[BBC List] sinclair ferguson

[Mike Abendroth]

A Preacher's Decalogue 
Sinclair Ferguson
Part I

Listening to or reading the reflections of others on preaching is, for most
preachers, inherently interesting and stimulating (whether positively or
negatively). These reflections then are offered in the spirit of the Golden
Rule, and only because the Editor is a long-standing friend!   

Forty years exactly have passed since my first sermon in the context of a
Sunday service. Four decades is a long time to have amassed occasions when
going to the church door after preaching is the last thing one wants to
do-even if one loves the congregation (sometimes precisely because one loves
the congregation and therefore the sense of failure is all the greater!).
How often have I had to ask myself "How is it possible to have done this
thousands of times and still not do it properly?"   

Yes, I know how to talk myself out of that mood! Everything from "It's
faithfulness, not skill, that really matters"; "How you feel has nothing to
do with it!"; "Remember you're sowing seed." "It's ultimately the Lord who
preaches the word into people's hearts, not you." All true. Yet we are
responsible to make progress as preachers, indeed evident and visible, or at
least audible progress (1 Tim. 4:13, 15 is an instructive and searching word
in this respect!).   

All of this led me while traveling one day to reflect on this: What ten
commandments, what rule of preaching-life, do I wish someone had written for
me to provide direction, shape, ground rules, that might have helped me keep
going in the right direction and gaining momentum in ministry along the way?


Once one begins thinking about this, whatever Ten Commandments one comes up
with, it becomes obvious that this is an inexhaustible theme. My friend, the
Editor, could easily run his journal for a year with a whole series of "My
Ten Commandments for Preaching." I offer these ten, not as infallible, but
as the fruit of a few minutes of quiet reflection on a plane journey.   

1. Know your Bible better. Often at the end of a Lord's Day, or a
Conference, the thought strikes me again: "If you only knew your Bible
better you would have been a lot more help to the people." I teach at a
seminary whose founder stated that its goal was "to produce experts in the
Bible." Alas I was not educated in an institution that had anything remotely
resembling that goal. The result? Life has been an ongoing "teach yourself
while you play catch-up." At the end of the day seminaries exist not to give
authoritative line-by-line interpretations of the whole of Scripture but to
provide tools to enable its graduates to do that. That is why, in many ways,
it is the work we do, the conversations we have, the churches we attend, the
preaching under which we sit, that make or break our ministries. This is not
"do it yourself" but we ourselves need to do it.   

As an observer as well as a practitioner of preaching, I am troubled and
perplexed by hearing men with wonderful equipment, humanly speaking (ability
to speak, charismatic personality and so on) who seem to be incapable of
simply preaching the Scriptures. Somehow they have not first invaded and
gripped them.   

I must not be an illiterate. But I do need to be homo unius libri-a man of
one Book. The widow of a dear friend once told me that her husband wore out
his Bible during the last year of his life. "He devoured it like a novel"
she said. Be a Bible devourer!   

2. Be a man of prayer. I mean this with respect to preaching. Not only in
the sense that I should pray before I begin my preparation, but in the sense
that my preparation is itself a communion in prayer with God in and through
his word. Whatever did the apostles mean by saying that they needed to
devote themselves "to prayer and the ministry of the word"-and why that
order?   

My own feeling is that in the tradition of our pastoral textbooks we have
over-individualized this. The apostles (one may surmise) really meant
"we"-not "I, Peter" or "I, John" but "We, Peter, John, James, Thomas, Andrew
. . . together."   
Is it a misreading of the situation to suspect that preachers hide the
desperate need of prayer for the preaching, and their personal need? By
contrast, reflect on Paul's appeals. And remember Spurgeon's bon mot when
asked about the secret of his ministry: "My people pray for me."   

Reflecting on this reminds me of one moment in the middle of an address at a
conference for pastors when the bubble above my head contained the words
"You are making a complete and total hash of this," but as my eyes then
refocused on the men in front of me they seemed like thirsty souls drinking
in cool refreshing water, and their eyes all seemed to be fixed on the water
carrier I was holding! Then the above-the-head-bubble filled with other
words: "I remember now, how I urged the congregation at home to pray for
these brethren and for the ministry of the word. They have been praying."   

Alas for me if I don't see the need for prayer or for encouraging and
teaching my people to see its importance. I may do well (I have done well
enough thus far, have I not?) . . . but not with eternal fruit.  

3. Don't Lose Sight of Christ. Me? Yes, me. This is an important principle
in too many dimensions fully to expound here. One must suffice. Know, and
therefore preach "Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). That is a
text far easier to preach as the first sermon in a ministry than it is to
preach as the final sermon.   

