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Preaching Lecture Part 3 By Jay Adams

If you believe it's a good exposition of the past, don't leave it there, just a point on the count.
It's unworthy object. You are unworthy of his life.
You know, it's saving purpose. Nevertheless, God's love reached down.
I mean, one speaks to human beings. The other speaks to the air.
That's what Paul said he didn't do. He wasn't going to box in the air. He wanted to hit something.
You know, when you get the purpose of a passage and attach it to a format that is designed to preach rather than lecture,
you're going to be getting results from your preaching. Have you ever wondered why you get so few results?
Have you ever wondered or seldom wondered or at any time wondered why what you usually get is at the door,
Nice to be here today, pastor. Thank you for a nice message today, pastor.
In the New Testament, things happen when people preach.
Two thousand people repent and believe the gospel and are added to the church on the occasion of one servant.
On the occasion of another, the preacher is stoned to death.
These days you have to say with stones.
You know, things happen when New Testament preachers preach.
When the New Testament preachers go throughout the Mediterranean world, what's said about them is that they have turned the world upside down.
Things happen. Now, I don't believe that you ought to have preachers stoned every week.
I don't believe that you need to have two thousand converted every week in your congregation because you're preaching to a group of people largely,
Largely who are not hostile. I say largely advisedly.
And you are preaching largely to Christian people.
What's that? At the very minimum! Now and then! I qualify every way I can.
Now and then at least I have some people come up to you and say,
That's exactly what I needed, Pastor. Thank you! That's going to change my life!
Or come up to you and say, I am angry with you.
You know, every once in a while that should happen.
You're really preaching biblically. Every preacher in the New Testament got into trouble with people, including our Lord.
And not only that, you'd think that every once in a while people would come up and say,
Pastor, I've got to talk more about this because I don't make an appointment to see.
This is talking to me and there are things that are happening. What's going to happen with these people?
Yeah, something should happen. And I believe the reason why things don't happen, there are many other factors.
Sometimes our own relationship to the Spirit of God isn't proper and other things,
but we're not talking about that side of the preaching enterprise today, though that's very critical, absolutely essential,
because no matter how good our format is, if we don't have the right relationship to God, nothing's going to happen.
Unless he decides to eat and work when and where and how he pleases, I mean, in spite of you and me.
But he hasn't promised to do anything. He wants us to do the job effectively, that we are to be accurate in our handling of the Word of God.
But here is the Spirit of God at work, and let's say then we preach for the purpose for which the passage was given,
fearlessly proclaiming it, letting it fall where it may, without being offensive as individuals,
but letting the offense of the Gospel have its way. Preaching, if that Spirit will, will cause things to happen.
It will change the face of your community.
John Calvin, and I'm going to talk to the first experience again here, sorry to the Pentecostalists and other people who are here.
I met one, at least, I don't know who else, maybe a Baptist or two.
John Calvin, when he went back to Geneva, wrote a letter to Virez.
And he said in that letter to Virez, I have broken ground in the city in a series of twelve messages.
Now that's an interesting statement, that letter to Virez. I have broken ground in the city, Geneva, in a series of twelve messages.
Geneva, as you know, was a very violent and immoral city before Calvin and the others who were with him.
And that statement says two things, maybe twenty, but two that I want to mention.
First of all, he had a vision for more than most men do. He had a vision for a whole city.
Not that Geneva was all that big, but nevertheless, he saw the whole city, not just his few people.
He was going to do something by the grace of God that would affect that whole city.
That was a Presbyterian view of things, rarely found among Presbyterians today,
who are glad if they can hold on with their toenails to the few that they have.
Then he said the other thing, I have broken ground on the city in a series of twelve messages.
He believed that preaching could make the difference in the city.
He expected preaching to do something.
