Attention to the Work of the Spirit⤒🔗

Not so long ago Dr. A. vanBrummelen, a Dutch Reformed minister, published a brochure, entitled De bevinding in de prediking (Experience in Preaching) in which he makes a strong plea for what he calls "experiential preaching" ¹ VanBrummelen is convinced that the experience of God's children ought to have a place in the preaching. He does not wish to take this experience as one-sided, as it was done in a later form of Pietism, but to understand it as the experience of faith. There is an internal side to this experience, a side which has an inward aspect directed towards the heart, but it also has an external side, a side which has an outward aspect directed towards the activity of good works. For that reason he concludes that the whole of our lives should receive attention in the sermon. The preaching may not remain silent about our calling in work, school, society and state. Belief finds its expression in all areas of life, and, therefore, preaching must account these various experiences.

Even though VanBrummelen sees experience in broad terms, the inner faith experience is still the experience par excellence for him. He consid­ers the believer's heart, the inner chamber, to be the territory of experience. "There we find the lustre of the communion with God, which colours all the other things. We do not separate the hidden life from the public life, however, we do make a distinction. In the inner chamber we rejoice and lament. There we receive strength and confess guilt. There especially we meditate on the ways of the Lord."²

If the preaching is truly to be experiential, then it should speak about what goes on in the heart of God's child. "On the pulpit we may and we must deal with the ways of God with His people according to the Scriptures. We need to be the interpreter of what God by His Spirit works in the hearts of His people, when we proclaim what the soul feels, when the Spirit sheds light over the work performed in the hearts of the believers." ³

Only when preaching deals with what takes place in the hearts of the believers in this way, does it become truly priestly and pastoral. "When this conscientious, experiential preaching is lacking much obscurity and insecurity about our state before God arises due to lack of knowledge. In connection with God's Word the preacher ought to describe how the Holy Spirit, as a rule, works and in what way spiri­tual life develops. Experiential preaching is also medical, or rather medicinal, preaching. Spiritual deviations must be described, their causes must be traced and the medicine for them must be pre­scribed. Only then healing can be expected."⁴

VanBrummelen does not want preaching to be wrapped in this experientialism. He pleads for a "relative place". The light of God's Word must shine over all of life. The experience, however, must find a "discreet" place in the sermon, otherwise the warmth will be lost.⁵ VanBrummelen belongs to the Gereformeerde Bond in the Dutch Reformed Church. Whoever is somewhat familiar with the ecclesiasti­cal maps, knows that the preaching varies from one Bond congregation to another.⁶

Not every Bond minister will agree with everything vanBrummelen writes. The fact, however, remains that many in the Bond whole-heartedly support the plea for experi­ential preaching.

C. Graafland says this about preaching in the circle of the "Bonders":

concerning the Hervormd­-Gereformeerd preaching, we prefer to speak of a Scriptural-experiential preaching. What that means is not easily said. This preach­ing, in the first place, strives to be the administration of the Word, an exegesis of the Scrip­tures. Therefore, actuality preaching is contraband. It must be proclamation of God's Word, but then in such a way that the thrust of it is directed towards people, believers in the first place, but also towards those who are outside the faith. The life of faith and the call for it has an important place in this kind of preach­ing. One is not satisfied with exegesis only, neither with the teaching of doctrine, but the application must also be included. The work of the Holy Spirit occupies a large place.⁷

Experiential preaching is not promoted within the Bond only. Also within the Free Reformed Churches the necessity of this type of preaching is accented. In fact the very character and strength of the Free Reformed Churches is said to lie in its experiential preaching. ⁸

Christ must be preached, not only in the salvation obtained for us, but also in the working of that salvation in us.