What do I mean? Perhaps the point can be put sharply, even provocatively in
this way: Systematic Exposition did not die on the Cross for us; nor did
Biblical Theology, nor even Systematic Theology or Hermeneutics, or whatever
else we deem important as those who handle the exposition of Scripture. I
have heard all of these in preaching . . . without a center in the person of
the Lord Jesus.   

Paradoxically not even the systematic preaching through one of the Gospels
guarantees Christ-crucified centered preaching. Too often preaching on the
Gospels takes what I whimsically think of as the "Find Waldo Approach." The
underlying question in the sermon is "Where are you to be found in this
story?" (are you Martha or Mary, James and John, Peter, the grateful leper .
. .?). The question "Where, Who and What is Jesus in this story? Tends to be
marginalized.   

The truth is it is far easier to preach about Mary, Martha, James, John, or
Peter than it is about Christ. It is far easier to preach even about the
darkness of sin and the human heart than to preach Christ. Plus my
bookshelves are groaning with literature on Mary, Martha . . . the good
life, the family life, the Spirit-filled life, the parenting life, the
damaged self life . . . but most of us have only a few inches of shelf space
on the person and work of Christ himself.   

Am I absolutely at my best when talking about him, or about us?  

4. Be deeply Trinitarian. Surely we are? At least in some of our churches
not a Lord's Day passes without the congregation confessing one God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. But as is commonly recognized Western Christianity has
often had a special tendency to either an explicit or a pragmatic
Unitarianism, be it of the Father (Liberalism, for all practical purposes),
the Son (Evangelicalism, perhaps not least in its reactions against
Liberalism), or the Spirit (Charismaticism with its reaction to both of the
previous).   

This is, doubtless, a caricature. But my concern here arises from a sense
that Bible-believing preachers (as well as others) continue to think of the
Trinity as the most speculative and therefore the least practical of all
doctrines. After all, what can you "do" as a result of hearing preaching
that emphasizes God as Trinity? Well, at least inwardly if not outwardly,
fall down in prostrate worship that the God whose being is so ineffable, so
incomprehensible to my mental math, seeks fellowship with us! 

I sometimes wonder if it is failure here that has led to churches actually
to believe it when they are told by "church analysts" and the like that "the
thing your church does best is worship . . . small groups, well you need to
work on that . . .." Doesn't that verge on blasphemy? (Verge on it? There is
surely only One who can assess the quality of our worship. This approach
confuses aesthetics with adoration).   

John's Gospel suggests to us that one of the deepest burdens on our Lord's
heart during his last hours with his disciples was to help them understand
that God's being as Trinity is the heart of what makes the gospel both
possible and actual, and that it is knowing him as such that forms the very
lifeblood of the life of faith (cf. John chapter 13-17). Read Paul with this
in mind and it becomes obvious how profoundly woven into the warp and woof
of his gospel his understanding of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is.   

Our people need to know that, through the Spirit, their fellowship is with
the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. Would they know that from my
preaching?  

5. Use your Imagination. Does this not contradict the immediately preceding
observations that the truth of the Trinity should not be thought of as
speculative metaphysics? No. Rather it is simply to state what the preaching
masters of the centuries have either explicitly written, or at least by
example, implied. All good preaching involves the use of the imagination. No
great preacher has ever lacked imagination. Perhaps we might go so far as to
say it is simply an exhortation to love the Lord our God with all of our . .
. mind . . . and our neighbor as ourselves.   

Scripture itself suggests that there are many different kinds of
imagination-hence the different genre in which the word of God is expressed
(poetry, historical narrative, dialogue, monologue, history, vision and so
on). No two biblical authors had identical imaginations. It is doubtful if
Ezekiel could have written Proverbs, for example!   

What do we mean by "imagination"? Our dictionaries give a series of
definitions. Common to them all seems to be the ability to "think outside of
oneself," "to be able to see or conceive the same thing in a different way."
In some definitions the ideas of the ability to contrive, exercising
resourcefulness, the mind's creative power, are among the nuanced meanings
of the word.   

Imagination in preaching means being able to understand the truth well
enough to translate or transpose it into another kind of language or musical
key in order to present the same truth in a way that enables others to see
it, understand its significance, feel its power-to do so in a way that gets
under the skin, breaks through the barriers, grips the mind, will and
affections so that they not only understand the word used but feel their
truth and power.   

