Illustrations of Biblical Preaching I: Verses and Short Paragraphs · 2019. 9. 13. · is of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ. One could enlarge on this how

Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics

Transcript - HR503 Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 18 of 20HR503

Illustrations of Biblical Preaching I: Verses and Short Paragraphs

Biblical Preaching: A Pastor’s Look at Homiletics

We’re glad of the opportunity, our Father, to be quiet in Your presence before we begin our thought together. And we pray that the Holy Spirit may be our Teacher and that You will continue to shape us and make us into expositors of Your Word in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, amen.

Well I’ve called our lectures today and tomorrow “Illustrations of Biblical Preaching,” because I thought it might conceivably be helpful if we could look at some biblical passages together and I could suggest to you some ways in which such passages could be unfolded and expounded and related. And I’ve suggested taking the single verse and the short paragraph today, particularly the single verse. I want to major on that because I’ve noticed that none of you, I think I’m right in saying, in the lab sessions we’ve had have taken a single verse. I think that’s almost true of everybody. I think all of you’ve taken a passage or a paragraph.

So I thought I’d major on the single verse and then tomorrow take the longer paragraph and the whole book. And my purpose is that from these illustrations we should learn a bit more clearly how to expound Scripture in such a way that we’re not giving a lecture but are actually preaching a sermon, that we’re not just giving a verse-by-verse exposition through a passage but are enabling people to grasp this overriding message to feel its impact and to bow themselves to its authority. So I want particularly to take a text, a single verse if possible, and to draw out its implications; first from the context in which it’s set and from its total biblical context, and yet doing so in such a way that the text remains in people’s minds. By the way, if you’ve got your Bibles, I think you’ll need them.

I thought we’d begin with one of the Beatitudes, partly deliberately because we’ve been some of us been going through the Sermon on the Mount rather quickly in a way. I thought just to take one beatitude and think of it in greater depth might be a help. And

John R. W. Stott, D. D.Experience: Founder, Langham

Partnership International



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I’ve chosen Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” This it seems to be, for example, to be a very suitable text to take on Veteran’s Day or what in Britain we call—I don’t think you have a Remembrance Sunday, do you, when you remember people who have fallen in the wars? But one might conceivably introduce a sermon on “blessed are the peacemakers” with a quick description of how the world has been full of war for so many years and how desperate is the need for peacemakers in the community and how Christians ought to be in the forefront of peacemaking. But then I would want to go on and say that what is to me most striking in this beatitude is to see the first and the second parts of it together, that Jesus doesn’t just say “blessed are the peacemakers” period, but “blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” And what is the relation between being a peacemaker and being a son of God? Now immediately one would probably have to say what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that by engaging in the work of reconciliation we earn the right to become the sons of God, but that by peacemaking we demonstrate whose children we are since peacemaking is a characteristic activity of God.

And then one could go on to say that the Bible indeed presents God as the great peacemaker who, through Jesus Christ, has made peace through the blood of His cross. And then I would suggest that we can learn about peacemaking from the divine peacemaker. That is, I think it is legitimate to take the two parts of the verse and say that since peacemakers demonstrate they’re the sons of God by their peacemaking activity, let us learn from His peacemaking what our peacemaking should be. So what can we learn about the peacemaking activities of God? And I would want to draw out three things, and, I don’t know, one could use a simple alliteration here and say, first, we could learn about the condition of peacemaking. There is at least one major condition of all successful peacemaking, and it’s plain in the reconciling work of God. And that is that the God who has made peace is Himself the God of peace. He is given that title at least three times in Scripture. In other words, peacemaking is a divine activity because peace is a divine attribute. The God who has acted to bring us into peace with Himself and with each other is a God who is at peace with Himself. He is a God of complete inner harmony. The three persons of the Trinity are bound together in love and peace. And similarly then, one would have to draw out that doctrine a bit and then say it’s the same for us. If we want to be peacemakers in the community, we’ve got to be at peace ourselves. And we all know some people who spread strife and enmity in the community



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because they are at war with themselves. They can’t spread peace because they haven’t got peace to spread. So here is the first indispensable condition of peacemaking: to be at peace ourselves. One might want to illustrate that from some figure of history or somebody we know.

