New and Improved

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. Luke 22:20

When a manufacturer wants to improve product sales, one method is to implement a new design and slap “new” on the package. Wanna jack up sales even higher? Try “new and improved.”

When it comes to the new covenant, it’s both new and improved. It’s redesigned from the ground up. And the improvements? Well, they’re out of this world!

It turns out the old covenant had a design flaw. Don’t take my word for it. It’s a recurring theme in the book of Hebrews. The problem was impotency. The people just couldn’t keep the requirements. They failed again and again, incurring God’s divine judgment.

Still not convinced? Let’s boil down the old covenant and the new covenant to their irreducible minimums and use just one word to describe each. The old covenant is law and the new covenant is grace. Alternately, the old covenant is do and the new covenant is done. The new covenant is both new and improved over the old, but it’s no marketing ploy. It’s just reality.

Do you ever save the best food on your plate for last? That’s what God did for us with the new covenant. He saved the best for last. This covenant is the best of the bunch we’ve visited in our tour of Scripture at New Life Church. The new covenant is our study this coming Sunday. If you’re in the Clarkfield, Minnesota, area, you’re welcome to join us.

For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. Hebrews 8:7-8

Expository Preaching

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. 2 Timothy 4:1-5

Yesterday somebody asked me if I’m an expository preacher. It was a great question. Our conversation was brief, but the question has continued to reverberate in my mind.

Haddon Robinson wrote a classic primer on preaching, Biblical Preaching. It was the primary homiletics textbook at Dallas Theological Seminary when I was a student back in the 1980s. I wouldn’t be surprised if they still use it today. Perhaps they also use the sequel, Expository Preaching. There are more than a few of us left who remember with awe and reverence Robinson’s slow, gravelly drawl. He reminded me of Humphrey Bogart. Haddon Robinson wasn’t merely a prince of preachers. He was a kingly instructor of expositors. He helped shape a generation of powerful pulpits.

Robinson defined expository preaching as “the communication of a biblical concept derived from and transmitted through a historical-grammatical and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher then through him to hearers.”

During my four years at Dallas Theological Seminary, campus expansion reached the rear of the property. The school erected a large sign facing Live Oak Street, which reads, “Touching Lives with Scripture.” On the back of the sign, visible only to the campus, is an admonition, “Preach the Word.” Expository preaching was hammered into us constantly, even when we were walking across the lawn.

Thirty-five years later, how could I even think of doing anything else? Expository preaching is hardwired into my soul.

Two years ago I attended church with a relative in the South. The theology of that congregation is extremely liberal. The associate pastor, a young woman, announced her text from the Gospel of John. I was encouraged because it was a straight-forward text with a clear message. I was afraid she might read the passage and never mention it again in her sermon. To my surprise, the sermon was a slow walk through the text with abundant life application. But to my horror, what she preached had nothing whatsoever to do with authorial intent. It was postmodern reimaging. The sermonic points weren’t theological enough to be heresy. It was just meaningless drivel as far as the Scriptures and the gospel were concerned. I gripped my chair with both hands so I wouldn’t jump up and disrupt the meeting. I practiced slow breathing to remain calm. Preaching is usually a battle for me. That day listening to preaching was a battle. Needless to say, according to Haddon Robinson’s definition, that was not expository preaching. The message was not the result of a historical-grammatical study of the text. That wasn’t even her intent.

Afterward my relative greeted the pastor and thanked her for the excellent message. I also shook her hand and told her she had made me think hard. It was true. I have reflected a great deal about the message, though with sadness.

Last fall I attended a different church with another relative, also in the South. This time the pastor preached an excellent exposition of Romans 10:1-4, except for a six minute rant in the middle when he mounted a hobbyhorse (his term) and railed against pragmatic churches which employ topical preaching. He didn’t cite any names, but it was transparent what kind of church he meant, especially as his congregation is only 100 miles from Atlanta, where Andy Stanley preaches topically with huge influence.