If we have the right vision and if we have the right expectations of preaching,
and instead of lamely and wimply moving ahead as though maybe God will do something every six years for one person in our congregation,
instead of going ahead with this kind of a vision and belief that the Spirit of God uses his word when preached effectively,
and then get the right kind of a format and start preaching it with power, I believe God could turn Australia upside down.
And he could do it through the Presbyterians of all people.
Now, I'm supposed to be lecturing. I shouldn't preach. That's a mistake. I'm sorry. What? What's that?
Oh, right. Well, okay.
So what I'm trying to say, brothers and sister or two, is I think we've just got to get with it.
Things can happen. Things can really happen when we get it all together.
In the right spirit, the right relationship with God, putting it in the right format, things will happen, I believe, wherever the word has been preached that way.
Things did happen. It happened with Luther, it happened with Calvin, it happened with Latimer, it happened with Swainly in the Reformation.
I wish I had time to get into Latimer's preaching a little bit with you, the father of English preaching.
And if we had just followed our father in the English preaching, preaching would have been different these days.
Latimer was an effective preacher. Children followed him around the streets. They were so excited about this man.
People made songs, made up songs that sang songs about lines out of his messages.
When's the last time somebody wrote a song about one of your messages? Hello?
This was the kind of man Latimer was. Sayings were closed all over England without radio or television.
Everybody in England knew about Latimer's messages when he preached the message on the plow.
And he talked about strawberry prelates who, like the red berry, appear in their pulpits once a year.
Everybody chuckled about that for a long while and talked about strawberry prelates.
What a man he was. What a powerful preacher. And he preached to people.
When he went up to preach before the king, his friends warned him, oh, Latimer, be careful.
Was he? Absolutely not.
The man was fearless. One time he recanted a little bit, and then he recanted others,
recanted and eventually went to the state. A powerful preacher.
He was the one who said, give good cheer, Master Ridley, in the play of the man.
For this day we shall light in England a candle that shall never be put off.
It's growing very dimly today. Very dimly today.
One of the main reasons is that the sermons of the Greek priests don't even begin to resemble the sermons of Latimer
and the other great preachers of English history.
All right. Now I've said a couple things here that probably have infuriated some of you.
I hope so. Because if you're upset, then you'll think. If you're sitting there, you won't.
I hope I've challenged a few of you and made some of you think the other way, too, happily.
Somewhere I have something else here I can't find. Probably lost it, dropped it, whatever it may be.
I glue these things in here, and then I can't find them. It's a dumb thing to do.
But I do it anyway. So I keep things together so you won't lose them.
Well, it's gone. I'll do it from memory if I can.
At any rate, I've talked about stance and format. I want to talk about positioning.
That's another word nobody uses. We use all these words that we're not worried about. We don't put our own content in.
There are three positions that you can take. Maybe there are five, but I think three boils down to what there are, essentially.
Three positions you can take in the pulpit, in relationship to your people, in re, your congregations.
Three positions you can take.
In the first of those, there are just enough boards here. Glad it's not a four-point message. It would be over in the wall.
But the first of these positions is a position of an onlooker.
Maybe a reverent onlooker, maybe an anxious onlooker, but really an onlooker or spectator.
Perhaps even more to the point, a cameraman.
The text, the preaching portion, so that his congregation can see what's going on in the preaching portion.
He's a cameraman. That's probably the best relationship to say what the relationship is like in the pulpit. That's what he becomes.
And as he does this, he identifies with no one in the preaching portion. He is outside of it all.
He's not identified with the crowd to whom Jesus is speaking in the passage, or the recipient of the letter Timothy,
or with the writer of the letter Peter, or with the preacher, or perhaps John the Baptist in the passage.
He doesn't identify with anybody, either the recipient or the writer, or the recipient of a message or the speaker.
He's outside of it all. He doesn't get identified. He stands above it, we might say, or at least outside of it,
and looks on it and helps the congregation to see what's happening in the passage as sort of disinterested, personally, individuals.
Here, what he has to say largely is third person, they, he, he, it, she, so on.
