The Kind of Preaching We
Need
By: Vance
Havner
In these wild and
weird and wicked times, the work of the preacher is
being rethought and revamped and reexamined. Some think
the preacher is just to be an equipper of the laymen for
their ministry. He's been pushed from the center of the
platform to the wings in favor of celebrated experts and
entertainers. But the Book still says, "How shall they
hear without a preacher?" (Rom.
10:14).
What kind of
preaching do we need today? We need the same kind we've
always needed. Nothing important has changed. Just
because we've split the atom and sent a man to the moon
doesn't mean we need a new kind of Christianity. We have
a new kind of preacher in some quarters, but we don't
need him.
1. The
preaching that we do need is apostolic.
Of course,
there are no apostles today in the original sense, but
an apostle is one sent, and a preacher is also a man
sent from God. The apostles studied at the feet of Jesus
Christ. Our Lord said, "Learn of me," and that means
studying in the school of Christ Himself. It's
possible to have a magna cum laude from a college and be
a first-grader in the school of Jesus Christ. The
apostolic preacher was anointed
by the Holy
Spirit....
2. The
preaching that we need today must be authoritative.
My Lord taught us
having authority and not as the
scribes.
Too much today
sounds like the scribes. There's no king in Israel;
every man does what is right in his own eyes.
Authority goes out, and anarchy comes in. Jesus met
the devil not in His own name, not in His own power, but
with the Scriptures: "It is written.... It is
written.... It is written." If He could defeat the devil
with three verses out of Deuteronomy, we ought to
be able to do it with the whole
Bible.
3. Then it
must be absolute.
This is a day of
relativism. Right used to be right, and wrong used to be
wrong. Now black and white have been smudged into
indefinite gray. We've had two wars that we've neither
won nor lost. We're afraid to win them and ashamed to
lose them. But General Douglas MacArthur summed it up
when he said, "There's no substitute for
victory."
Joseph Parker said
of Spurgeon, "The only colors Mr. Spurgeon knew were
black and white. In all things he was definite. You were
either in or out, up or down, alive or
dead.
4. It ought
to be affectionate.
"Speaking the
truth in love" (Eph. 4:15). Some preach the truth and
don't have love. Some preach love and don't have the
truth. Get the mixture right. You have to mix it. A man
puts one foot in hot water and the other foot in ice
water and feels very uncomfortable. But when he mixes
the waters, he's quite all right.
The truth will
keep you from dissolving into sentimentality; love
will keep you from hardening into
severity.
5. Finally,
it ought to be apocalyptic
preaching.
Beloved, we're
living in a terrible time, in a day of beasts and seals
and trumpets and four horsemen and the harlot on the
beast and scorpions and dragons and a sea of glass
mingled with fire and earthquakes and falling stars
and
Babylon and the
bottomless pit and the lake of fire and Gog and Magog
and six-six-six and the downfall of the devil and the
great white city coming down.
It's no time to
tiptoe through the tulips in the administrative end. In
such an hour, good news is bad news and bad news is good
news. "When they shall say peace and safety" sounds like
good news, but no: "Destruction
cometh."
Good news is bad
news. "But when you see all these things come to pass,
famines, wars and rumors of wars, men's hearts failing
them for fear," that is bad news. But "lift up your
heads; for your redemption draweth
nigh."
It's a great day
for preaching-apostolic, authoritative, absolute,
affectionate, and apocalyptic.
"Even so,
come, Lord Jesus."