J.H. Velema writes:

We understand experien­tial preaching as making a connection with the heart of the sinner, so the work of Christ through His Spirit penetrates into the human heart. Experiential preach­ing is that type of preaching in which the Holy Spirit finds a place.⁹

W. Kremer stresses that the preaching must give spiritual guidance. 'The confession has the congre­gation and its members in mind. And among the members there is great variety. It speaks in the church about hypocrites, about true faith and about false repentance. It also speaks about the marks of true Christians and knows about the variety, as it becomes apparent in degree, measure and state of faith. The confession keeps in mind the growth, the weakness, the battle, in short the way in which the Mediator is known and the treasures of the covenant which are given, received and enjoyed.' ¹⁰

For the years after the Liberation of 1944 depu­ties of the Free Reformed Churches and the Reformed Churches (Liberated) met in dialogue. In these discussions preaching was a constant subject. The Free Reformed Churches had many objections to the preaching in the Liberated churches. Free Reformed deputies emphasized that "the mystery of rebirth and faith must be preached in depth, neces­sity, beauty and fruits."¹¹ The scriptural-spiritual preaching, which is the inheritance of the Secession, may not be relinquished.¹²

When the Liberated deputies inquired about the con­tent of the so-called "spiritual-confessional principle", as it had been brought out from the Free Reformed side, their deputies answered: "in theol­ogy, preaching and other official work it must be remembered that God Himself by His Spirit, makes clear in the confession that the believer must live according to the confessed truth."¹³

The Free Reformed deputies referred to the Canons of Dort which pictures the life of faith in its struggles and temptations, in its degrees and growth. The question was asked whether the Liberated churches took that into account in their preaching.

This dialogue took place some years ago. No doubt the deputies of the Free Reformed Churches would express themselves differently today. There has also been a development in the Free Reformed Churches with regard to the preaching. Yet, I think I may state that experiential preaching is still de­fended in these circles. Much attention is paid to the experience of faith, the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart and the guidance given to the life of faith.¹⁴

The Preaching of the Secession←⤒🔗

The Free Reformed deputies spoke about the "in­heritance of the Secession" in connection with a scriptural-spiritual preaching. It can, indeed, be said that in the preaching of the Secession attention was paid to the experience of faith in a more narrow sense.¹⁵ One should, however, not forget that ini­tially there were various trends in the churches of the Secession.¹⁶

In the 1840's and 1850's the so-called "Drentse school", under the leadership of Rev. H. Jotters, was very dominant. This school of thought was closely allied to the preaching of the men of the Nadere Reformatie. W. a Brakel was the undisputed leader of this movement.¹⁷

In it the experience of faith held a dominant place in the sermon because it was thought that the surety of belonging to God's people rested on noticing those marks in oneself.

The function of preaching with that view contains: first, the explanation and recommendation of the truth to all; second, the assurance that those in whose heart the Holy Spirit already works and lives, will also receive God's promises, and will be added to the Book of Life; and, third, guidance to the recipients of the preaching in their search and judge­ment of the forms, experiences, marks of their faith, from which it is shown that the Spirit has made a beginning of saving work in them.¹⁸

When the influence of Calvin became stronger in the churches of the Secession, through the work of de Cock, Brummelkam, Pieters and Keulen, the opinion of the "Drentse" trend diminished steadily. The attention paid to the forms and the experience of faith in the preaching, however, remained. Doubt, lack of faith, darkness and temptation in the lives of God's children are mentioned repeatedly.

The Canons of Dort←⤒🔗

The Free Reformed deputies also referred to the Canons of Dort. Indeed, this confession portrays faith with all of its struggles, growth and tempta­tions. On this point the Canons unmistakably link up with the reformers Luther and Calvin, who both knew about the temptations of faith.

"The Canons are not at all a scholastic text‑book, they wish to serve life and have a good pastoral tendency."¹⁹

• In I, 12 it is said that the elect are assured of their election when they observe "in themselves, with spiritual joy and holy delight, the unfailing fruits of election pointed out in the Word of God — such as a true faith in Christ, a childlike fear of God, a godly sorrow for their sins and a hungering and thirsting after righteousness." We also hear about people who have not yet come to a believing life before the Lord.
   
• In V, 2 the life of the believers is sketched as follows: they constantly "humble themselves before God, flee to the crucified Christ, put the flesh to death more and more through the Spirit of prayer and by holy exercises of godliness, and long for the goal of perfection."
   