Then secondly, I’d go on from the condition to the character of peacemaking and see that the most obvious thing about the peacemaking operation of God is that He initiated it Himself. He didn’t wait for us to take the initiative, or He would have waited forever. He took it Himself. Scripture says again and again that all is of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ. One could enlarge on this how we deserve nothing at His hand but judgment, and yet He came. He took the initiative. He didn’t wait for any move on our part. He made the first move. He came in Jesus Christ to make peace. And there is an immediate lesson to learn for human peacemakers. If we want to behave as the children of God, we must do the same, yet how often we wait for somebody else to take the initiative. That is, when it is a quarrel in which we ourselves are involved, if we are the guilty party, then often we’re too proud to admit it. If we are the innocent party, then we stand on our dignity and wait for the other person to make the first move. Or if it’s a quarrel in which we are not personally involved, but a third party, we say we don’t want to get involved. We want to mind our own business. So again, we don’t take the initiative. But God took the initiative. The peacemaking action of God did not depend on whether people had any claim on Him, on whether they deserved His help or not. He loved us and that was enough for Him to take the initiative to do something to make peace. One could enlarge on that a lot.

Now the third thing I would want, I think, to draw out is the cost of peacemaking. Christian peacemaking is not the same as appeasement. It’s not peace at any price. It’s peace through pain. It’s costly peace. And again the divine prototype makes this plain. God made peace through the blood of Christ’s cross. And one would enlarge on the costliness of the peacemaking activity of God. Then one would have to say, well of course when we make peace, there is nothing comparable to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Yet nevertheless, there is cost and pain in peacemaking. And then you’d have to give examples. For example, there is the cost of struggling to listen to the other side, the pain of identifying ourselves with the other person to understand, to sympathize with him, in his position. Or it may be there is the courage to rebuke somebody who is in the wrong when we’d far



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rather hold our tongue and say nothing. Or there’s the protracted negotiation in which forgiveness is withheld until the guilty party acknowledges his guilt and repents. Or there’s the commoner cost of reconciliation, which is the pain of acknowledging our own fault, the humiliation of saying that one is sorry. And so you could again think yourself into various peacemaking situations in which there is a cost to be born. So one would then sum up and say all this is involved in imitating God the peacemaker and so becoming peacemakers ourselves. Those three things: We must be at peace ourselves as He is. We must take the initiative with others as He did. We must be willing for costly sacrifice in peacemaking.

Now I personally would conclude then, I think, with some kind of appeal, this preaching through to the heart that we’ve talked about in one of two ways. Well now I think what I would want to do is I would think, well there are many people who would find this an uncomfortable work in the community. All of us would much rather mind our own business in any situation than to be an active, constructive peacemaker. So I’d say to myself, now how can I close the escape routes and let the congregation go away with this Scripture having laid hold of them in such a way that they are determined not to mind their own business and to contract out or cop out (as I understand you say here), but to accept this responsibility.

Now there are various ways you could do it. One is to say, well now this is one of the Eight Beatitudes. The Beatitudes describe every Christian. This is Christ’s specification of the Christian. You can’t get out of this by saying, well I’m poor in spirit, and I’m willing to fulfill that beatitude but I don’t want to be a peacemaker. No, all Eight Beatitudes describe every Christian. We can’t get out of this. This is Christ’s own specification of Christians. This is what He wants every Christian to be.

Or secondly, you can say, but the peacemakers are the sons of God. Are you a son and daughter of God? Are all of us the children of God? Then we’re called to demonstrate it. How can we claim to be children of God if we don’t engage in this fundamental activity of the children of God? And so, in these various ways to close the escape routes that the congregation feel, well it’s right. I must be a peacemaker because this is something to which Christ calls me as a child of God. Well, I just feel that to send them away with this—I mean, in the course of the sermon one would go on repeating “blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called the sons of God” until this one little phrase rings in their ears, and



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they feel the impact of this Word of God.

Well now, let me take a very different suggestion with you, and from the Old Testament this time. Let’s turn to Psalm 130. I think in peacemaking, what one has tried to do is to take a single text but to compress, if you like, the doctrine of reconciliation from other parts of Scripture, the divine work of reconciliation and show how it all can be distilled into this one verse. I’d like to do something rather similar in Psalm 130 and in particular verse 6, or maybe we could take verses 5 and 6 together. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits more than watchmen for the morning.” Now here is a very interesting couple of verses, the best I know perhaps anywhere in Scripture on the whole doctrine of waiting for the Lord, this idea of patient waiting upon God.

