As I was looking over these three talks
that are now on paper in front of
me, I felt constrained to begin like this.
What I have to say I believe is
true, and I believe it is an important
angle on preaching, but I'm just overwhelmed with
the thought that it is one angle.
And I want to say this up front,
because when you start talking and the emotion
comes, and you start saying things with strength,
you can give the impression that you think
what you have to say is the only
thing that needs to be said in all
the world about preaching.
And so I wanted to pull the plug
on that mistake right now and say there's
a hundred things that need to be said
about preaching that I'm not going to say.
And the question you need to ask as
you listen with me is why did he
say what he said to me now at
this point in my life?
Why did God set it up so that
he came to Trinity now with me in
my particular situation on this topic with those
emphases and that particular dynamic?
Why did God do this?
That would be the question to ask yourself,
I think, rather than saying, does he think
that's the only thing that needs to be
said, which it isn't.
And I'd like to begin now with the
prayer that God would help us maintain that
careful perspective.
Oh, Father, I ask for your help now
in these days together and in these messages,
that you would protect these brothers and sisters
from error and that you would blot out
anything that has a bad emphasis or is
poorly stated or is just plain wrong.
And what is true, I pray that the
Holy Spirit would take it up, drive it
home, and transform lives and ministries with it.
In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen.
I want to begin with a question about
the relationship between contemporary worship songs and preaching.
I wonder if we would all agree, as
I think the case is, that in the
last 20 years or so there's been a
phenomenal explosion of worship singing that is good.
Jack Hayford's Majesty, Graham Kendrick's Shine, Jesus Shine,
hundreds of worship songs, which if I were
to start singing them right now, you could
all finish them.
Thou art worthy.
Father, I adore you.
Open our eyes, Lord.
We worship and adore you.
Thou, O Lord, art a shield about me.
You are Lord, you are Lord, you are
risen from the dead.
I could start 25 songs right now and
every person in this room could finish them
with me.
And not only here, but all over the
world.
It's a phenomenal thing.
I was in Brazil two weeks ago.
Brilha Jesus, Shine, Jesus Shine, is down there.
And so was Majesty.
They're singing the same songs in Brazil.
All over the world, this explosion of awakening
in worship.
Now, some of the songs are poetically, grammatically,
musically deplorable, which we should not make too
much of if we grew up on Dulord.
But one thing is unmistakable as a trend
in these songs.
By and large, they are God word.
They are God word.
All the ones I listed up there were
addressed directly to God, not sung about God
in his presence, but to God in each
other's presence.
And therefore, these worship songs force the issue
of authentic worship.
Are you right now engaging in a spiritual,
authentic, genuine, real way with the living God?
That's what those songs force as an issue
on Sunday morning in a way that many
of the old choruses that my parents and
I sang did not force.
Add this.
The tunes that are being written today are
very, very engaging tunes.
They have a way of awakening the affections.
They're not excessively complex by and large or
intellectual or demanding, but they catch up the
emotions and the spirit in their mood.
So two things are happening in the best
worship songs.
If you don't like worship songs, be careful
that you don't make the mistake of comparing
the worst worship songs with the best hymns.
It's not fair.
Compare the best worship songs with the best
hymns and the worst worship songs with the
worst hymns, because there are a lot of
lousy hymns just like there are a lot
of lousy worship songs.
So be fair in your comparison and your
critique of what's happening in worship.
But in the best worship songs, two things
are happening.
The mind is being brought with God-centered
lyrics in an amazing way into engagement with
God, and the heart, stirred by these contemporary
tunes, is being engaged with tenderness, devotion, enjoyment.
At least for millions of people this is
true, even if not for a lot of
musical classicists.
So I look at this worship awakening, and
what stands out above all things to me
and strikes me and makes me ask questions
is its God-centered lyrics.
It's just amazing to me what's happening in
the lyrics of contemporary worship songs.
God is exalted.
He's Lord.
He's risen from the dead.
He's majestic.
He's mighty.
He's holy.
He's conquered the power of death.
He's a shield.
He's glory.
He's the lifter of our heads.
He's great.
He's wonderful.
He's rock.
He's fortress.
He's deliverer.