Luther did this by the sheer dramatic forcefulness of his speech. Whitefield
did it by his use of dramatic expression (overdid it, in the view of some).
Calvin-perhaps surprisingly-did it too by the extraordinarily
earthed-in-Geneva-life language in which he expressed himself. So an
overwhelming Luther-personality, a dramatic preacher with Whitefieldian
gifts of story-telling and voice (didn't David Garrick say he'd give
anything to be able to say "Mesopotamia" the way George Whitefield did?), a
deeply scholarly, retiring, reluctant preacher-all did it, albeit in very
different ways. They saw and heard the word of God as it might enter the
world of their hearers and convert and edify them.   

What is the secret here? It is, surely, learning to preach the word to
yourself, from its context into your context, to make concrete in the
realities of our lives the truth that came historically to others' lives.
This is why the old masters used to speak about sermons going from their
lips with power only when they had first come to their own hearts with
power.   

All of which leads us from the fifth commandment back to where we started.
Only immersion in Scripture enables us to preach it this way. Therein lies
the difference between preaching that is about the Bible and its message and
preaching that seems to come right out of the Bible with a "thus says the
Lord" ring of authenticity and authority.   

This is, surely, a good place to end the "first table" of these Commandments
for Preachers. Now it is time to go and soak ourselves in Scripture to get
ready for the "second table."  
A Preacher's Decalogue
Part II 
The first part of this "Preacher's Decalogue" reflected on five commandments
that I thought might helpfully have guided me from early days in ministry.
Unlike the true Decalogue, these "commandments" make no claim to either
inspiration or They are the reflections of the moment. More prolonged
reflection, or the stimulated reflection of others, might well produce a
more coherent and perhaps more salutary list. 
The "first table" of the "Preacher's Decalogue" was as follows:
(1) Get to know your Bible better; (2) Be a man of prayer; (3) Don't lose
sight of Christ; (4) Be more deeply Trinitarian; (5) Use your imagination. 
We turn now to:
6. Speak much of sin and grace. In his exposition of Paul's Letter to the
Romans, Martin Luther insightfully used the words of Jeremiah's call: 
The sum total of this epistle is to destroy, root out, and bring to naught
all carnal wisdom . . . All that is in us is to be rooted out, pulled down,
destroyed, and thrown down, i.e. all that delights us because it comes from
us and is found in us; but all that is from outside of us and in Christ is
to be built up and planted 
If that is true of Paul's "preaching" in Romans, it ought to be true of ours
as well. Sin and grace should be the downbeat and the upbeat that run
through all our exposition. 
But there are some cautions. Preaching on sin must unmask the presence of
sin, and undeceive about the nature of sin, as well as underline the danger
of sin. 
This is not the same thing as hammering a congregation against the back wall
of the "sanctuary" with a tirade! That requires little more than high levels
of emotion. A genuine, ultimately saving, unmasking and undeceiving of the
human heart is more demanding exegetically and spiritually. For what is in
view here is the skilled work of a surgeon-opening a wound, exposing the
cause of the patient's sickness, cutting away the destructive malignancies,
all in order to heal and restore to life.
Doubtless people need warnings against the evils of contemporary society
(abortion, apostasy in the visible church, etc). But we cannot build a
ministry, nor healthy Christians, on a diet of fulminating against the
world. No; rather we do this by seeing the Scriptures expose the sin in our
own hearts, undeceive us about ourselves, root out the poison that remains
in our own hearts-and then helping our people to do the same "by the open
statement of the truth" ( 2 Cor. 4:2). 
There is only one safe way to do this. Spiritual surgery must be done within
the context of God's grace in Jesus Christ. Only by seeing our sin do we
come to see the need for and wonder of grace. But exposing sin is not the
same thing as unveiling and applying grace. We must be familiar with and
exponents of its multifaceted power, and know how to apply it to a variety
of spiritual conditions. 
Truth to tell, exposing sin is easier than applying grace; for, alas, we are
more intimate with the former than we sometimes are with the latter. Therein
lies our weakness.
7. Use "the plain style". This is a familiar enough expression in the
history of preaching. It is associated particularly with the contrast
between the literary eloquence of the High Anglican preaching tradition and
the new "plain style" of the Puritans in the 16th and 17th centuries.
William Perkins's The Arte of Prophesying served as the first textbook in
this school. 
But this seventh commandment is not insisting per se that we should all
preach like the Puritans. Indeed acquaintance with the Puritans themselves
would underline for us that they did not all preach as if they had been
cloned from William Perkins! But they did have one thing in common: plain
speech which they believed Paul commended and should be a leading