There's another position a lot of people take. That is, in fact we might even say fellow recipient, a fellow recipient of the message.
So you identify with the crowd, with Timothy, to whom the letter is being sent, with the church,
or the congregation to whom a letter is sent, or whatever, but you identify with the recipients of the message,
with the recipients of the message.
And here the great word is I and we.
And what you're hearing here all the time is things like, look, what I have to say,
I'm not talking about you is over against me, I'm just one of you.
We're all in this boat together. Every time I point at you, three other fingers point back to me.
That's the kind of thing that you're hearing with this fellow recipient approach in the pulpit.
I'm in the same boat with you. We're all trying to learn together.
Sounds very humble. The last thing this kind of person would want to do, whatever they want to use, the third person,
he's involved in this first person speech.
That's everything, because the third person might indicate if he were to use it that he thought he was superior,
or a holier than thou, or some people might get that idea, and so at all costs he's got to avoid that.
So I'm just in this boat with you, and we're rocking on the waves together.
The tragedy with that is that what it sounds humble is arrogance personified.
It is arrogance personified.
For a man to get into the pulpit before God's people and say, I am no different from any of you,
I'm just one of you and we're all in it together, means he ought to get out of that pulpit because he has no reason to be there.
The Church of Jesus Christ has not done anything to him.
Jesus Christ has not called him. The Church has not ordained him. He's not an official herald of the word. Come on.
He stands there without authority, without warrant, if he's the same as everyone else.
As long as out there with him will be there.
It's not humility. It's arrogance!
Because he's saying, take it on my word, and my word is no different from anybody else's.
I have no special appointment to stand here before you in the name of a living God and tell you what I have to say.
And there's a lot of sloppy agape going around like that today.
It sounds humble, but it's arrogance personified when a man in his own right stands before others to tell them what God has to say without being commissioned by God to do so.
There's a third position, which you gather is the one that I behold to.
He always deals with the client man.
That is the herald of God's message.
The man who stands not in his own right, but who stands in the name of another with a different message from the one he himself would have proclaimed,
but the one that he has been commissioned to proclaim by that other who has rights and power over him and over those to whom he speaks,
to tell him to take that message to them in his name.
And he speaks third person, you, as the dominant note in his message.
What's that? You're right. Second person. Glad you said that. You're with me at least.
Always good to know you're with me. In fact, you're ahead of me.
All right. Second person. You know, 20 hours in the air, I'm liable to say it's the fourth person before it's all over.
Now, think about that for a moment.
I'm saying that preaching ought to be done with power and authority from Jesus Christ and his church,
delegated to him by the Lord and recognized by the church that ordains him and puts him in a position of a herald of God's truth,
that he ought not to take this upon himself on his own.
And when he stands four people in the pulpit, the position he takes is not a one who's disinterested,
not a one who identifies himself with the crowd, but one who identifies with the writer or speaker of the message.
That's what he identifies with.
He identifies with Paul or with Jesus preaching the message or with whoever it may be writing the letter,
but he identifies in the final analysis with his God, his sentence.
There's a difference here.
And I believe another reason why people, particularly in this day and age of democracies and go your own way and do your own thing,
another reason why people don't hear the message and listen to the message
is because the messenger fails to recognize and assert the authority that God has given them.
In the scriptures it says, obey those who have the rule of Hebrews 13.
It says in Thessalonians, when ready to them, Paul said, honor them for their work's sake.
Hold them in high esteem for their work's sake.
There is a uniform that goes with this message, and it ought to be acknowledged that there is.
Too many preachers have become too loose about this and afraid to assert their authority in the proclamation of the word
and to follow it up if necessary with elders who are afraid to follow it up by the discipline of the Church of Jesus Christ,
which has to accompany both preaching and counseling when people refuse to hear and obey the message of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Church discipline is another factor that needs to be put into place in our churches today.
But I wrote a book on that so you can get that somewhere.