He's the coming King, Redeemer, name above all
names, Messiah, Lamb of God, Holy One.
He is God, and our God reigns.
It's an amazing thing what has happened in
the lyrics of popular worship music.
It is an unmistakable thing.
If you don't like the drums, if you
don't like the guitars, if you don't like
electricity, if you don't like platforms all cluttered
with black microphones and boxes and everything and
T-shirts, if you don't like that, you
still have to admit that by and large
the lyrics of this phenomenon are God-word.
They are almost pure scripture again and again
and again, even if clumsily set to the
music.
And the hoped-for effect is a relentless
addressing of God directly for the engagement of
the heart.
Now, here's a second fact to put over
against that fact that raises my question.
As I have observed this, I look at
the preaching that follows this event for the
last 20 years or so, and I find
that the preaching is moving in exactly the
opposite direction.
And I am floored to figure it out.
While the worship songs have moved God-word,
preaching has moved man-word.
While worship songs focus our attention again and
again on the character of God, the great
works of God, the glory of God, preaching
focuses again and again on contemporary issues, personal
problems, relationships.
Worship songs focus our attention on the presence
of God drawing near to us.
Preaching gives advice on how to get along
better on the earth.
However we say it, and I'm not sure
that I have said it well or can
say it the way it needs to be
said, I don't know anybody today, tell me
if you're an exception to this, who would
say that preaching has experienced the same phenomenon
of God-word awakening that singing has over
the last 20 years or so.
I don't know of any great resurgence of
God-centeredness in preaching.
I don't know of any great moving of
the spirit of transcendence.
I don't know of any profound God-wordness
that pervades denominations by and large in American
evangelicalism.
Rather, it seems to me that preaching would
be characterized by relational, anecdotal, humorous, casual, laid
-back, absorbed with human need, fixed on relational
dynamics, heavily saturated with psychological categories, strategies for
emotional healing.
And my question is, why?
Why this different development in the singing of
our churches with lyrics that are God-word
and preaching that is so man-word?
Now, it's complex, and I don't know the
whole explanation.
But I want to try to commend a
possible explanation that would account for why I
have focused in these talks on what I
have.
Why have preachers not followed the lead in
worship music into a sustained focus on the
greatness of God and the majesty of his
name and the glory of his works?
Why is the atmosphere of preaching so different
from the atmosphere of these worship song lyrics?
Here's a possible answer.
The God-centered lyrics of worship songs have
the great advantage over preaching that they are
accompanied by music, engaging music.
The assumption is that the words of God
-centeredness and God-exaltation would never in themselves
hold the interest of the congregations except with
the help of the emotionally charged and effective
music.
Therefore, the music is what makes the God
-centered lyrics palatable to contemporary evangelicals who are
basically atheological.
And without the music, the words would be
considered dry and irrelevant and distant and unengaging.
That's a negative way to describe it.
Here's a positive way.
The positive way would be to say, the
music really does, by God's divine appointment, I
believe from scripture, have a way of opening
the human spirit to at least recognize and
affirm some of the true significance of the
majesty of God.
And therefore, the lyrics have the advantage of
the accompanying help of the music to open
the heart to receive the truth of the
lyrics.
So whether you put it negatively and say
the music makes God-centeredness palatable, or whether
you put it positively and say that the
music, by God's design, opens the spirit to
receive and affirm the truth of the God
-centered lyrics, however you put it, the preacher
knows he's got no help.
There's nobody playing any background music, and there's
nobody humming or there's no synthesizer playing while
he's preaching.
He's got to go it alone with his
words.
And yet, almost every preacher wants to accomplish
what that music accomplishes.
Rightly so.
He wants the heart to be open.
He wants the emotions to be stirred.
He doesn't just want to persuade intellectual assent
in his preaching.
He wants people's hearts to be moved and
broken and reach out and embrace the truth
emotionally, to be transformed to the depth, not
just at the superficial cognitive level.
It's not wrong for a preacher to want
to happen through his preaching what happens through
those worship songs.
And yet he knows doctrine, theological portraits of
God, transcendence, he thinks.
And this is a faithful and mistaken judgment,
I believe.