characteristic of all preaching. (2 Cor 6:7, cf. 2 Cor 4:2). 
There are many ways this principle applies. Do not make eloquence the thing
for which you are best known as a preacher; make sure you get the point of
the passage you are preaching, and that you make it clear and express its
power. True evangelical eloquence will take care of itself. Despite Charles
Hodge's reservations, Archibald Alexander was in general right in urging
students to pay attention to the power of biblical ideas, and the words used
in preaching will take care of themselves. 
The "masters" of clear style can teach us here. Paradoxically, in this
context, two of them were themselves Anglicans. 
C. S. Lewis's counsel on writing applies equally to preaching: Use language
that makes clear what you really mean; prefer plain words that are direct to
long words that are vague. Avoid abstract words when you can use concrete.
Don't use adjectives to tell us how you want us to feel-make us feel that by
what you say! Don't use words that are too big for their subject. Don't use
"infinitely" when you mean "very", otherwise you will have no word left when
you really do mean infinite!
In a similar vein, here is J.C. Ryle's counsel: Have a clear knowledge of
what you want to say. Use simple words. Employ a simple sentence structure.
Preach as though you had asthma! Be direct. Make sure you illustrate what
you are talking about.
Of course, there are exceptions to these principles. But why would I think I
am one? A brilliant surgeon may be able to perform his operation with poor
instruments; so can the Holy Spirit. But since in preaching we are nurses in
the operating room-our basic responsibility is to have clean, sharp, sterile
scalpels for the Spirit to do his surgery.
8. Find your own voice. "Voice" here is used in the sense of personal
style-"know yourself" if one can Christianize the wisdom of the
philosophers. 
That being said, finding a voice-in the literal sense-is also important. The
good preacher who uses his voice badly is a rara avis indeed. Clearly
affectation should be banned; nor are we actors whose voices are molded to
the part that is to be played. But our creation as the image of God,
creatures who speak-and speak his praises and his word-really requires us to
do all we can with the natural resources the Lord has given us. 
But it is "voice" in the metaphorical sense that is really in view here-our
approach to preaching that makes it authentically "our" preaching and not a
slavish imitation of someone else. Yes, we may-must-learn from others,
positively and negatively. Further, it is always important when others
preach to listen to them with both ears open: one for personal nourishment
through the ministry of the word, but the other to try to detect the
principles that make this preaching helpful to people. 
We ought not to become clones. Some men never grow as preachers because the
"preaching suit" they have borrowed does not actually fit them, or their
gifts. Instead of becoming the outstanding expository, or redemptive
historical, or God-centered, or whatever their hero may be, we may tie
ourselves in knots and endanger our own unique giftedness by trying to use
someone else's paradigm, style or personality as a mold into which to
squeeze ourselves. We become less than our true selves in Christ. The
marriage of our personality with another's preaching style can be a recipe
for being dull and lifeless. So it is worth taking the time in an ongoing
way to try to assess who and what we really are as preachers in terms of
strengths and weaknesses.
9. Learn how to transition. There is a short (2 pages) but wonderful
"must-read" section for preachers in the Westminster Assembly's Directory
for the Public Worship of God. Inter alia the Divines state that the
preacher "In exhorting to duties . . . is, as he seeth cause, to teach also
the means that help to the performance of them." In contemporary speech this
means that our preaching will answer the "how to?" question. This perhaps
requires further explanation.
Many of us are weary of the pandemic of "how-to-ness" we find in much
contemporary preaching. It is often little better than psychology (however
helpful) with a little Christian polish; it is largely imperative without
indicative, and in the last analysis becomes self and success oriented
rather than sin and grace oriented. But there is a Reformed and, more
importantly, biblical, emphasis on teaching how to transition from the old
ways to the new way, from patterns of sin to patterns of holiness. It is not
enough to stress the necessity, nor even the possibility, of this. We must
teach people how this happens.
Years ago I took one of our sons for coaching from an old friend who had
become a highly regarded teaching professional. My son was not, as they say,
"getting on to the next level." I could see that; but no longer had (if I
ever had!) the golfing savoir faire to help. Enter my friend, and within the
space of one coaching session the improvement in ball-striking was both
visible and audible (there is something about the sound of a perfectly
struck drive-or home run for that matter!). 
This is, in part, what we are called to effect in our handling of the
Scriptures-not "this is wrong... this is right"-but by our preaching to
enable and effect the transition. 
But how? For all its criticism of the pragmatism of evangelicalism, Reformed