Now one could introduce that in many ways. I have preached on this and I think introduced it on that occasion along the lines of asking, I wonder if there’s anybody in the congregation who’s finding the Christian life unsatisfactory? Maybe you came to Christ some years ago. You had great expectations when you came to Him. You were led to believe that life in Christ is an abundant life, a life of unbroken communion with God, a life of undisputed victory over evil, of unruffled assurance and peace, etcetera. And yet as you have gone on living the Christian life, you’ve been disappointed. The first flush has faded. The blossom of your spiritual springtime began to fall, etcetera. And you can describe the kind of person who began with great promise and has found much disappointment. And in that condition of disillusion, one might go on, you became an easy prey to those spiritual physicians who offer quick remedies, which are quack remedies. They diagnosed your case, and they prescribed their universal cure. They promised you an easy road to spiritual health, some kind of perfectionism. And you could again, I suppose, mention (without probably wanting to name them), various kinds of ready-made solutions. You’ve got to recite a formula, press a button, flick a switch, get an experience, and all your problems will be over. Well now I think one would probably gain the concentration of a congregation if you mention this double situation of spiritual disappointment and disillusion in which there are many people offering you their quick remedies.

I would then go on to say that I want to uncover one major cause



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of spiritual malaise and thereby indicate one essential remedy. And I would probably quote my text then, rather than quote it earlier, and bring them to this passage. One would have of course to describe the context a little, that here is a man who portrays himself as floundering in deep waters (verse 1): “Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord”—a man who’s in the depths—and he appeals to God to rescue him. The deep waters appear to be his sin and his guilt. He speaks about (verse 3) God marking his “iniquities.” “But there is forgiveness with thee.” He’s a man who’s sinned. He has a guilty conscience. He wants forgiveness. But in particular (verses 5 and 6), he says he is “wait[ing] for the Lord.” He’s confident that God is going to forgive him and restore him. And for this forgiveness and restoration, he is content to wait with prayerful expectation. And he says he’s prepared to wait “more than watchmen for the morning.” And he goes on to urge Israel to do the same (verse 7): “O Israel, hope in the Lord!” etcetera. So I would then go on and say I believe that a major cause of spiritual malaise in the whole church today is a failure to wait for the Lord. So let’s ask what it means to be a spiritual watchman, the repetition of the word “more than watchmen for the morning.” Well it’s still not uncommon to see night watchmen about. This is a night watchman. We know how he may, if he’s employed by a public body, the municipal body, he may be sitting on the sidewalk in a little readymade hut with a brazier in the winter burning in front of him. And there he sits as a night watchman. Or he may be in a factory or whatever. Now I may tell you that I got myself a great blessing out of this passage when I meditated on this psalm some years ago.

And it seems to me that one could say this: that firstly, the night watchman waits eagerly for the morning. You can describe, I suppose, the kind of feelings that a night watchman would have. They are obvious, because everybody prefers daytime to nighttime. There are a few night birds I suppose, but most people prefer the daytime because the night is dark and with the darkness comes cold, loneliness, and fear. You can graphically describe the night watchman shivering with cold, hugging himself, stoking up his fire in his brazier, wrapping a rug around him because it’s cold for the night watchman. Or it’s lonely, so he reads something. He hums a tune to himself. He pictures his friends because he’s lonely. Or he gets scared because the night brings eerie shadows, and he hears strange sounds, and he imagines things when he’s afraid. So he longs eagerly for the morning, because the morning will bring light and with light will come warmth and company and safety. To me that’s not farfetched. I would want to say that



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when you enter a spiritual time of darkness in which the light of God’s presence is withdrawn and the soul gets cold and lonely and frightened, the thing to do is to wait eagerly for the morning. That is, don’t get so accustomed to the dark that you can accept it as a permanent state. Look forward eagerly to dawn.