He thinks, won't hold them, won't move them,
won't awaken them.
The only thing that will verbally do to
a congregation what musically is done in worship
songs is not a message about God, but
a message about divorce, or drugs, or parenting,
or anger, or success, or intimacy, or pain.
In other words, the common strategy of preachers
today for awakening people's emotions, and that's almost
a given, we must have affirmation in their
faces.
We must feel that they're with us.
The common strategy for achieving that without music
is to choose themes and topics that already
have the emotions running.
It's already there.
The trigger is wired.
If you just touch it, the emotions go
off.
And all preachers know what those topics are
and where that pain is in their people's
hearts.
It may be the pain in marriage.
It may be the anguish of wayward teenagers.
It may be stress at work.
It may be the power of sexual temptation.
It may be the breakdown of community or
the woundedness of old abuses.
It may be the absence of intimacy.
The preacher knows if he plants his sermon
there, and with just a modest ability of
anecdote and illustration, and especially some personal vulnerability,
he's got them.
He's got them, and he's accomplishing what the
music accomplishes.
Empathy, you'll see in their faces, and he
will be glad with their attentiveness.
Now, right at this point, you can either
put this in a negative or a positive
light.
You can say positively.
That's great.
I mean, at least preaching knows where people
hurt.
At least we're not just talking into the
air.
At least the preaching is connecting, which is
a good thing.
It's a good thing.
Preaching that does not empathize with people's pain
and connect with where they are will not
produce biblical fruit, period.
But there's a negative spin to put on
this as well.
I'm going to put the negative spin on
it.
The negative spin is that the reason preachers
don't believe that the greatness of God and
the atmosphere of transcendence and the glory and
majesty of Christ and the deep things of
the Spirit will not move and awaken and
hold the people is because they do not
move Him.
The preacher's heart is not engaged in that
way.
What are the books that he's reading?
They're not books about God, by and large.
Just go to the bookstores and ask.
Take your surveys and see what preachers are
buying.
What awakens him?
What is he reading?
Books about anger?
Books about intimacy?
Books about marriage?
Books about success?
Books about how-to strategies?
Books about what makes the church work?
What makes the preacher's juices flow these days,
it seems, is psychological angle on dysfunction in
the family, a new strategy for mobilizing the
laypeople, a new tactic for time management, and
most of all, a fresh approach for dealing
with depression and some empathetic treatment with his
own pain and abuse after being beat up
for ten years by carnal laypeople.
That's what pastors really want to read about
and talk about.
Not the inexhaustible riches of Christ.
Not books about the glories of God's character.
My explanation of why preaching is going this
way and worship lyrics are going this way
is paradoxically that preachers really are trying to
go the same way.
They really want to accomplish in their preaching
the same thing that is happening in the
worship music.
They know they don't have the help of
the music, and therefore to accomplish the same
thing that's being accomplished over here with the
help of the music, they cannot do with
doctrine, God, theology, and transcendence.
They know they have to take people with
the itch that they have and scratch it
so that they quicken the emotion that's already
there since they can't awaken it with God,
and they move manward.
My own sense is that this tension can't
last.
It can't last very long.
It's not going to go on, this tension
between preaching and worship lyrics.
Either God-centered worship singing is going to
come down or preaching has got to come
up.
My aim in these messages is to plead
that preaching come up.
And when I say come up, I don't
mean come up away from the pain.
Of the people.
I mean come up with the pain of
the people into the presence of God whose
glory, whose revelation is the bottom line only
answer for that pain.
No matter what all the strategies are given
and all the hopeless sessions I had, the
bottom line is, will the glory of God
be revealed in this family.
The aim of preaching, no less than singing,
is God-exalting worship.
Not only that, my conviction is, and that's
why I asked for this title, that true
biblical preaching is worship.
It is worship.
In other words, in the same way that
a melody or a tune can awaken us
to the true beauty of God in the
lyrics, so there is a music in here.
There is a music in the soul of
the pastor which he sings over the glory
of the God that he's seen the word
that will awaken the people.
It will when he's singing.
When they can hear the song of the
preacher through the transcendent words that he speaks,
they will be awakened.
And if that song isn't there, he's right.
