In his inaugural sermon at Bethlehem Baptist Church John Piper said he longed for a particular sound to mark the congregation.

If I could choose a symbolic sound that Bethlehem Baptist Church would come to be known for, you know what it would be? The swish of the pages of 500 Bibles turning simultaneously to the morning and evening texts.

When was the last time you heard such swishing of pages in a church service? I bet it’s been a  l o n g  time. The ubiquitous use of smart phones and tablets has relegated the printed Bible to a minority in corporate worship. And that’s ok. Piper would even agree.

We would do well, however, to remember why he wanted to hear the sound in the first place:

The reason [why I want the sound of swishing pages is this]: the source of my authority in this pulpit is not—as we shall soon see—my wisdom; nor is it a private revelation granted to me beyond the revelation of Scripture. My words have authority only insofar as they are the repetition, unfolding and proper application of the words of Scripture. I have authority only when I stand under authority. And our corporate symbol of that truth is the sound of your Bibles opening to the text.

Yes and amen. It’s all about authority.

But if symphonic rustling of pages belongs to an era gone by is there any contemporary replacement? Is there anything we ought to long for as a sign of where our authority in preaching lies?

HOLY BOBBLE HEADS

I would argue the best congregational sign of preacher rooted in biblical authority is in the sighting of what I like to call “holy bobble heads.” I want to see a congregation look up at the preacher and then look down at the text, look up at the preacher and then look down at the text.

It is a terrible experience to sit in the congregation and listen to the preacher’s rhetoric for twenty minutes before he summons you to look at the particular passage he is supposed to exposit. What he doesn’t realize is that, in all likelihood, he has just implicitly stated his authority lies in his rhetoric more than the theopneustos Scripture.

No, dear preacher, read your text at the beginning and never let long go by before you tell your people, “Look at verse . . .,” “Notice what happens next in . . .,” or, “See how he concludes the argument in verse . . .” Your authority is in that Holy Book, so tell them – frequently – to look down at The Book.

In his recent book Taking God At His Word Kevin DeYoung notes how the sanctified bouncing of heads is Berean movement:

When I speak at different conferences and churches, I’m often surprised how few people bother to look at their Bibles when I’m speaking. Be it laziness, forgetfulness, or something else, it’s not a good habit. I have no authority in myself. I don’t want people to just take my word for it. God’s people should be testing everything against God’s word. Whether we are the ones teaching or listening, we need to have our Bibles open like the Bereans. (75)

Preacher, you can help them be like the Bereans with consistently pointing their eyes back to your passage.

PREACHING IN AND NOT ABOUT

I’ve said before that in the delivery of preaching there is a great difference between preaching at the sheep and preaching among the sheep. Don’t you love distinctions? When done wisely they are like flint for our sermon swords. There is another distinction which lays at the heart of this issue of rooting your preaching in the authority of God’s word: we must preach in the text, not merely about the text.

You likely have experienced the distinction before. One sermon proposes to expound a passage of Scripture and says many true things about the text, but one leaves feeling the preacher invited the congregation on a holy float across the sea of Scripture. There are things surely worse than floating. Many contemporary preachers are content to sit on the sands far removed from the biblical waters. But we can and must do better than a leisurely float. We must summon our congregation through the sermon to a high-pressure, deep dive in the waters of God’s truth.

We herald the matters of life and death; so it is indeed a high-pressure endeavor. And it must also be deep. Jesus washes His church in His word by having His preachers soak their sermons in His word. Descend down to the depths of truth each week. So tell them to look down there with you!

Preach in the text, not merely about the text.

Help your people become holy bobble heads.

Give them the rich portions of His word.

And summon them to see it.

David Helm begins his fabulous little book Expositional Preaching with a portrait of the great Charles Simeon.

Helm says Simeon’s preaching “had something that much of our preaching lacks.” What might that be? “Simeon believed,” Helm writes, “that a simple and clear explication of the Bible is what makes a church healthy and happy. Biblical exposition does the heavy lifting of building a church.”

Simeon once said,

My endeavor is to bring out of Scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head; never to speak more or less than I believe to be the mind of the Spirit in the passage I am expounding.

And this is exactly what is lacking in so much of the popular preaching today. Helm says we need preaching “committed to staying on the line, never rising above the text of Scripture to say more than it said and never falling beneath the text by lessening its force and fullness.”

WHAT EXPOSITION REALLY IS

Many of us experientially know how spot on Helm is. We have sat through preaching that claimed to be expositional, but was far from the true ideal. Sure, the preacher was sequentially walking through a book of the Bible, but lectio continua does not make one an expositor. It is oh so easy to take a text and pull out from it something that isn’t there. Maybe it is the classic “right doctrine from the wrong text,” or it is increasingly likely that a preacher using the text a launching pad for personal musings on just about everything.