I wasn’t surprised this pastor would be a critic of topical preaching. What did surprise me was that he abandoned his text in order to attack topical preaching. Later I penned a letter to him, in which I said: If we’re going to refute pragmatism, we have to exegete and apply texts which refute pragma­tism. But when you applied verse three with a rant against pragmatic churches, what I heard was a batter’s whiff. Your “hobbyhorse,” as you termed it, struck me as a caricature at best and character assassination at worst. It was a pragmatic way to dismiss other churches whom we believe may have an exegetical problem. You preached to the choir and got some immediate affirmation for it [applause], but in my ears the tirade rang hollow.

This pastor would disagree with my assessment of his rant in an otherwise excellent sermon, but according to Haddon Robinson’s definition, I think his outburst against pragmatic, topical preaching wasn’t expository preaching. It didn’t arise from the text and it wasn’t an application of the text (or any other biblical text). In Romans 10:1-4 the Apostle Paul did not instruct the church to avoid topical preaching. It’s almost absurd to suggest otherwise. The pastor’s rant was an expression of bias, not an exposition of the Bible. Nothing in Scripture even hints against topical preaching that helps people in a pragmatic way. It’s quite the opposite. Jesus himself preached topically.

In the end, neither the liberal sermon nor the conservative rant was expository preaching. The conservative pastor hinted as much in his sermon. He labeled the detour “a pastoral word” at the beginning of the rant and “my hobbyhorse” at the end of it.

His tirade illustrates how expository preaching has become a battleground and a lightning rod issue. In the last generation, a movement has arisen which defines expository preaching in an extremely narrow sense and rejects anything outside that narrow definition. In such circles a question about expository preaching can be more of a shibboleth than an exhortation. When the Apostle Paul admonished Timothy to preach the word, he was exhorting him to be faithful to the message more than creating a litmus test for methodology.

At Saddleback Church, Rick Warren has a simpler, broader definition of expository preaching: “When the message is centered around explaining and applying the text of the Bible for life change.” Tim Challies responded in his blog that Rick Warren is not an expository preacher and his definition is wrong.

Challies is a careful scholar, but I wonder if Haddon Robinson might disagree with him. Before he died, in an interview with Preaching magazine Robinson addressed the challenge of expository preaching in a changing, postmodern world. Among the churches he cited as positive examples of reaching secular people were Saddleback Church and Willow Creek Church. Those churches are high profile models of topical preaching. Reading between the lines, the inference from Haddon Robinson is that topical preaching is expository preaching if the Scriptures are handled well and interpreted properly; that is, if the message is derived from the text. It seems that topical preaching does not violate Robinson’s definition of expository preaching.

There’s a small irony for me in this conversation. What I do in preaching tends toward the narrow definition of expository preaching which Tim Challies would advocate. What I view in preaching tends to be topical, expository preaching in a broader sense. It’s quite natural for me to preach through Ephesians or Esther. I also greatly appreciate topical preaching designed to impact a secular culture steeped in postmodernism. It can be extremely powerful. Preaching through a biblical book or preaching a life issue in a practical way is not an “either-or” question. It’s “both-and.”

I think Haddon Robinson would agree, as long as the text is not abused. There’s a lot of bad preaching out there. But it’s not bad because it’s topical preaching. It’s bad because the message misses the meaning and application of Scripture.

Preach the Word!

The Chart, part 1

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. James 3:1

For the past seven years I’ve been meeting with a group of guys at 7 a.m. Saturday mornings for life transformation. Through the years several guys have come and gone, but three men have emerged as constant, committed, and transparent. We have developed very high trust with one another. I love each one of them with all my heart. I would take a bullet for them. I think they would take a bullet for me. But let’s not test that theory, please. I might be wrong.

One man in particular, the youngest (although he’s 60), is almost totally uninhibited. He says out loud what everybody else is thinking. And I love him for that. He unlocks the group week after week.

Many of our sessions, especially in the beginning years, began with a lament. Problems in the church. Struggles with family. Corruption in government. Shortcomings in the media. Dead-end conversations by the water cooler at work. Eventually a Scripture would come to mind which addresses the situation and we’d spend an amazing time before the Lord. Time after time I was amazed how God met us.

After a couple years, I noticed how no matter where we started, we ended up with the same set of solutions. So one day I started to chart them on a white board. On the left side was where we were. On the right side was where we needed to be. Over time I gradually added items to the list.