They will not.
The phrase that I have used to define
preaching in this series is, it is expository
exaltation.
That's my definition of preaching.
Preaching is expository exaltation.
Not with an A, but with a U.
Exaltation.
And when both of those happen, the people
will join you in worship.
Now, someone might say at this point, Oh,
wait a minute.
What's wrong with 30 minutes of lingering in
God-centered singing and then 30 minutes of
God's word addressed to human beings?
You describe it like it's a problem.
What's wrong with it?
Sounds okay to me.
Here's the problem I see in it.
Preaching is meant by God to catch people
up into worship and not be a practical
application after worship.
These three messages are meant to defend that.
The aim of preaching is dealing with divorce
worshipfully for God's sake.
The aim of preaching is to deal with
teenagers worshipfully for the glory of God.
The aim of preaching is to deal with
anger in family systems worshipfully for the glory
of God.
Preaching exists to magnify God and exalt his
centrality in all of life.
And if that doesn't happen, I don't think
it's Christian preaching.
I'm going to give you three reasons.
Three reasons for believing that.
Number one, I believe that preaching is designed
to quicken and awaken and sustain the centrality
of God in people's affections because the Bible
teaches that everything is to be done for
that purpose.
And preaching is part of everything.
1 Corinthians 10.31 Whether you eat or
drink or whatever you do, do everything that
God might be worshiped.
That is, to the glory of God.
I don't know how you can believe that
and not make the magnifying of the glory
of God the aim especially of preaching.
Or, whatever you do in word or deed,
do all in the name of the Lord
Jesus.
Everything is to be done to highlight the
centrality of God.
Everything in life is to be done to
magnify the glory and magnificence and beauty of
God.
How much more than the preaching of the
word of God must have that as its
ultimate aim and its pervasive theme.
Therefore, my first argument is the Bible says
do everything to bring people to glorify God,
to magnify the wonder and beauty and loveliness
and all sufficiency of God.
Do everything and therefore do preaching in order
to cultivate the cherishing of God and the
wonder of God and the being satisfied in
God.
That's argument number one.
Here's argument number two.
God himself says that he does everything he
does for his own glory and for the
exalting of his own name.
And preaching is one of the great things
that God does.
The banner that flies over every act that
God has ever performed is Isaiah 48, 11.
For my own sake, for my own sake
I act.
How can my name be profaned?
My glory I will not give to another.
That's the banner that flies over every act
God has ever performed, including preaching.
And if we don't live under that banner
and wave that banner over our preaching, we
strive against God.
He predestined us and chose us for his
glory, Ephesians 1, 6.
He saved us for his glory, Ephesians 1,
14.
He created us for his glory, Isaiah 43,
7.
He sanctifies us for his glory, 2 Thessalonians
1, 12.
All that God does, he does to hold
up and magnify and glorify his own great
name.
Preaching is one of the things that God
does.
It is a great thing that God does,
and he does it for this purpose, and
therefore we must devote ourselves to preaching in
such a way as to bring people to
value and cherish and be satisfied in God.
Argument number three, and finally.
Preaching exalts the centrality of God because the
appointed end of preaching in the New Testament
is again and again said to be faith.
And the heart and essence of saving faith
is a being satisfied with all that God
is for us in Jesus.
And a being satisfied with all that God
is for us in Jesus is a magnifying
of God, because God is most glorified in
us when we are most satisfied in him.
And when God is magnified through our being
satisfied, that is worship.
And therefore when the New Testament teaches that
the aim of preaching is faith, it means
worship.
Let me just show you some texts so
you can hang your thoughts on these and
see if this is so.
Romans 10, 14.
How shall they believe, there's faith, in him
whom they've not heard?
How shall they hear without a preacher?
So there's the connection between faith and preaching.
And he says it again in verse 17.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by
the word of Christ.
Or 1 Corinthians 1.21. Since in the
wisdom of God the world did not know
God through wisdom, God was pleased through the
foolishness of preaching to save those who believed.
So there's the connection again.
Preaching and faith.
One more.
1 Corinthians 2.4.5. My message and
my preaching were not in persuasive words of
wisdom, but in the demonstration of the spirit
and power that your faith, there it is
again, should not rest on the wisdom of
men, but in the power of God.
