Few missions in life are as challenging as that of preaching the Word of God.  We who preach are under Divine commission, but we stand before people for whose minds a million things compete.  We preach under the discerning gaze of God, but too often before the glazed daze of people suffering from sensory overload.  We stand to proclaim the timeless, authoritative Word of God, but we do so in an age of pluralism and relativism where any given voice is deemed as no more legitimate than the next.

How are we to faithfully “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:1) in such a day and age as ours?  There is some preaching that gathers crowds.  There is some preaching which garners guffaws.  There is some preaching which is mired in a day gone by.  Our calling as pastor/teachers is to build believers through the proclamation of the Word of God.  How can we preach so as to strengthen and establish the people of God on the foundation of Jesus Christ as revealed in the timeless Scriptures?

To answer this question in a series of posts I would like to employ the use of an acrostic.  Lets take the word mature, since it represents our goal in building up mature believers in Christ, and use it to guide our way.

M = Mission

“M” stands for mission.  What are we preachers aiming at?  I take Paul’s words to Timothy as normative for our divinely given mission in preaching:  “But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (I Timothy 1:5, NASB).

Note that this is “instruction.” Practically speaking in our cultural context preaching and teaching are often viewed as distinct.  We, however, should not make too fine a distinction between preaching and teaching at a philosophical basis.  All good teaching includes application, and all good preaching is didactic as well as applicational.  Yet the primary goal of preaching is not the imparting of information or the increase of knowledge, but the production of love.

We do not simply teach a passage, explore a topic, or preach a message.  We must do more than be orthodox, though that we must be.  Our goal in preaching is not just to “get through the material” we have assembled from passionate study.  As God’s spokesmen we do not have the freedom to get lost in a topic, theme, or doctrine as we frantically attempt to say all that could be said on the topic of the day.

We must seek to communicate a given passage, topic or theme in such a way as to provoke love toward God and man in a particular people.  There must be connection with these people.  This love is, however, not some nebulous sense of goodwill.  It must arise from an encounter with God the Spirit through the Scriptures.  The desired love must spring from a firm, three- pronged base: “a pure heart,” “a good conscience,” and “a sincere faith.”

  1. This means I must preach in such a way that the people to whom I speak that day are moved toward a love which looks outward at others with good motives (“a pure heart”),
  2. looks inward at self in self-judgment (“a good conscience”), and
  3. looks upward at God without ulterior motives (“a sincere faith”).

Such an encounter will begin to produce the love sought from the beginning to the end of the preaching process.  This encounter is accomplished logically by providing a preaching experience which moves people from #3 (looking upward to God with a sincere faith), through #2 (looking inward with a clear conscience), and on to #1 (looking at others with a pure heart).  That is to say that we first seek to bring people into an authentic encounter with God through His Word, this encounter should lead to an inward examination of self before God, which in turn changes the way they look at and respond to others.  This and nothing less is our desired objective each time we stand to say “Thus saith the Lord!”

We do not aim at experience over content, for it is the truth that sanctifies (John 17:17) and sets free (John 8:32).  Nor do we function merely as a conduit for content.  Rather we aim at a presentation of the Scripture’s truth that grows from disciplined preparation and is delivered under the Spirit’s enablement so that it might accomplish its divine mission.  This means we preach messages whose very shape as well as content are derived from the biblical text.  We select the appropriate content gleaned in our exegesis that will accurately convey the Spirit-intended message of the passage to the specific people before us at that time and that will produce in them a love that is catapulted forward on the fulcrum of “a sincere faith,” “a good conscience” and “a pure heart.”  Preaching is the art of selection; selection made on the basis of a specific desired outcome.

The question is how can I preach so as to create an atmosphere wherein the Holy Spirit can produce this well grounded love?  That will lead us to our second letter in the acrostic, which we shall take up in our next post.