• In V, 4 it is said that the converted can "turn aside through their own fault from the guidance of grace. They must therefore constantly watch and pray that they may not be led into temptation."
   
• In V, 5 we find that the converted "by gross sins" can "greatly offend God, incur deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, suspend the exercise of faith, very grievously wound they consciences and sometimes for a while lose the sense of God's favour."
   
• In V, 9 we confess that the believers "are certain of this preservation of the elect to salvation accord­ing to the measure of their faith."
   
• In V, 11 reference is made to Scripture which "testifies that believers in this life have to struggle with various doubts of the flesh and, placed under severe temptation, do not always feel this assurance of faith and certainty of persevering."

It would be a serious mistake to think that the Canons only speak about election and rejection. It deals, in great detail, with the work of the Holy Spirit in the rebirth and renewal of men. Also the life of the believer in its high and low points and, in its growth of grace and sinful decline is described.

Those who wish to know about the life of God's children cannot leave this confession unread! The fathers of Dort again and again show great insight into what the Scriptures say about the subject and what pastoral experience teaches us concerning it.

Administration of the Word←⤒🔗

Preaching must be administra­tion of the Word. That implies that it must enter into the needs and questions of the congrega­tion. In it, when we truly wish to care for Christ's flock with the Word, we must take into account what the Canons of Dort say about the life of the believer.

Calvin, whose preaching was truly preaching of the promises, "had in his preaching a wide-open eye for variability in the life of faith and for the various situations of believers and unbelievers, but all of it is included in the same preaching, coupled to the confession of the one assurance of faith, namely he who believes belongs to the Lord forever." ²⁰

The Scriptures speak about doubt (James 1:16), lack of faith (Matthew 14:31), temptation (Luke 22:31), forsakenness (Psalm 22:2), ridicule (Psalm 42:10), darkness (Psalm 88:19), spiritual growth (Philippi^­ans 1:9, Ephesians 4:13) and the decline of grace (Hebrews 12:15). All of this has to be brought out in truly pastoral preaching. Augustine, Luther and Calvin preached a great deal on the Psalms. All three of them were great spiritual advisers. They realized how precisely the life and struggle of God's children are described, by the Holy Spirit, in the Psalms.

I would rather not call that kind of preaching "experiential" preaching. The term is explained by one as being this and by another as that.²¹ There certainly is no unanimity among those who plead for experiential preaching.

The word is also associated with the later phase of the Nadere Reformatie.²² In addition, in my opinion, it carries an anthropocentric characteristic. The preaching is typified from the experience of the believers. While the heart of man should be consid­ered in the preaching,²³ it is and must remain the proclamation of God's promises and demands.

The Psalms are not anthropocentric. Preaching on the Psalms does not proclaim the faith experience of God's children. The Psalms are songs of the Holy Spirit. In the Psalms God proclaims what He wishes to be for His covenant children. The "theme" of the Book of Psalms could well be: "the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He makes known to them His covenant" (Psalm 25). In the framework of that proclamation the Psalms speak about lack of faith, forsakenness, questioning God, self-confidence, un-confessed sins and a whole lot more. The darkness in human hearts is talked about, but all of it is imbedded in the preaching of mercy, the covenant faithfulness of the Lord to those who fear Him.

The Psalms are theocentric. The praise of the God of the covenant is sung. Within that framework, to speak with Luther, we see into the hearts of the saints. What the heart feels and experiences cannot be the centre of the preaching. Our experiences are not the rule, for they are always tainted by impurities and sin. The work of God is much broader and higher than what human hearts experience of it.

Whoever proposes that the preaching must give voice to what the heart of the believer experiences, misunderstands that preaching can only be the administration of God's Word and forgets that the human heart and its experience can never be the source of preaching.