And then the second thing is that the night watchman waits confidently for the morning, because although the night may be exceptionally dark and cold and he may feel particularly lonely and frightened and the hours may drag interminably by, etcetera, the morning will undoubtedly come. He knows that for certain. All of us know that God’s ancient promise to Noah has never been broken, that while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never fail, so that the day always follows the night. And however long the night may seem, the day is going to come. I sometimes quote a little notice that was put on a naval notice board once which said, “The fleet will sail at dawn or at sunrise, and the sun will rise at 4:58 a.m.” Well I didn’t perhaps quote that very well. But you will see that to draw a parallel between those two—to say that the fleet will sail at sunrise is an order of the Navy. But the sun will rise at 4:58 is not exactly under the command of the Navy. But nevertheless, it is known for certain when the sun will rise. So the watchman waits confidently for the morning. He knows that however cold, however dark, however lonely, however frightened, they’re all going to be temporary. And it’s the same in spiritual darkness. We could wait with more confidence than a night watchman because of the promises of God. That’s why he says here, “in his word I hope” (verse 5). “O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love.” That is, if you’re trusting in the character and the promises of God, you know that He will lift up the light of His countenance upon you again. And there I’ve sometimes quoted Hosea 6:3: “Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; for his coming forth to meet us is as sure as the dawn.” It is as sure as the dawn. So, as we press on to know the Lord, His coming to meet us to manifest Himself to us is as certain as the coming of the dawn after a long dark night. So the watchman waits confidently.

And then thirdly, he waits patiently for the morning, because however impatient he gets during the dark hours of the night, he won’t bring the dawn any closer. He may grit his teeth and wring his hands and stomp up and down the sidewalk, but however excited he gets, the sun is still going to rise at the same time. So his impatience won’t bring the dawn any closer. He waits patiently for it to come. And I would then speak about the need of



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inheriting the promises of God with faith and patience (Hebrews 6:12). God always fulfills His promises, but He doesn’t always tell us when He’s going to do it. You’ve got to wait patiently for His promises to be fulfilled.

Now having expounded what it means to be a watchman, waiting for the Lord more eagerly, more confidently, more patiently than watchmen wait for the morning, one would then want to go and to apply it. And I would want to apply it to the problems of the instant generation that when one must talk about waiting like a night watchman for the morning, you’re right out of step with the modern world because ours is this instant generation, the day of your instant coffee and instant whips and everything that one of you mentioned, I think, in a lab session. And one would then try to describe, I think, what a Christian life like that is like. So many instant Christians [utter] a few gabbled prayers in the morning while the mind is otherwise occupied, a rapid skim through Scripture when one would rather read the newspaper, an undisciplined irregular attendance at the Lord’s table, a breathless arrival at church while the first hymn is being sung and then during the service a roving eye and again a restless mind. And then we’re surprised that our Christian life is unsatisfactory, and we call the Christian life a hoax because it’s an up-and-down kind of Christian experience. So, I would then go to town, as it were, and try and beg the congregation to make their protest against this kind of spirit of the age, to register a protest against a modern idolatry of speed which crowds God out of the lives of His people, etcetera, and to fulfill the role of the Christian night watchman who waits for the Lord and is prepared to wait eagerly, confidently, patiently, more than what watchmen for the morning. Well I don’t know if that is a good example or not really. But it seems to me a way in which you can take a metaphor, this watchman for the morning, and think yourself into the metaphor and apply it to the night watch of the soul, if you like, when we’re in spiritual darkness and are waiting for the Lord to manifest Himself again.

Now let me go back to the New Testament and take a verse from the book of the Revelation, and take Revelation 7:15. And I’d like to suggest to you how you could take just the seven words at the beginning of the verse: “Therefore are they before the throne of God” (eight words). “Therefore are they before the throne of God.” Now I think there is a place sometimes of beginning a sermon by telling them immediately what your subject is without needing to introduce it by some reference to a modern or contemporary question, simply because you know when you announce your



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subject, the people will immediately be interested. And so I’m proposing to preach today on heaven and how to get there. Now one might want immediately to talk about death as the great unmentionable subject today and give illustrations of how people don’t think and how foolish they are not even to think about this question of eternity. But one could then immediately say, well the eight words of my text really tell us all we need to know both about the nature of heaven and how to get there. So first, what is heaven like? Everybody’s inquisitive about the next world. The great popularity of spiritism today bears witness to that. And there is this fascination with the occult. What is heaven like? Well the first thing a Christian would want to say in answer to the question is, we don’t know. And there should be a considerable degree of Christian agnosticism about the nature of heaven. It will be far more glorious and far more beautiful and far more satisfying than any Christian has even begun to imagine. So you might want to warn people against being beguiled by some dogmatic literalists who presume to be able to tell us in precise detail the locality, dimensions, population, and appearance of heaven and try to confine it within the compass of their little minds. And let us at least say to people that heaven is a far bigger and more glorious concept than anybody has begun to grasp. But having said that, one would go on and say, if we asked the average Christian today what heaven is like, he would probably describe it as in verses 16 and 17: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; the sun will not strike them, nor in its scorching heat. . . . And God will wipe away all tears.” In other words, no more hunger, no more thirst, no more scorching heat, no more tears. And there is something very significant about that true but popular description of heaven. One, is that it’s negative. It’s understanding heaven not in terms of what it is but in terms of what it isn’t. And the other is that it’s very individualistic. It’s no more hunger for me, no more thirst for me, and all my tears wiped away.