So in those three texts at least, and
there are more, preaching is brought into connection
with faith as that which is to flow
out of preaching.
When you preach, from whatever text and on
whatever theme, the goal is to beget and
sustain faith.
Now why?
Have you ever asked yourself that question, why
God has ordained that salvation be by faith
alone?
Why is faith so central?
And I believe the answer is because faith,
more than any other human act, humbles man
and magnifies the all-sufficiency of God.
And I get that from Romans 4.20,
where Paul brags on Abraham as the model
of the believer, the one who has faith,
like this.
Abraham grew strong in his faith, giving glory
to God.
I believe that's a modal participle.
That is, the way you give glory to
God is by trusting him and vice versa,
fully convinced that God was able to do
what he had promised.
And here's my conclusion from that, and I'll
give you one other text to support this.
The heart and soul of saving faith is
the spiritual apprehension of the glory of God
in Jesus Christ.
And the embracing of all that God is
for us in Christ to the satisfaction of
the thirst of our souls.
That's saving faith.
Parenthesis, it's the failure to understand that meaning
of faith, which is at the bottom of
the lordship controversy.
You cannot believe like that and not obey.
By definition, close parenthesis, faith in its essence
is a spiritual apprehension of the glory of
God in Christ and a being drawn into
embracing that and all that God is for
us in Christ to the satisfaction of our
own soul's thirst.
Now here's the other text that I said
would support this understanding of faith, which is
the aim of preaching, which means that the
aim of preaching is worship.
John 6, 35.
Jesus said, I am the bread of life.
He who comes to me shall not hunger,
and he who believes in me will never
thirst.
Believing in John's theology is a coming to
Jesus so to drink that you cease thirsting
for sin.
The power of satisfaction that comes from seeing
all that God is for us in Christ
and embracing it by faith severs the power
of sin by a superior satisfaction.
Faith in Jesus Christ is a being satisfied
with all that God is for us in
Jesus.
When you experience that, you magnify his preciousness.
If you asked me for a sentence that
would sum up my theology, it would be
this.
God is most glorified in you when you
are most satisfied in him.
And therefore my task as a preacher, gloriously,
does not have to choose between magnifying God
and satisfying my people.
The only way God will ever be magnified
is if they are satisfied in him.
Oh, how mistaken preachers are when they say
this church would get along better if people
would come here to give instead of to
get.
It's wrong!
My job as a pastor and in this
whole service is to spread a banquet table
of the glories of God.
That's what we talk about this afternoon.
To spread a banquet table of the glories
of God for my people to come starved
to eat.
And their problem is not that they come
to get instead of to give.
The problem is that they stuff themselves with
the white bread of television so that when
they see the banquet of God's glory spread,
they are not hungry anymore.
But that doesn't change your job.
Your job is to give glory to the
end that those hearts are so satisfied that
TV goes, lying goes, immorality goes, cheating goes,
money grabbing goes, and what comes is a
radical devotion to God so that we can
magnify or maximize the joy that we have
in Him.
So let me sum it up and close
like this.
The aim of preaching is this kind of
faith.
Faith that is a being satisfied with all
that God is for us in Jesus.
And a being satisfied with all that God
is for us in Jesus magnifies God.
How do you magnify a fountain?
Drink!
Drink and thirst for nothing else.
It magnifies Him and that magnifying of God
is worship.
And therefore, my conclusion this morning is the
aim and the ultimate goal of all preaching
from every text and in every topic is
soul-satisfying, God-exalting worship.
Almighty God and Heavenly Father, I beg you
by the power of your Spirit that you
would come and perform worship in these hearts
by begetting a hunger and a thirst that
may have dried up a long time ago
or has been made dead by television, a
Tom Clancy novel, and wasted efforts in money
-seeking.
I pray that you would break hearts and
that you would cleanse and that you would
quicken a desire for yourself and that in
that, oh God, you would get glory as
the fountain of living water and that you
would receive worship and that you would transform
preaching.
I ask this for our own soul's sake
and for the glory of your name, through
Jesus Christ, your Son.
Amen.