I think that A. Kuyper was very wise when he sais:

 ...on the pulpit we may not give a description of the story as the preacher or other people have experienced it. Fortunately not! If that were the case, then we would hear nothing else but the continuous impure rendering of the dull, incomplete, and al­ways murky experiences of the soul. We must and may hear something far more beautiful in the assem­bly of believers. From the Scriptures we must bring God's own clear and pure message about our sin and our sorrow for it, our faith and our repentance, our struggle and our prayers, our despondency and our strength, our decline and our growth in faith. For everywhere in the Scriptures God writes about them in a certain connection, with a special tenor, under constantly changing views, and in their own place in the history of salvation.²⁴

C. Veenhof summarizes Kuyper's feelings on the subject as follows:

Jahweh, for example, made David experience and struggle with all sorts of things. Next, He inspired him and made him able to write songs about it all. That description is correct, for in the final analysis it was God who did it. That is what counts, not David's own — and then always incor­rect — description of his own experiences. No, David's poems are fragments of God's revelation. They were taken by God and placed above David's individual life, raised to that level where He speaks and reveals Himself to His children. If we have understood that, we hear in the Psalms of David not, in the first place, the personal expression of the personal experiences of the poet-king, but we hear the living God, who speaks in them about His own work for His own child.²⁵

Text and context←⤒🔗

The sections of the Canons of Dort about the experi­ence of faith need not be mentioned in every sermon for the preaching to be truly pastoral. That view has made the preaching of the later Nadere Reformatie and of many of the early Secession ministers very monotonous and schematic.²⁶

K. Dijk correctly says that:

the text determines the application. Whether the preaching will be an unfolding of the truth of salvation or a careful interpretation of the soul's experience is determined by the text. The text also decides whether it will speak about the salvation wrought by Christ, or about the salvation which the Spirit applies in us.²⁷

It is inadmissible to drag all sorts of unrelated matters into a sermon, regardless of how noble the pastoral motives may be. The preacher must let the text speak.

From this it is obvious how important the choice of the text is. If the preaching wishes to be truly pastoral, then the choice of texts cannot be one-sided. The minister of the Word has a great respon­sibility in his choice. He must, following Paul's example, proclaim "the whole will of God" (Acts 20:27). When the choice of texts is broad and varied, then the life of faith in all its nuances will be dealt with in the preaching.

Pastoral work has been correctly considered the context of the preaching. Whoever truly wishes to tend the sheep with the Word, must know the flock. Listening to the experiences and struggles of church members will equip and stimulate the preacher in his pulpit work. From the choice of text it must be clear that he knows the questions, temptations and cares of his members of the congregation.²⁸

Those who prefer experiential preaching often make a separation between the converted and the unconverted. The converted are further subdivided and each group is addressed separately.

In my opinion, this fragmented approach must be forcefully rejected. The preaching is to be directed to the whole congregation of Christ.²⁹ Nobody may break the congregation into groups and persons. In his letters, Paul always addresses the congregation, even though only some are erring (1 Corinthians 15:12) and only some are unruly, faint-hearted and weak persons (cf. 1 Thessolonians 5:14).

M.J. Arntzen is right when he writes:

The strugglers, the tempted and those who call from their very depth must be encouraged. The easy going, the indifferent, the self-assured and the people that boast about their attain­ments must be shocked into a beneficial uneasiness, so that more and more we learn to immerse our­selves in Christ's righteousness alone.³⁰

That is done not by addressing them separately, but by a varied choice of texts, so that the Word is admini­stered with force and from the love of Christ. Only in this way is the preaching truly distinct and dis­creet.³¹

One cannot appeal to Lord's Day 31 (H.C.) to justify the division of the congregation into groups. The Catechism takes for granted that the promise of forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to the congregation (cf. "to each and every believer"). That proclamation must be accompanied by the proclamation of judge­ment over everyone who does not believe.

M.J.C. Blok, in this connection, remarks:

Of course Lord's Day 31 does not split the congregation into two groups, wherein each receives a separate message. The promise of the Gospel is for 'each and everyone'. The hypocrites and the true believers both receive, and cannot do without, all those warnings, admonitions and threats.³²

God's promises are proclaimed to the whole congregation with, however, the de­mand for faith and repentance as the Canons of Dort state it in II, 5.