But I would then go on to say that the essential biblical doctrine of heaven is not the absence of sorrow, suffering, and sin, but the cause of these absences: namely, the presence, the central, overshadowing, dominating, irresistible presence of the throne of God. “Therefore are they before the throne of God.” And the essential biblical revelation of heaven is that God’s throne is there and dominating it. Then one could enlarge a little bit on what these chapters tell about the throne of God, on what John saw when the little door was opened in heaven: “Behold, a throne.” The first thing he saw when the door was opened in heaven, the first thing his eye lit upon was a throne. And the whole vision of heaven here



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is related to the throne, the symbol of God’s sovereignty, how God is described as the One who sits upon the throne, and the Lamb is described as the One who shares the throne with Him. The Spirit is before the throne, the elders around the throne, the angels and archangels around the throne. And the redeemed company of God are before the throne and thunder and lightning are issuing from the throne. Everything is related to the throne of God. So the central vision in Scripture of heaven is that it’s dominated by the throne of God. We shan’t be able to think a thought, say a word, do a deed that isn’t under the sovereignty of God. The kingdom of God will have been consummated. The rule of God will have been perfected. God will rule everywhere. He’ll be everything to everyone. So, one can spend a lot of time on that, enlarging on this, what is heaven like? You see, in some sense, we don’t know. But it’s more than these absences. It is the presence of God’s throne, which is the cause of these absences.

Then how do you get there? Well then one would pause on the word therefore (verse 15). “Therefore are they before the throne of God.” Well what does that “therefore” mean? How do you get before the throne of God? How do you join the redeemed company? Well, you look back to the previous verse and see that these people who are before God’s throne are described as having “come out of the great tribulation” and as having “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

Well let’s take the second first. One would want immediately to say, please don’t be put off by this expression of washing your clothing in the blood of the Lamb or in the Lamb’s blood. Some twentieth-century people are repelled by this, find it repulsive. But don’t be a biblical literalist. You know perfectly well that white robes, or black robes if you like, don’t come out white, as we were thinking when we talked about the interpretation of Scripture when you plunge them in blood. And it’s obviously a symbolic expression, and the robes are the righteousness; without the white robes of the righteousness we cannot stand before God’s throne. Our own righteousness is like filthy rags, but the blood of the Lamb is His death on the cross. And notice, moreover, that they’ve washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. That is, it isn’t enough that the blood of the Lamb was shed. They had to wash their robes in it. It isn’t enough that Christ died. We have to come to Him and appropriate His sacrifice.

But then there’s another thing about them. They’ve not only done that, they’ve come out of the great tribulation. And it’s



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important not to gloss over that phrase. I would want to say there is no reference to the great tribulation of Daniel 12:1 of which Jesus also spoke, which is to engulf the world before the end. No reference either to those who may have to endure more suffering than others do, because all those who are before the throne of God are said to have come out of the great tribulation. So I would argue that there is only one possible interpretation of the great tribulation, namely that it is a description of the Christian’s life on earth. It may be surprising, but it’s an apt description of being a Christian. And you could quote John 16:33, “In the world you will have tribulation.” Acts 14:22, “We must, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom of God.” First, Thessalonians 3:4, “When we were with you we told you beforehand that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and as you know.” John describes himself in Revelation 1:9 as “your companion in the tribulation of Jesus.” So every Christian experiences this opposition of the world. So then one could conclude on this “what is heaven like?” and “how do you get there?”

I would want to talk I think at this point about the great company of the redeemed too vast to be counted composed of men and women of every nation differing from one another in every conceivable way—racially, socially, culturally—but united in these two things: that they’ve come out of the great tribulation and washed their robes and, therefore, they are before the throne of God.

