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August 6, 2017 |
| Preaching and Teaching | ||
Preaching and Teaching are not two different words for the same thing. They describe different styles for delivering a message and they imply different audiences or different messages. As a style, preaching is declarative and primarily a one-way communication. Because there is low involvement by the audience they can come and go as they please and get from it what they can. That low involvement makes it possible for one speaker to reach a larger audience.
Teaching is more interactive. It is expected that members of the audience can ask the teacher to stop and explain parts that were not understood. The expectation of the audience is that they will understand all of the message when the teaching is complete.
As far as the church goes, from early church accounts in the Bible it appears preaching was more commonly used to introduce large numbers of believers to the Christian message and teaching was used for detailed instruction of a smaller number of people. Today street preaching is far less common in most countries and preaching is used to deliver a general message to a general audience in the church as a sermon. Teaching is used for classes and Bible Studies.
I think that we as Christians often make the mistake of teaching the world in the same way that we teach Christians and we teach them the same things. But each audience has a radically different perspective that requires a radically different message.
In this lesson we will look at the different messages the Bible has for these two groups.
It's certainly wrong to say that the world has a single perspective on God. The perspective ranges from curiosity to ambivalence to antagonism. Yet the Bible has a single message for all of them, understanding that some are ready to hear that message now, some later, and some never will be.
That message for them is the gospel message. It's a message about God, sin, eternal punishment, a redeemer, and salvation. We'll detail all of that later.
Unlike the world, Christians do believe in God. The message to them is about growth in faith, knowledge, and obedience - a completely different message.
A problem comes when we present the Christian message to a worldly person. If we tell such a person that God says in the Bible that it's wrong to cheat on a spouse, the person has no reason to accept that message. He or she doesn't believe in God, at least not in a committed way. Perhaps the person believes God exists, or some god exists, but it's no more than fanciful speculation - this god or gods are not relevant to his or her life.
Therefore they will not accept the Bible as authoritative. At the most it will be seen as a guide to living a better life. If that person decided to change as we suggest and stop cheating, we've still achieved almost nothing.
If all the world decided to use the Bible as a guide to living better lives it would make the world a much better place, but it would not help them in any significant way. At the end of their lives they would still face torment and judgement. No matter how good a life they live they cannot be perfect and therefore they cannot be acceptable to God.
They've been given the message that is intended for Christians instead of the message intended for the world. They aren't ready for it so they've misunderstood it. They think that they will go to Heaven if they live a good life, or a good enough life … as defined by them.
It's easy for them to get that idea. They hear it on TV and they sometimes even hear it on the rare occasions they go to church - funerals.
I once attended the funeral of a man who was a friend of a friend but whom I knew fairly well. The minister there made it very clear that this man was now in Heaven. This man was a nice person, a friendly man, hard working, served in the military, etc., but I had never known him to enter a church. If he had owned a Bible that would have been news to me. The minister didn't offer any evidence that he was a Christian, yet it was pronounced he was in Heaven.
The saddest thing that day was the message that all his friends heard: if you are good, you will go to Heaven. Therefore a real chance at eternal life was taken from them.
The world needs to hear a message that brings conversion. Until they have that come-to-Jesus moment all the good they do counts for nothing.
The message to Christians is about growth. When we converted we said we gave him control of our lives. Growth is about making that a reality. Our experiences with God should make it possible to trust him more and more and therefore to give up more and more of our natural desire to control our lives. Over time we should be living lives that are closer to perfection as we learn to accept that he knows what is best for us. As we read his word we gain a better understanding of how he wants us to live.
We are called to take the gospel message to the world but the main way we do that is through the lives we live, and more than that, through the change in the lives we live.
"Yes, the true servant unceasingly rebukes the wicked, but he does it most of all by his conduct, by the truth that shines in his words, by the light of his example, by all the radiance of his life."1
The word "Gospel" means good news but the message to the world begins with bad news.
The Message About God
"God is holy and perfect and He requires holiness and perfection from us. Holiness is the inability to sin. It means moral perfection and it is something that God alone possesses. Holiness is an attribute of God's perfect nature. Therefore, since there is no one greater than God, and God is the greatest good, God is necessarily the standard of what is good.
The Message About Man
Man is unable to live according to God's standard and therefore cannot be with God and would be destined to be separated from him forever in torment.
The Message About Jesus
Jesus came to live the perfect life that we could not. He allowed himself to be killed, though he had the power to stop it. He did this because his perfect life and sacrificial death made it possible to restore the relationship between man and God - but only for those who believe in him.
"There are a lot of Christians who present a false gospel in their evangelism. They don't do this on purpose, but they do it nonetheless. Let me give you some examples of bad presentations."2
"Christians with good intentions often repeat these watered-down, insufficient presentations of the gospel so that when a person "asks Jesus into his heart," there is a strong risk of not receiving Christ properly. This is dangerous because it has the potential of inoculating someone from truly finding Christ in the future."3
One of the problems with the phrases above is that they use church jargon that would be meaningless to someone who wasn't in the church. For example "give your life", how exactly does someone do that, "ask Jesus into your heart", what does that even mean, "savior" and "save you", saved from what.
Another problem is that the phrases contain no recognition of sin and no repentance. There is no aspect of discipleship in them either. There is also no understanding that God's will is now sovereign.
It is necessary to have some understanding before it is possible to accept Jesus and exercise the faith God provides to those who do.
This isn't a magical formula for conversion. God is able to work with any heart that is truly seeking after him. We need to be careful of false conversions though, where the person believes the process is complete. From the parable of the seeds, this would be the seeds that sprouted quickly or were choked out. With a false conversion this person might go on thinking they had converted.
I overheard a mother and daughter conversing at a restaurant:
Mother: "You are a Christian now"
Daughter: "But I don't want to be a Christian"
Mother: "Well, you are any way"
1 The Road to Assisi, Sabatier as edited by Sweeney
2 https://carm.org/how-to-present-gospel-properly
3 https://carm.org/how-to-present-gospel-properly