preaching is not always skilled in this area. Many are stronger on doctrine
than on exegesis; and often stronger on soul-searching than on spiritual
upbuilding. We need to learn how to expound the Scriptures in such a way
that the very exposition empowers in our hearers the transitions from the
old patterns of life in Adam to the new patterns of life in Christ.
How do we do this? To begin with by expounding the Scriptures in a way that
makes clear that the indicatives of grace ground the imperatives of faith
and obedience and also effect them. This we must learn to do in a way that
brings out of the text how the text itself teaches how transformation takes
place and how the power of the truth itself sanctifies (cf. Jn. 17:17). 
This usually demands that we stay down in the text longer, more
inquisitively than we sometimes do, asking the text: Show me how your
indicatives effect your imperatives. Such study often yields the surprising
(?) result: depth study of Scripture means that we are not left scurrying to
the Christian bookshop or the journal on counseling in order to find out how
the gospel changes lives . . . no, we have learned that the Scriptures
themselves teach us the answer to the "What?" questions and also the answer
to the "How to?" question.
Do we-far less our congregations-know "how to"? Have we told them they need
to do it, but left them to their own devices rather than model it in our
preaching?
Some years ago, at the end of a church conference, the local minister, whom
I knew from his student days, said to me: "Just before I let you go tonight,
will you do one last thing? Will you take me through the steps that are
involved so that we learn to mortify sin?" 
I was touched-that he would broach what was obviously a personal as well as
pastoral concern with me; but perhaps even more so by his assumption that I
would be able to help. (How often we who struggle are asked questions we
ourselves need to answer!) He died not long afterwards, and I think of his
question as his legacy to me, causing me again and again to see that we need
to exhibit what John "Rabbi" Duncan of New College said was true of Jonathan
Edwards's preaching: "His doctrine was all application, and his application
was all doctrine." 
The ministry that illustrates this, and that understands what is involved in
how preaching transitions its hearers from the old to the new, will have
what Thomas Boston once said about his own ministry, "a certain tincture"
that people will recognize even if they cannot articulate or explain why it
is so different and so helpful. 
10. Love your people. John Newton wrote that his congregation would take
almost anything from him, however painful, because they knew "I mean to do
them good." 
This is a litmus test for our ministry. It means that my preparation is a
more sacred enterprise than simply satisfying my own love of study; it means
that my preaching will have characteristics about it, difficult to define
but nevertheless sensed by my hearers, that reflect the apostolic principle:
What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves
as your servants for Jesus' sake (2 Cor. 4:5)
We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own
selves, because you had become very dear to us (1 Thess. 2:8)
In Jesus Christ, the church's One True Preacher, message and messenger are
one. He is the Preacher, and also the message. That is not true of us. But,
in union with Christ (and we preach "in Christ" as well as live and die "in
Christ") a coalescence of a lesser sort takes place: the truth of the
message is conveyed by the preacher whose spirit is conformed to the grace
of God in the message. How can it be otherwise when preaching involves "God
making his appeal through us" (2 Cor. 5:20)? "A preacher's life" (wrote
Thomas Brooks) "should be a commentary upon his doctrine; his practice
should be the counterpane [counterpart] of his sermons. Heavenly doctrines
should always be adorned with a heavenly life." [1]
<http://www.reformation21.org/Content/EditTextItems.aspx?vobId=&iid=342&rurl
=http%3a%2f%2fwww.reformation21.org%2fUpcoming_Issues%2fDecalogue_II%2f149%2
f> 
A "Preacher's Decalogue" might be helpful; but at the end of the day we are
nourished not by the commands of law but by the provisions of God's grace in
the gospel. It is as true of our preaching as of our living that what law
cannot do, because of the weakness of our flesh, God accomplishes through
Christ, in order to fulfill his commands in us by the Spirit. 
May it be so for us! Then we will be able truly to sing:
Happy if with my latest breath,
I might but gasp his Name
Preach him to all, and cry in death
Behold, behold the Lamb



http://www.reformation21.org/Content/EditTextItems.aspx?vobId=&iid=342&rurl=
http%3a%2f%2fwww.reformation21.org%2fUpcoming_Issues%2fDecalogue_II%2f149%2f
- _ftnref1
<http://www.reformation21.org/Content/EditTextItems.aspx?vobId=&iid=342&rurl
=http%3a%2f%2fwww.reformation21.org%2fUpcoming_Issues%2fDecalogue_II%2f149%2
f> [1] Thomas Brooks, The Epistle Dedicatory to The Crown and Glory of
Christianity, London, 1662.



Charis,
 
Mike Abendroth
 
"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.  Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."
 - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer
 
www.bbcchurch.org
 

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