One thing that will protect us against unintended imposition on the text is a clear, and right, understanding of what expositional preaching really is. David Helm’s definition is as good as I’ve come across. He says,

Expositional preaching is empowered preaching that rightly submits the shape and emphasis of the sermon to the shape and emphasis of the biblical text.

The strength of his definition, for me at least, is his employment of “shape and emphasis.” If the sermon gets this right then you can bet it brings out of the text what the Holy Spirit put there, not what the preacher thinks is there.

WHAT EXPOSITION SOUNDS LIKE

Paying attention to shape and emphasis bears significantly on structure and delivery. For example, I recently preached a sermon on Mark 14:12-31 where the author employs one of his favorite literary sandwiches. Three sections in the text meant three divisions in the sermon. I could have easily come up with five divisions, but at that point my sermon is not as clearly reflecting the shape of the text. Furthermore, this Markan sandwich exists to emphasize the self-sacrifice of Christ that is announced in the Lord’s Supper. So, my attempt to mirror the text’s emphasis meant devoting most of my explanation and application to 14:22-25.

Now, we ought to mention how much tone comes into play in this understanding of exposition. If comforting promises fill the text, our tone ought to have distinct warmth and sympathy. If threatenings or judgments are emphasized, our voice must have prophetic courage. This kind of attention to emphasis protects the preacher from becoming a one-chord band. Ican point you to many a preacher who are like Creed or Nickleback; no matter the content the song always sounds the same.

STIR ‘EM UP

Decades after his ordination Charles Simeon reflected on his early preaching ministry by saying,

I undertook the care of [of a friend’s church] and I have reason to hope that some good was done there. In the space of a month or six weeks the church became quite crowded; the Lord’s Table was attended by three times the usual number of communicants, and a considerable stir was made among the dry bones. (quoted in Helm, 111).

Work hard this week in your preparation to feed God’s sheep. Labor to rightly submit the shape and emphasis of your sermon to the shape and emphasis of the text. Then go and make a considerable stir among the dry bones.

A few months ago I offered three advantages a manuscript will bring for the ordinary preacher: clarity, sensitivity, and usability.

If one decides preaching from a manuscript is best for his ministry, the decision making is not done. He must then settle on exactly how to format his manuscript: font choice, size, and color being a few things that come to mind.

A DIVERSITY OF EXAMPLES

Several years ago Josh Harris ran a fascinating and edifying series on his blog called, “Preaching Notes (Round 1, Round 2)”. He asked a few well-known preachers to send along whatever resource they took into the pulpit on a recent Sunday: manuscript, outlines, or stick note. Here are a couple examples from men that manuscript their sermons:

• Mark Dever
• David Platt
• Kevin DeYoung
• While I am not sure it is “properly” a manuscript, Tim Keller’s method is nonetheless amazing!

Clearly no two manuscripts are alike and, in many ways, they appear to reflect the preacher’s individual personality. Some have hand-written annotations, while others are more keen on employing font formatting.

A COLOR-CODED SCRIPT

Page 4 of my sermon on Mark 14:12-31.

If Josh ever comes along and ask for my manuscript – not in this life! – you’d see a plethora of color. My manuscripts are color-coded, which means:

• Any Scripture quotation is in blue
• Any extra-biblical quotation is in green
• Any illustration, analogy, or metaphor is in red
• Any application is in orange
• The gospel call to unbelievers is in maroon
• Any exposition or explanation is in black

I’ve found color-coding the manuscript to be uniquely helpful in preparation and delivery. When I am preparing a sermon I can generally get a sense of the content’s development by the color. For example, if look at an entire page without any orange (application) or red (illustration, analogy, etc.) it’s likely my exposition of certain points is far too long-winded. Or if I look at a page and see half of it in red, I have fallen off the other side of the horse and the illustrations are taking over. What I am looking for is appropriate balance in color, mostly black and blue, with some subset of color shading each page (my sermons generally run six pages long).

The color-coding is also incredibly useful during sermon delivery. I am a visual learner who functionally memorizes his manuscript. The color helps me quickly situate my mind on any given page of the sermons so that I rarely need to search for particular content. This is particularly useful when I want to read a quote; all I need to do is seen green on the page and start reading. My goal in all this is that my use of a manuscript never becomes obtrusive to my delivery.

Another benefit is that I often do not have to read any specifics of the text the get my homiletical bearings, but only see the color to know what’s coming next. So in the screen-shot above, if I look down when making the point about the Lord’s Supper being an eschatological announcement, I will see a chunk of red and orange coming and thus immediately know the exposition is followed by illustration and application. The color alone is often sufficient to summon the individual parts to memory.

