Simon Flinders recently spoke to our preaching club at Abbotsford on preaching.
Simon preached and then spoke about preaching, the following are his thoughts:
Preaching has many detractors these days.There are many who question its place or its relevance, this is not new, it may be that the detractions come more frequently these days.
The attacks may come from bored and resentful pew sitters; from educators who are moving toward more student directed learning; from learning style advocates who argue for more varied presentation methods; from the social media generation who are not used to sitting and listening unless the content comes in super short grabs, YouTube hits and Insta reels; from those who value God’s voice in another form, like direct words of prophecy or dream revelation; from evangelists who may question preaching which they think may seem unattractive and even alienating to the visitor at church.
Why then should we persist with preaching?
Preaching may be under fire but God’s word is the fire under preaching. There is something about the nature of God’s word that lends itself to being preached. That something is the word’s authority, the Bible is the word of the God who speaks!
When God speaks things happen, God acts by speaking and God is the Lord.
When God speaks we should listen.
Habakkuk 2:20 sums up what so much of the Bible is teaching us, ‘The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him’.
Since God’s word comes to us with his authority then silent listening is the right response, for it is there that we hear God’s sure voice.
But what about preaching?
There is something about an uninterrupted monologue that carries greater authority than other forms of teaching. It’s the silence of the listeners that makes preaching so unique and important.
Whatever the Bible says to us it says with the authority of God and when we as hearers simply sit and listen we reflect that we have understood God’s authority in his word in a way that we rarely do at other times.
The Bible is full of examples that God works his purposes in our hearts and minds through preaching, to teach, challenge, stir us and change us. And the Bible testifies from beginning to end that this is the case.
Moses preached life shaping sermons as did the prophets and the Lord Jesus and we could almost say that the book of Acts is really a collection of sermons strung together by the narrative that unites them.
In most other forms of teaching, like Bible studies and discussion groups, we have the opportunity to divert our thoughts in other directions when we start to feel unsettled. But when someone is preaching and all we can do is sit still and listen, the preacher has a unique ability to drill down on some truth or application until all that needs to be said has been said. This is the effectiveness of the uninterrupted monologue and I am not sure there is anything else quite like it.
The Bible insists that preaching is effective because God has chosen to accompany faithful preaching with the strength of his Spirit, Ezekiel is told to preach to a valley of dry bones and the Spirit animates as he preaches.
This is God’s gracious and powerful work.
And a preaching pastor is a gift from God to the church.
In 2 Timothy 4, Paul is calling for preaching by a pastor who is known and trusted by the local flock; when a sermon is preached in the local church it is preached by someone whose life is an open book to those to whom he preaches.
Paul assumes a relationship between the preacher and his hearers, between the pastor and his sheep. The preacher knows the real lives of his people and is able to apply God’s word in ways that are personal and meaningful.
This is why the weekly sermon in the local church is something special. It’s a moment in which God’s people gather together, in a relationship of love for one another, sitting together under the preaching leadership of someone they have learnt to trust, and sitting together quietly under the authority of the God they serve. This too, church, pastor, word, the ever present Spirit, is God’s gift to us.
As Habakkuk says,’The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him’.
Let all the earth be silent before him!
Simon Flinders.
Hear Simon preach, along with Jim Mobbs, Mike Leite, Michael Leong, David Burge and David Cook at our upcoming Preaching conferences at Wahroonga, 18-19 August and Armidale, 25-26 August.