Now I wondered if you would like it then, if I’ve got time, to attempt a couple more quite as briefly as I can. I’d like to take a text as a way, if you like, of conveying the teaching of a whole book on a particular subject from one text. Let’s take the well-known verse at the end of Galatians 6:14, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14). Well one could begin conceivably by quoting it and saying what an absolutely extraordinary statement it is that Paul declares in a most solemn and emphatic way; that he intends to glory in nothing but the cross, that the cross of Jesus, which appeared to be such a disgrace and a shame, was actually the object of his glory and his boast and that far from being ashamed of it, he reveled in it. And could this be true of us? Is this true of Christians today? Could we say, “far be it from me to glory in anything except in the cross of Jesus Christ”? Now one might need to have to pause and say, what does he mean to glory in something? That it has no exact translation really in English, we know the verb is dóxa se



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káti. It includes various shades of meaning. To glory in something is to revel in it, to rejoice in it, to find your joy in it, your pride in it, to trust in it, to rely on it, to live for it. What we glory in is the thing that obsesses us, that engrosses us, that is the object of our confidence; it’s our obsession. And every man has something for which he lives or of which he boasts. And for the Christian it is the cross. It’s not even the birth of Christ nor His life and teaching nor His resurrection, etcetera. It’s the cross. Now then, what did Paul mean? How do we unfold that? I think it would be legitimate at this stage to say, well this comes very near the end of his letter to the Galatians. What does this letter tell us about the cross that could throw light upon what Paul means by this phrase? And then I would take up perhaps three or four of the great texts in this letter about the cross.

First, we glory in the cross as the way of our acceptance. The great question of religion is how can I be accepted by God? I’m a lost and guilty sinner. How can He accept me in His presence? Well Galatians 3:13 has a great statement here that “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” in order that the blessing (next verse 14), “that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”

Now here are verses that talk about a curse and a blessing. And they tell us that in order to receive the blessing that God gave to Abraham—a blessing that Paul interprets in terms not only of acceptance, but of the gift of the Spirit—Jesus Christ bore the curse. He was cursed that we might receive the blessing. He bore the curse that we might inherit the blessing. And one could enlarge on the substitutionary atonement and this amazing truth that although in verse 10 we’re told that we are under the curse of the law. “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t abide by everything written in the book of the law, and do them.” Yet Christ was made a curse for us. So we’re redeemed from the curse, and we inherit the blessing. No wonder you glory in the cross. And again one would enlarge on the wonder of Christ’s atoning death and the fact that still for the Christian it should be more real to him today than on the day of his conversion. Because the blessing that we enjoy today is due to the curse that Christ bore that day. Are we glorying in the cross as the only way of acceptance?

But secondly, we glory in the cross not only as the way of acceptance, but as the pattern of our self-denial. Well we go back to Galatians 6:14 and we see this very interesting thing that any true



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exposition would bring out that Paul says, “God forbid I should glory, except in the cross of Christ,” that is, in His crucifixion. But by this crucifixion of Christ, the world has been crucified to me and I have been crucified to the world. So the verse speaks of two crucifixions, not one. It speaks not only of the crucifixion of Christ but of my crucifixion unto the world, not of course to the people of the world but to the standards of the world. We are called to serve the people of the world but to reject the standards of the world. And not only is the world crucified, but in the verse that we were brought in chapel incidentally the other day (Galatians 5:24), we ourselves, our flesh, our fallen nature, has been crucified. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So the cross in a Christian’s experience is not just the cross of Christ through which we are accepted, it is a pattern for our own self-denial. And this is a development of the metaphor that Jesus Himself used when He said that we must take up the cross and follow Him. And if you’re following Christ when you’re carrying a cross, there’s only one place you can follow Him to. And that is the place of crucifixion, because anybody carrying a cross in Palestine was on his way to crucifixion. So if Jesus said, “take up your cross and follow me,” we’ve got to follow Him to the place of execution. As Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him die.” So are we glorying in the cross in that way too, that it’s not only the way of acceptance, it’s the pattern of our self-denial?

But then thirdly, it is the substance of our witness. The cross is to be as central to our Christian witness as it is to our justification and our sanctification. So that Paul can say, for example, in this same letter (3:1), “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you . . . before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Here Paul sums up his preaching ministry as a public portrayal of Christ crucified, as it were, demonstrating Him on a public billboard, setting Him forth before their eyes, making the crucifixion a contemporary, existential, visible phenomenon, something they could see before their eyes as having happened. And this is the work of the Christian witness: to bring the cross out of the first century, as it were. Although it happened then and can never be repeated, yet it has to be brought out of the first century and publicly portrayed before people’s eyes in the twentieth-century so that they see it. And this is our task in bearing witness to Christ. It is to bear witness to Christ crucified.

