Challenges to Preaching

Posted: February 22, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Just for Fun | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

There is a dangerous tendency even in evangelical circles to reduce preaching either by one, to an expression of the minister’s personal experience or two, a general instruction in religion and morals (although example and instruction are good in themselves) moralism is not.

Remember, preaching is a means of grace only as the preacher repeats the Word he has received from God. Faith comes not by feeling, speculating, seeing, or striving, but by hearing the Word preached (Rom. 10:14–17).

A Means of Grace to Consider

Posted: February 19, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Just for Fun | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Conceived by hearing the gospel (Rom. 10:17), the church never stops receiving its redemption and its identity from the living voice of God. The “two words” of the Word accomplish different things: the law convicts and directs, and the gospel justifies and gives life.

The new creation is effected in the church but not by the church; like the faith and new birth of its members, it is a creation of God’s Word (creatura verbi). Conceived by hearing, the church never stops receiving its redemption and its identity from the living voice of God. God’s both creative and redemptive. God’s Word is never inactive or ineffectual; by the Spirit’s power, it always accomplishes what the Father has spoken in his Son (Isa. 55:11). There is no opposition here between divine and human action. Within the appropriate covenantal context, the words of commissioned representatives—whose personality and characteristics are not overwhelmed in the process—actually bear God’s Word, accomplishing what it speaks. Only the written Word of the prophets and apostles occupies inspired canonical status, but the subsequent preaching of ministers communicates exactly the same Word, illuminated by the very same Spirit.

Preaching involves teaching, but it is much more; its sacramental role as a means of grace underlies the Reformation understanding. The proclamation of the gospel not only calls people to faith in Christ; it is the means by which the Spirit creates and strengthens this faith. It is critical to recognize that the “two words” of the living and active Word of God—the law and the gospel—accomplish different things. By speaking the law, God silences and convicts us; by speaking the gospel, he justifies and renews us. While everything that God speaks is true, useful, and powerful, only the gospel of God’s mercy in Christ gives life (Rom. 1:16; 10:15, 17; 1 Peter 1:23–25).

The Word of creates His community. Although private prayer and meditation on Scripture is crucial to the Christian life, God’s saving action is public and social from the outset—creating genuine community in Christ by the Spirit, rather than merely an aggregate of individuals who have decided to come together for excitement or convenience. The Word heard in preaching and visibly signified and sealed in the sacraments creates and sustains the community, as those who are called out of themselves to God and one another.

Prayer a Means of Grace or Not

Posted: February 18, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Just for Fun | Tags: | Leave a comment

Prayer is not strictly a means of grace but the fundamental expression of faith, in Spirit-enabled response to what God does through those means. Prayer is indispensable to our fellowship with God. Strictly speaking, it is not God’s means of grace toward us but their result: our Spirit-enabled response of believing and loving communication with him, whether in the form of joyous praise and thanksgiving or heartfelt lament. Prayer is also the link between God’s ministry to us, through the means of grace, and our ministry to others.

The goal of theology itself is a form of prayer—invocation, calling on the name of the Lord. And prayer is the original expression of true faith: coming boldly to the throne of grace without fear, through our gracious Mediator, who has given us the Spirit who moves us to cry, “Abba! Father!”

Abraham’s Clearer View of Christ’s Day

Posted: February 6, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Just for Fun | Leave a comment

If the Messiah be anywhere symbolized in the Old Testament, he is certainly to be seen upon Mount Moriah, where the beloved Isaac, willingly bound and laid upon the altar, is a lively foreshadowing of the Wellbeloved of heaven yielding his life as a ransom. We doubt not that one great intent of the whole transaction was to afford Abraham a clearer view of Christ’s day; the trial was covertly a great privilege, unveiling as it did, to the patriarch, the heart of the great Father, in his great deed of love to men, and displaying at the same time, the willing obedience of the great Son, who cheerfully became a burnt offering unto God.

** Quote taken from C H Spurgeon, Christ in the Old Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG 1994), 39.