But don’t just take my word for it. If you are a manuscript man feelingly a stuck on black and white, take a dance on the wild side and try color-coding your content. You might be surprised how useful it is.

One of the greatest things a pastor can do is sit under the preaching of God’s word. It’s also one of the hardest.

The difficulty, for many pastors, is their tendency to hear a sermon with critical ears. They are quick to point out where the exegesis was wrong or how the delivery was less than desirable. And many guys I know where this as a badge of ministerial honor. But is it really a good thing? I think not.

What is good is hearing and receiving God’s word with discernment, which is a very different thing than receiving it with criticism. The line between discernment can criticism can be quite fine, but it is nevertheless one on which we would do well to faithfully tread.

I am in the midst of a two week stretch of not preaching at IDC and am thus learning this lesson once again. I recently listened to a Q&A session at Westminster Theological Seminary with John Piper where he was asked to speak to this very issue. His answer is characteristically wise and helpful.

Any preacher would do well to listen to this challenging and edifying five minute clip.

I have written before (here, here, and here) about the great weight I often feel after preaching. That descent from the sacred desk is a walk normally filled with steps of despair and discouragement.

I am always helped to know I am not alone in the struggle. Such encouragement came earlier this week from On Being a Pastorby Derek Prime and Alistair Begg. Their chapter on preaching ends with a section on “The Perils of Preaching,” which mentions the peril of “despair and sense of failure.”

The following back and forth between Prime and Begg was valuable for me to hear, as I bet it would be for any preacher.

Derek Prime: “I doubt if there has been a Sunday I have preached when I have not had some [despair or sense of failure]. On occasions I have known deep despair because I have felt I have been so clumsy in my presentation of the truth. At such times we need to remind ourselves of God’s call. I have come to recognize that God allows such things to happen so that I cultivate the humility that befits a teacher of His word and to teach me my constant dependence on Him. One of the most humbling experiences I know is to discover afterward that on the occasions when I felt I did badly, God has been pleased to work in a special way in people’s lives!”

Alistair Begg: “I am encouraged to know that Derek feels this way. I had hoped that this sense would pass with time. But it hasn’t. As I stood to preach this past Sunday, I felt as though I was standing in a telephone box, and, although I could see the people outside and could hear my own voice (usually a bad sign), I had no assurance that they could hear me. Eric Alexander told a gathering of ministers that when he left the pulpit and returned to his vestry, he found himself saying out loud, ‘Lord, I am sorry.’ Lloyd-Jones was as outspoken on this matter as any I have read. ‘Any man who has had some glimpse of what it is to preach will inevitably feel that he has never preached. But he will go on trying, hoping that by the grace of God one day he may truly preach.'”

So preacher, if you often sense despair take comfort from these brothers, and by God’s grace, go on preaching!

Yesterday I prepared the first draft of my sermon for this Saturday on Mark 13 and kept thinking to myself how the text demands an unusual amount of what I would call “teaching.”

I thought to myself, “Is that a good thing? Shouldn’t I have more ‘preaching’ in the sermon?” Then I remembered Jason Meyer’s helpful discussion on the relationship between teaching and preaching in his excellent book Preaching: A Biblical Theology.

TEACHING VS. PREACHING?

He says that preaching has three phases: stewarding, heralding, and encountering. The stewarding phase focuses on the content of preaching, the heralding phase focuses on the tone of preaching, and the encountering phase focuses on the reception of preaching.

He believes, and rightly so in my view, that the two terms stewarding and heralding help us understand the relationship between teaching and preaching. “I believe preaching refers to how something is stated (in a heraldic way), while teaching focuses on the content of what is said (unpacking something)” (24). He goes on to say,

Another reason why people should not sharply distinguish preaching and teaching is that the two are often used interchangeably in Scripture. For example, the response to Jesus’ most famous sermon (the Sermon on the Mount) defines the sermon as ‘teaching’ (Matt. 7:28). In the same way, a verse in Romans sheds light on the interchangeable nature of the terms. Paul lays down a general statement for the Jews: ‘You then who teach others, do you not teach yourselves?’ (Rom. 2:21). When he give an example of this principle, he uses the term ‘preach’: ‘While you preach against stealing, do you steal?’ (2:21).

Therefore, the combination of the terms stewarding and heralding honors the intricate connection in Scripture between preaching and teaching. (24)

In short, preaching has to do with tone and teaching with content.

The best sermons preach and teach. They provide an education in Christ leading the soul to exultation of Christ. The next time you ascend to the sacred desk be both a steward and a herald.

Teach in your preaching and preach in your teaching.