Well now this is what Paul meant by glorying in the cross. And I think one could quite easily carry that home to people by a series



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Lesson 18 of 20

of very personal questions as to how far we’re glorying in the cross today, that it’s central in our living and our thinking and our witnessing, so that it’s not an accident that a cross is the symbol of Christianity.

Now I’ve time only for one paragraph. And I want, if I may, to take a very well-known paragraph and finish in my last five minutes on this. And that’s at the end of Matthew 11, the context in which the “come unto me” invitation is set. And I reckon there are many, many preachers who’ve preached on Matthew 11:28, “Come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” and have never seen the verse in its context. And yet as one is meditating on—supposing one begins one’s preparation by saying, well I’m going to preach on “Come unto me”—one of the immediate questions that would come into our mind is, well who is this “me” who is speaking who says, “Come unto me?” What does the context tell us about this “me” to whom we are to come? And we look back in the Revised Standard Version, it’s all part of the same paragraph (verses 25–27). This “me” is speaking, and Jesus declares, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and clever and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such is thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son. Anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come unto me.”

Now as I meditated on those words, what stood out for me is the repetition of the word revealed. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it yourselves. But verse 27 is, “No one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” So the first statement Christ makes is that God is only revealed in Christ, and by Christ, true, God is revealed in nature, in history, in our conscience, in lesser ways. But ultimately and fully, He is revealed only in Christ. And nobody knows the Father except the Son. And nobody knows the Son except the Father. And again nobody knows the Father except those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. He is uniquely competent to reveal the Father, because nobody knows the Father except Himself. So God is only revealed by Christ. But the other phrase about revealed is in verse 25 where he says that “God has hidden these things from the wise and clever and revealed them to babes.” So the second statement is that God is only revealed to babies. He’s only revealed in Christ, and He’s only revealed to babies, to those, that is, not who are young in years but who are childlike in their approach, who come with the open, unprejudiced, humble mind of a little child. Now


Christ-Centered Learning — Anytime, Anywhere

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Illustrations of Biblical Preaching I: Verses and Short ParagraphsLesson 18 of 20

there are two tremendous statements that Christ makes, two claims He makes. He can reveal God to you, but He will only reveal God to you if you become like a baby.

Now it is this person who makes those two tremendous assertions who then issues two invitations. The first is “come to me” and the second is “take my yoke upon you.” Now when you come to Him, we come heavy-laden and laboring. He likens mankind to oxen, not a very complimentary picture. But we’re like oxen laboring under a yoke that chafes on our back and heavy-laden with a burden, a misfit yoke and a heavy burden. And one would go into the burdens we have particularly of sin and guilt. When you come to Christ, He lifts the burden. He eases the yoke, He gives you rest. But that’s not the only thing He invites us to do. He goes on and says, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light” so that when we come to Christ there is an exchange. We lose our burden, but we gain His burden. He eases our yoke, but He puts His yoke upon us in its place. But the beautiful thing is that although our burden is heavy, He says, “My burden is light.” We’re heavy-laden, but His burden is light. Our yoke is the misfit one that we labor under, but His yoke is easy; it fits. What is this light burden and easy yoke? Well He says, “Learn from me.” It’s Christian discipleship. I’m gentle and lowly in heart. I’ll put this yoke upon you and this burden upon you, and it is an easy yoke of a daily Christian discipleship.

So then one would end by putting the two together and say how balanced is the invitation of Christ. And there are too many people who want to come to Christ to lose their burden, but they don’t want to gain Christ’s burden. They want to have their yoke eased, but they don’t want to get Christ’s yoke. But we can’t pick and choose in the invitations of Jesus. And the wonderful thing is that in both invitations the promise is rest. That is, you come to Me, the yoke is eased, the burden is lifted; and I will give You rest (verse 28). “Take my yoke upon you [my burden], and you will find rest.” There is a double promise of rest. But rest is found not only in losing our burden but rest is found also in gaining Christ’s burden. Well that’s an example of seeing this “come unto me” that is so familiar in its context and seeing the invitation enriched by the context in which it comes. Well tomorrow we’ll have some examples of longer paragraphs and one or two whole chapters if we have time.

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Illustrations of Biblical Preaching I: Verses and Short Paragraphs · 2019. 9. 13. · is of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ. One could enlarge on this how