At first I left the white board sitting in the church basement where most of our people would see it. But that turned out to create a problem. One influential person walked past it and commented to nobody in particular, “I don’t like it.” Another very thoughtful, soft-spoken person stared at the chart and confessed, “I don’t get it.”

Those responses are totally understandable. It would have been surprising if they had liked it. It would have been amazing if they had comprehended it because they had not been through the process. So I took down the white board and stored it in the furnace room. It was almost like our little secret. If someone outside the men’s group asked about it, I’d say, “It’s not for you. It’s about another group.” That wasn’t a put-off. It was quite literally true. The chart was just for us. We never judged anyone else by our criteria.

On Saturday mornings whenever a discussion would hit a tipping point, I’d drag out the chart and set it up. We’d go over something on it again. This didn’t happen every week, but we referenced that little chart dozens of times over the years. We confessed how hard it is for us to move from the left side to the right side. Our little group invested hundreds of hours in conversation and Bible study, impromptu video sermons, prayer and anguish over that chart. We had to become vulnerable. We had to get past surface issues to find root causes. We had to identify our biases. We had to learn to see the world through a different lens. It changed the way we read Scripture. We no longer saw the Bible as a club to batter others. Instead, God’s Word was a lifeline to us, the weak and needy.

Why do I tell this story now? Two reasons:

First, several of our meetings early this year have felt like revival to me. I’ve said that to the guys. I’m sensing a spiritual breakthrough. For the first time, I’m not the person dragging out the chart. Others are doing it, too. A few weeks ago after a home Bible study, one man said to me, “I see why this specific item is on the chart.” And he named the item. Our meetings are getting longer from intense engagement. We pushed three hours last Saturday.

Another guy said, “I’ve been resisting this for years. We all have. It’s finally making sense to me.”

Yes, I think it is finally making sense.

A second reason I’m telling this story is I think the chart is finally finished. About three weeks ago, we added a word at the bottom on the left side to describe where we are now and a word at the bottom on the right side of the chart to describe where we want to be. But I wasn’t the person who discovered it. The rest of the group saw it first. I just recorded it for them.

We’ve made it to the bottom of the board. More important, we’ve made it to the bottom line of the chart. It’s only one word, but it sums up everything.

That word is grace.

After sharing this story, I may be obligated to reveal the contents of the chart. I’m not sure when that will happen. Undoubtedly the chart will be misunderstood. People will draw conclusions that aren’t accurate. It may spark controversy we’re not quite ready to face. But the right time will come. Eventually, there will be a part two to this post.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.    John Newton

 

 

 

The Davidic Covenant

For the past few weeks at New Life Church we’ve been taking a slow tour through the major covenants in the Bible. So far we’ve visited the covenants God made with Noah, Abraham and Moses. Our fourth stop is the most obscure covenant on our list, the Davidic Covenant.

Unless you’ve attended a lot of Sunday School classes or thoroughly explored the Bible, you might be unfamiliar with this covenant. Yet ramifications of the Davidic Covenant are cited through­out the New Testament beginning with the very first sentence in Matthew 1:1, “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David….” Why “the son of David”? Well, it’s all about God’s covenant with David.

Although you might not be familiar with the Davidic Covenant, many familiar verses refer to it, including the angel’s announcement to the shepherds about the birth of Jesus, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you” (Luke 2:11) and the shouts of the people when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey in the trium­phal entry, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (Matt. 21:9).

Here’s the irony: you can attend church for decades and never learn about the Davidic Covenant. You might not even know it exists, much less care about it. But if you visit church only at Christmas and Easter, you’ll hear an inference to the Davidic Covenant almost every time. You just don’t know you’re hearing it. Very few people make the vital connection from the Davidic Covenant to Christ­mas or Easter. This coming Sunday at New Life Church we’re going to close that gap and explore why it’s so huge that Jesus is “the Son of David.” The Davidic Covenant explains why the people wanted to crown Jesus as king over Israel.

The Davidic Covenant also can help us understand why Jesus is even a king at all. The covenants of Noah, Abra­ham and Moses all connect to Jesus, but not his kingship. All that changes with the Davidic Covenant. We don’t have a king in the United States government, but you might determine that you do have a king, King Jesus. Let’s get ready to bend our knees. If you’re in the Clarkfield area, you’re invited this Sunday.