Zondervan.
Not all of them Zondervan.
At any rate, this is important, the herald position.
Now you say, but shouldn't I, shouldn't I, you know, I'm not over the scriptures.
Shouldn't I just sort of stand aside and let the scriptures say what they want to say?
Sure, in the pulpit, I mean in the study, you ought to come with an empty bucket to the well
and draw from the well what God has for you and for your people.
In the study, you ought to let it get hold of your life in such a way that you as a fellow believer are affected by what you're going to have to say
and this ought to change you and transform you before you preach it to other people.
Of course, these two stances have their place, but not in the pulpit.
You notice the double line.
In the pulpit.
In the pulpit, when you walk from the study, you do not take the same position in relationship to that truth as you do when you're in your study.
Now you stand before God's people with God's message, which you have looked at and you hope you have not distorted and you have not poured your own ideas into it,
but you have been humbled enough to ask the Spirit of God to open your heart and your mind to the Word so that you will see it in all of its clarity and all of its penetrating brilliance
and you will allow it to affect your life in whatever way it may.
You have been through all of that in the study and in your own personal living.
Now you stand before the people of God as his appointed messenger with his truth and with power and authority you proclaim what he has to say.
Well, it's alright, but I still don't like to use the second person. You!
People will think that I think that I'm holier than they.
Well, you know, there are lots of ways to get around that without changing from the second person.
First of all, use some examples in which you are the brunt of the example.
People love to hear preachers tell stories on themselves where they do, especially stories where their wives came out better than they did.
Now don't take the most horrendous stories you can find. Some of the lighter foibles of yours will do very well,
but people will then get the idea without you having to necessarily say it that you don't think you're all that great.
When you stand in this position, it's because you've got a uniform and a task to perform, but you're not saying I'm all that great.
You're saying God's all that great. I'm standing here in his name with his message to tell you what he says.
If I were standing here in my own name, this isn't what I'd say at all.
So a few stories in which you are the brunt of the illustration.
And then, it's about time just to quit. I'll try to get this over with quickly.
I'll steal five minutes maybe if we're bored off of the next telek period.
You can also say from time to time in so many words.
If you think there's something that sounds very strong, people can say,
If I were standing here in my name telling you what I thought, I would say so.
But that's not why I'm here. I'm here to tell you what God has to say and like it or not.
This is what he said.
And you know, it's time that we started assuming this position.
It's foolishness that we allow our people just to run around and take or leave what we have to say from God.
To disrespect the messenger of God and thereby disrespect the message so that their lives don't have to be changed.
We don't seem to think that the second person is all that difficult in other areas of life.
At least in America. I don't know how it appears, but you're driving down the street and you go through a light.
Are they stop-and-go's here or are they traffic lights? Stop-and-go's?
What? Well, I know that. Yes, that's universal.
So you go through a red light, and the first thing you know, there's somebody with a flashing light on his car.
I assume they have those, too, and a siren of some sort.
He pulls you over to the side of the road, and you know what he says? He says,
We were going too fast, weren't we?
I don't know what he does here, but in the States then he says, I want to look at our licenses.
So you get your license out, he gets his out, and you look at your licenses.
And he says, Well, we will have a fine to pay. And he pays part of it and you pay part of it.
Is that how it goes here?
You know what the unmitigated gall of an officer of the law is when he stopped you in the States?
You know what he says? It may be different here, but he says,
Buddy, you were going too fast.
He says, I want to see your license.
And he writes your name on the ticket, hands it to you, and you pay the fine.
You all the way through. You and yours.
And you know what? We do it.
And though we don't like it, none of us, we recognize his authority to be very personal and to put it on us as limited.
Should that man with the uniform who represents the States bear more authority
and be recognized for it more than the minister who is a man from God?
I don't think so.
We've got to rebuild and restore the authority of the pastoral minister in the Church
so that people begin to heed it.
Okay, I think we're on to our next telek period.