The Appropriative Work of the Spirit←⤒🔗

Those who plead for experiential preaching stress that preaching must do justice to the work of the Holy Spirit on and in people. "Experiential preach­ing, is that type of preaching in which the work of the Holy Spirit has a place."³³

The Free Reformed depu­ties had objection to the preaching in the Liberated churches because although,

the promises of the covenant in its fulfilment were identified and the imperative of faith was spoken about ... the appro­priation of salvation to the sinner by the Holy Spirit is not sufficiently taken into account. In connection with this word and Spirit are identified (by the Liberated), with the result that the powerful work of the Spirit in the rebirth of dead sinners in its neces­sity, depth, beauty and fruits is not brought to light.³⁴

The deputies were of the opinion that in the order of salvation rebirth is followed by faith and, therefore, in preaching the action of the Holy Spirit, by which a sinner is born again, must have our full attention. If the faith imperative is ranked first, there is a danger of Arminianism. Also in the matter of emphasizing the necessity of the Holy Spirit's work the Free Reformed deputies appeal to the Canons of Dort.³⁵

We agree that in the preaching constant atten­tion must be given to the appropriative work of the Spirit. Faith is a gift (cf. Ephesians 2:8). No one can say that Jesus is Lord without the Holy Spirit (cf.1 Corinthians 12:3). It is not accidental that the fathers of Dort, over against the Remonstrants, spoke so elaborately about the work of the Spirit in rebirth and renewal (cf. Canons of Dort III/IV). The same fathers, however, also said that the Gospel promise must be proclaimed along with the demand for faith and repentance (cf. Canons of Dort II, 5). The formu­lation is striking! The call for faith and repentance must be not preached (by which then the necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit is accented), but the promise of the Gospel (with the demand for faith and repentance). This promise includes the power­ful action of the Holy Spirit. Everything which man needs to obey is in the Gospel.

When that promise is correctly proclaimed to the congregation, then the work of the Spirit in and to us receives its proper place in the preaching.

N. Bruin puts it this way:

He who follows what is said in Free Reformed Churches about their own prin­ciple, gets the idea, that in fact the preaching of the necessity of rebirth as a work of the Holy Spirit is placed between the preaching of the Gospel promise and the congregation.³⁶

In my opinion, the appropriative work of the Spirit should not receive a separate place in the preaching. Whoever pleads for that takes away the comfort and the security from the congregation and robs the proclamation of the promise of its serious­ness. Then the congregation is again driven in the direction of the subjectivism of the later Nader Refor­matie. The awareness of "the marks" in oneself must then give certainty that one belongs to God's people and participates in the Spirit's work of grace.

Scriptural preaching also honours the work of the Holy Spirit, not by emphasizing that work and necessity separately, but by the proclamation of God's promise, and by presenting all that believers have in Christ: forgiveness of sins and the Spirit, who works faith (cf. Answer 74, H.C.).

C. Trimp writes:

True preaching of Christ is preaching of Christ for us and Christ in us. That is as true as that Romans 5 and 8 are in the Bible. With 'Christ in us' we think of the justification of our life before God in the blood of the cross; with 'Christ in us' we think of the sanctifi­cation of our life with God. Precisely in that work of dedication to God, Christ by His Holy Spirit is busy in our life. This Christ we may and must find back in ourselves, in our work and thoughts, in our sor­rows and joys. And why should we not find Him there, while He lives in us?³⁷

So the Spirit receives the place that belongs to Him and the congregation is saved from Arminianism.

Finally←⤒🔗

In the old form for the installation of ministers of the Word it is said that the preacher shall present and appropriate the Word of the Lord "as is needed by everyone". Everyone in the congregation should feel himself addressed by the sermon. That means that the preaching must be truly pastoral in that it deals with the questions, cares, temptations and struggles of God's people. Only then will the preach­ing be truly comforting, admonishing, instruc­tive. Only then will it answer to its highest goal: the up-building of the body of Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:19).