Volume 3 Number 3 (1999:3 )

10 March 1999

It is written that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, yet altogether too many "wise men" think that the beginning of wisdom is within them. How do you know this, you ask Gandalf? I've seen it, I say. I've seen it in some very subtle yet unmistakable ways, and by men who, we all thought, held the Sacred Scriptures in the highest regard. Why, that's God's Word, they'll say. All matters of faith and confession are to be answered by the Scriptures, they'll say. Sola Scriptura, they'll say. And our preaching is all Bible-based and Christ-centered, they'll say.

But they'll also say that the Word of God needs to be made relevant. Thus they think of themselves as the filters through which the Word of God becomes relevant, something that the people can relate to, something they can take home with them. So the sermon becomes the making relevant of the Word of God, putting it into terms we already understand. The preparation of a sermon becomes an exercise in taking something from Scripture and using it to launch into something else, something the preacher finds easy to hear. Hence, for instance, a sermon on the multiplication of loaves and fish for the four thousand might become no more than a discourse on how able Jesus is to provide for our needs. The details are omitted or ignored, deemed insignificant. No notice is taken of the fact that the loaves and fish were brought by a boy who seems to have more faith than the disciples do. Nor is anything made of the fact that Jesus says to make the men recline where there was much grass, a link to the Twenty-third psalm. In short, preachers regularly preach something they find in the shrine of their hearts to preach, rather than something they have found in the words of the Gospel themselves.

If men would become true preachers of the Gospel, whose PREACHING they expect others to hold sacred and gladly hear and learn, they must learn how it is that their PREACHING will be in truth the very Word of God. It will not be if it is only something they themselves have dreamed up and hoped would be relevant. Rather, it must be something to which their hearts are held captive, which they have learned upon a musing on the sacred words themselves. For in this musing the Holy Ghost is present, as Luther also said.

But this will never happen among those who presume to know better than the words upon with they preach. Who for instance might find it too dangerous a thing simply to say, "If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it from you," for they worry that someone might take them literally. What? They don't think Jesus thought of that? They know better than He about what might be an ill-advised thing to say? Or again, they might find it too immodest to preach those texts which happen to refer to the breasts of a mother. That might be too embarrassing. Or they might think it too violent to preach about the bloody texts of murder or its vindications. What would the children think? Or--here it gets really dangerous--they might think themselves too loving to preach the imprecatory psalms. So what do they do with them? They simply ignore them, ignore those words of the Holy Ghost. For they know better, they are wiser than that, they know their people, and they know what might be offensive to them. So they say. And thus, beginning in ever so innocent a way, they listen to the shrines of their hearts over the written revelation of God.

Preachers must rather be captive to that Word, not only in a general sense, but in very specific ways. If Scripture rebukes, they must rebuke; where Scripture becomes graphic they must be graphic; when Scripture is frank they must be frank.

Yet on the other hand, they must not be more so than Scripture. They must not speak openly about shameful things which are done in secret; they must not attempt a shock treatment on their hearers with a load of terms and descriptions Scripture does not use, especially when dealing with matters pertaining to sexual conduct and thought. Here, Scripture uses circumlocution very consistently. Thus, so must they. Though Scripture may be graphic about the battlefield, it is never graphic about the bedroom. They must follow suit.

They must, in a word, follow Scripture. They must not employ Scripture--Scripture must employ them. They must muse on the Scripture they are preaching, search it, rather than simply musing on what they might be able to say about it from their own resources. They must hear the Scriptures preaching to them first, and only then will they be ready to preach the Scriptures. They must regard especially the words of Christ as His sermons to them, and then when they themselves preach, they will be preaching His sermons, His Word.

Simply, they must submit to His Word and fear it with a holy respect and reverence; that is the beginning of wisdom for preachers.

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The Shire 1999:3

Copyright 1999 Gandalf the White.