.
Your love can heal. It can deal with risks between people, problems, or whatever it's talking about.
But it brings a healing touch to people's lives. You're talking to people from the passage.
Take the second point and translate it.
Your love can speak.
Notice the difference? The simplicity of its language, its ministry of healing, its simplicity of language.
Its simplicity of language falls flat, but listen to this.
Your love can speak where people won't hear anything else that you have to say when you come in love talking to them.
Out of the love of Jesus Christ, through what you do, that gets through to them.
That love speaks volumes. I mean, I could preach that all day, you know, that kind of stuff, even though I don't think Jesus is really good in the past.
Its competency for problem solving. Your love can solve problems.
See, we're just translating right over into a preaching format. Your love can solve problems.
There are knots that nothing else can untie.
And finally, its superiority of value. That's really bad. I mean, that doesn't mean preaching to the boys in the front row.
Your love is of great value. We can't do it without it in church. We have to have it. There are others who need it.
One preaches, the other lumbers along and puts people to sleep.
Can you see the difference between the lecture format and the preaching format?
Let's take another one, just for the fun of it.
Let's say, here's a lecture format. The gifts of the Spirit. What are you going to talk about, the gifts? You're going to talk about the Spirit.
The source of the Corinthians gifts. Source is abstract, Corinthians is past tense.
The function of the Corinthians gifts. The purpose of the Corinthians gifts.
You can give a lecture on the Corinthians gifts, and the boys in the back row will make a book on how many times you button, unbutton your jacket.
But suppose you say, instead of the source of the Corinthians gifts, God gave each one of you gifts.
Somebody sitting back there who's a little mousy person who's never spoken out in a public meeting anywhere in all of the world to himself or herself.
Me? Yes. I have gifts. God gave each one of you gifts. You don't believe me? Let me show you. Let me show you right here.
You see, you don't do any less of the biblical exposition. You don't do any less of going to the Scriptures.
But when the people go, they go to the Scriptures with you as oriented people who are going there to find out what God says to them about their lives.
And you're going to make a distinction between the ordinary and extraordinary gifts, doubtless.
But you're saying to these people, look, the whole body has gifts. Everybody's got them.
Everybody needs your gift. God's gift is your gift. People begin to think, hey, say yes, you. Well, show me how. Here's what it says.
See, the Bible then has present relevance. You don't make the Bible relevant. You let it become relevant by the stance that you take, which is a present, here-and-now stance.
One of the things that has really been exciting to me is to read Calvin's sermon. I've spent literally hours and hours and hours of each month over the last three years reading Calvin's sermons.
I've read yards of Calvin preaching. You don't have yards anymore. I'm sorry. I don't know what you do with two-by-fours these days, that kind of thing.
But I am amazed constantly by the difference between Calvin's preaching and his commentary. There is no resemblance except in the exegesis, no resemblance in the approach.
Most of you probably haven't studied much of Calvin's preaching, because nobody cares to do that. We don't even have much of it translated into modern English. Very little in modern English. You've got to study it with S's that look like F's in every name, most of it.
You're even going to study it in English, let alone getting into Latin or something. But Calvin preaches the Bible as though it were a victim of his congregation.
I don't think there's anything you can say more about Calvin's preaching than that, more trenchant about his preaching. That stands out!
Just take the book by Banner, the Sermons on Ephesians, and read the first sermon, first two pages, and he tells you that's what he's going to do.
And then he does it throughout all the sermons in Ephesians.
Look at his Sermons on Deuteronomy. First sermon, he tells you once again, that's what I'm going to do.
This book is given by the Holy Spirit to the church of all time, he says in both of them, and that's where I'm going to preach it.
There's a message of God to you in front of me here today, what he says.
And sure enough, when you go through the sermons, all those sermons in Deuteronomy, that's what he does.
He preaches Deuteronomy as though God wrote it to his congregation.
Timothy and Titus, it's the same thing again, and down the line, sermon after sermon after sermon.
That's what made the Reformation go.
It wasn't any of this analysis of the passage that led to paralysis of the passage.
The passage was opened up for his people, and he even says such things as, and I know I can speak about Calvin a little bit longer than most places here,
because we have Presbyterians here, and we form people here, and a sprinkling of others I guess,
but you people ought to be concerned about Calvin's preaching and what made the difference there in Geneva.
And he even says such things in his sermons as, the Holy Spirit says to you.
Normally he uses us. That's the one way you could change a sermon and make it more powerful, put it in second person.
Just translate it in to second person. What do you say? Paul is telling you, the Holy Spirit is telling you, he's constantly talking to his congregation.
Paul, we're writing, we're speaking directly to them. That's the way he preaches.
There's none of this tack it on at the end business. None of this tack it on even at the end of a section business.
From the beginning, he's got one sermon. He never even gets to the text. He gets so wrapped up in his congregation.
He mentions it briefly on the fifth page of the printed text, and then leaves it again quickly.
I mean, he goes too far in that message. He's always talking to people about themselves as God's herald of God's truth.
For them, that's what he's doing. That's what makes a difference.
Well, what a difference it is. What a difference it is.
Now, this was a sermon by a Baptist, Southern Baptist, and it's not fair to not get a Reformed guy along with him.
So, here's James Daines. I got one. This one I just found through my random sorting method, you know, like this in Zondervan's annual.
I didn't go looking for the message, but then I searched for one that was on long by a Reformed man so I could keep some balance here.
And I came up with this in James Daines' Preaching for Confidence with Confidence, and it's on John 3.16, and he entitles it,
The Greatness of God's Love, abstract title. He's going to lecture a love again.
And here's what he said. Notice the its business? That is in all of them, but sure enough, here was one on love with an its.
Really parallel with this. Its costly expression, abstracts again. Its unworthy object, abstracts again.
Its saving purpose, abstracts again. Costly unworthy saving and expression, object, purpose.
No human beings in it. No human beings in it. Not even a divine being in it. It's just impersonal.