Concerning Sermon (5): The Message

This will tread on thin ice.

Four preceding parts dealt with:
  Preach to the heart;
  Expository preaching;
  Talk to me, don’t teach;
  Preacher, it’s not about you.
Respectively, they dealt with the purpose, schema, the audience, the preacher.
It is now time to address—the message.

There are plenty of ways to discuss what a message should centre on. Examples are:
  Doctrinal topics such as salvation, righteousness of God, mercy of God, etc.,
  Contemporary topics such as social justice, poverty, climate change, etc.,
  Charismatic topics such as God’s vision, Church’s future, national destiny, etc.

But it’s like coming up with the Rule of Faith, or asking “which is the greatest commandment?” It’ll lead to endless debates.

So rather, this piece takes a different tack.

A message should be something that is from the speaker’s heart impacting the hearers’ hearts, regardless of content.
Philip Brooks once said, it’s truth through personality.
So it has got to come through, heart to heart.

Rick Warren once said something like this: I don’t love preaching; just love the people I am preaching to.

It’s indeed more important to know the difference between the two, rather than each individually. But unfortunately not a few preachers just love preaching. Their messages will never be fit for a sermon, though maybe for seminars.

A message must originate from the heart and mind that look lovingly on the audience.
Such a preacher feels for the congregation and will beg for God’s provision of message not to wow them but to comfort them.
And the congregation will with the Spirit feel spoken to and encouraged.

It is never a product of calculated communication skills or rhetorics. That is the subject of Paul’s criticism in 1 Corinthians, Paul’s emphasis can’t be missed.

If it is billed as “from God,” it’s stressing on the speakers inspiration.
If it is aimed to be “oriented towards audience,” its emphasis is on customer satisfaction.
If it is derived from the text itself, it’s the message that’s to be discussed here.

The message itself must be aligned with the purpose of the text, what it is intended to achieve, not what’s by speaker’s inspiration or for customer’s satisfaction.

Take the parable of the prodigal son.

First look at the parable undoubtedly yields teachings on the father-son dynamics, on repentance, forgiveness, and eventually father’s love towards the prodigal.
No complaint.

Then an expanded look will conclude that the father-son dynamics can’t be complete without the elder brother. Would he join in rejoicing because of the return of his prodigal brother?
No complaint there too.

A further expanded look will notice that the prodigal son parable is but the integral and final, albeit climatic, leg of a trilogy that reverberated with the refrain on lost-and-found in God’s eye.
No complaint there either.

A final expanded examination must shine light on what prompted Jesus to tell the trilogy, circumstances surrounding Jesus then:
Namely, that those self-righteous persons despised and rejected those of more questionable social or moral standing!
No complaint, period.

So what’s the message?
What’s it that aligns and reverberates with the purpose?

Taking the entire Luke Chapter 15, an inescapable message is this:
Don’t reject sinners but instead seek and embrace them so as to rejoice at their return; that’s what God wants. Church in particular must act that way.

This fits the context recorded in Luke 15:1-3:
Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them!
So Jesus told them this story:

Perhaps it would be great to check if that aligns with the purpose dictated by the larger context, the Luke Gospel.
But that would be straying too far.
Suffice to show that the Gospel begins with a despised group bracing the elements of a winter night!
A group given up as lost got the celebrated evangel!

It’s not enough to preach on the benefit of repentance alone.
Nor the mercy of the Father.
It must also target those sitting in pews in churches, having enjoyed a special relationship daily with the Father.

There lies the force of the message, borne out by the function of the trilogy of parable, designed to combat the deep seated despise of the self-righteous.

Anything less would be scandalous.

Sure, there must be room in the message to expand on the prejudice of the elder brother, the depravity of the prodigal, and the seemingly unjustified grace and love of the father.

But the main thrust of the text must stick like Crazy Glue to those self righteous.
It’s insufficient to shame them.
That’s never the primary role for a sermon to be polemic.
It’s rather to appeal to the hearers “sense of good”, and get the desired response!

Jesus came to reconcile.
All those unworthy.
What a failure if 2000 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, those high up in churches, Government, and in general society, still live like those in Luke 15:1-2!

If that happens, Christianity failed miserably.