2. Don’t be Controversial. 2a. Do be Consecrated.
3. Don’t be Conceited. 3a. Do be Concentrated.
- The Gospel has to move men to do what they are dead-set against doing, namely, giving up the right to themselves.
- The central, difficult requirement of the Gospel is for individuals to stop claiming rights to their own lives, ambition, and self-direction.
1. Don’t Be Clever. Never choose a text, let the text choose you. Cleverness is the ability to do things better than anyone else [speak impressively, know more than others]. Always hide your cleverness and your natural ability. The Holy Spirit is never clever. In a child of God the Holy Spirit works as naturally as breathing, and the most unostentatious [modest, unassuming] choices are His choices. Unless your personal life is hid with Christ in God (Col 3:3), natural ability (or experience or familiarity) causes pride and does not touch the hearts of the listener(s). When a text has chosen you, the Holy Spirit will impress you with its inner meaning and cause you to labor to bring out the meaning for your audience.
1a. Do Be Careful. Nothing that has been discovered by anyone else is of any use to you until you re-discover it. Be careful to use your own mental eyes, and the eyes of those who can help you to see what you are looking at. Drummond [Scottish evangelist] said that Ruskin [English polymath] taught him to see. Be careful to develop the power of perceiving what you look at, and never take an explanation from another mind unless you see it for yourself.
2. Don’t Be Controversial. Never choose disputed texts; if you do, you are sure to cut yourself. The spirit that chooses disputed texts is the boldness born of impudence [audacity, rudeness], not the fearlessness born of morality. Remember, God calls us to proclaim the Gospel. A man may increase his intellectual vim [vigor, enthusiasm] by controversy, but only 1 in 1,000 can maintain his spiritual life. Never denounce a thing about which you know nothing. Controversy harms spiritual life and is rarely productive.
2a. Do Be Consecrated. Never forget who you are, what you have been, and what you may be by the grace of God. When you try and re-state to yourself what you implicitly feel to be God’s truth, you give God a chance to pass that truth on to someone else through you.
3a. Do Be Concentrated. Strenuous mental effort to interpret the word of God will fag us out physically, whereas strenuous mental effort that lets the word of God talk to us will re-create us. We prefer the spiritual interpretation to the exegetical because it does not need any work. We are to be “workmen” for God, not just take God’s word to feed ourselves. The preacher has to concentrate on what God’s word says; he is dealing with a written revelation. The reason we have no “open vision” is that in some domain we have disobeyed God. Immediately we obey, the word is opened up. The atmosphere of the Christian is God Himself in ordinary times and exceptional times when He brings words to us. When He does not, never deceive yourself, something is wrong and needs curing, just as there would be something wrong if you could not get your breath. Supernatural manifestations of guidance are exceptional. The normal way of the Spirit of God is the way He worked in the life of Christ. Maintain your personal relationship with God at all costs. Never allow anything to come between your soul and God, and welcome anyone or anything that leads you to know Him better. Maintain a personal relationship with God above all else to guide your preaching and teaching.
- The Gospel challenges humanity's default desire for self-sovereignty, by demanding the surrender of one's own rights and the surrender to the will to God. This profound transformation calls for a continual dying to selfishness and finding life only by losing it in Christ.
Tim Keller: What is Gospel-Centered Ministry? "The ultimate purpose of preaching is not just to make the truth clear, but to make it real."
"What I love about Jonathan Edwards is how incredibly rational he is and logical, incredibly persuasive he is and yet, at the same time, he uses images. You go into his sermons and there’s sun, there’s moon, there’s stars, there’s mountains, there’s dandelions. It’s just astounding. What he understood is that if you just tell stories that tweak the emotions, it’s like putting dynamite on the face of the rock, and it blows up, and it just shears off the face, and doesn’t really change the life. On the other hand, if you bore down with the truth and put dynamite in there, if you are able to preach Christ vividly, and if you’re able to preach the truth practically, and change your own life and heart–which isn’t the easiest thing to maintain. When there’s an explosion, then it really changes people’s lives. We should not just want to speak the truth so that people are doctrinally sound. [Even the devil knows the truth but is unchanged.]
Martyn Lloyd-Jones was also not a touchy-feely type. This is what he says based on his understanding of what Edwards taught. He says, “The first and primary object of preaching is not to give information. It is [as Jonathan Edwards says] to produce an impression.”
"It is the impression at the time that matters, even more than what you can remember subsequently. Edwards, in my opinion, has the true notion of preaching. It is not primarily to impart information. And while you’re writing your notes, you may be missing something of the impact of the Spirit. As preachers, we must not forget this. We should tell our people to read books themselves at home and take their notes on the books at home. The business of preaching is to make such knowledge live."
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