Theology and Preaching¹ ⤒🔗

Let us begin with the realities of our day. As a student you have some liberty to ‘shop around’ for your own edification and enlightenment. You enter a nearby church for the first time, arriv­ing early enough to see the doors opened, the building ventilated, and the arrival of the congregation. Five minutes after the appointed hour the minister enters, the chatting in the pews ceases, and you are greeted with a hearty ‘Good morning!’ and some other pleasantries. There is a degree of mutual goodwill, if not of felt reverence. A hymn is an­nounced and introduced by the preacher at some length. You are then urged to turn and greet the worshippers on either side. Prayer follows, prayer of a conversational kind. You miss the note of adoration. You miss the use of Scripture phrase and idiom. You miss the prayer of con­fession, and the words of absolution from the lips of our High Priest. A Scripture reading follows from the Good News Bible and a talk to the children on ‘Going back to school’. The preacher introduces his address by remarking that he has attended a seminar on Church Growth and plans to speak for several weeks on this theme. The first instalment is simply an account of what transpired at the seminar. The Bible was not needed. Following the closing hymn you are urged to remain for the `family’ barbecue and get to know each other. You excuse yourself and make your way back to Rolland House irritated with your inexplicable feeling of frustration. By the time you shut the door of your room you have reached a tentative conclusion.

Every service of public worship reflects the theology of the preacher and consequently of the congregation. The sermon is the touchstone of that theology. It may therefore be laid down as an axiom that our theol­ogy will determine our preaching, our conduct of worship and all the varied elements of the entire service, both morning and evening. In the face of our man-centred society and in the face of the prevailing man-centred mood in worship, we affirm on the basis of Scripture that we enter the sanctuary to ‘Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name’ (1 Chron. 16:19). We heed the warning of another Preacher: ‘Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools ... Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God, for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few’ (Eccles. 5:1-2).

The bond between theology and preaching is implicit in the whole of Scripture. Certain doctrines lie at the heart of this reality and the first is the doctrine of Scripture as the Word of God.

It is not usually necessary to ask a preacher his view of Scripture. To the attentive hearer this becomes quickly apparent. His view of Scrip­ture influences the entire diet of worship, though the preacher himself may be the last to recognize this fact. The way in which he addresses himself to the reading of the Scriptures; the way in which he introduces the readings and brings them to a close; the unconscious way in which he draws upon apt Scriptures in his prayers; and supremely the way in which he uses or fails to use the Scriptures in his preaching – all declare the preacher’s attitude to the Word of God. The heart of the redeemed can quickly discriminate between a literary use of the Bible, an illus­trative use of the Bible, a moral use of the Bible and a doctrinal and authoritative use of the Bible. The casual use, the academic allusion, the reckless generalization, the depreciatory judgment, or the sheer indif­ference to the Word of God, are not lost on the attentive hearer in the pew. Conversely, that more attentive hearer will not fail to recognize in the preacher a reverent attitude to the Scripture from his disposition in the pulpit, his submission to it in his daily life, his conformity to it in his character and his dependence upon it in the whole of his preaching and ministry.

The Westminster Confession elevated the doctrine of Scripture to the first chapter because here our entire theology finds its formulation and our whole ministry its warrant and authority.

You are privileged to be studying in a Hall where this Confession is believed and honoured and at a time when the Presbyterian Church in Australia is re-discovering its strength and doctrinal standards. But you are well aware that the Protestant churches generally are half-hearted in their adherence to the full authority of Scripture and, precisely because of that, the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, preaching languishes, the ministry loses credibility, and the church looks about desperately for alternative means of survival and acceptance.

Second only to our doctrine of Scripture is our doctrine of God. If one is to preach effectively one must depend for all fruitfulness upon the living God. This fact alone should lead us to a high doctrine of the Per­son and work of the living God. Without burdening our congregations with the literature and short-lived novelties of unbelief we shall teach the doctrine of God as Scripture teaches it. This is, in fact, the essence of theology.

The third in order of these crucial doctrines for our understanding of our ministry and preaching is the doctrine of man. The immense acceptance of popular fallacies in the understanding of the nature of man has come to influence profoundly the approach to evangelism, preaching, church growth, and mission. Our principles are laid down in Genesis 1-3, and are everywhere corroborated in the Scriptures of the New Testament. Significantly, the Westminster Confession deals with the doctrine of man immediately after the doctrine of God and introduces the remedy for man’s sin and fall in the almost forgotten doctrine of God’s covenant of grace – a truth only now being rediscovered within our churches.

I mention only one further doctrine, the doctrine of Redemption, rooted in the doctrine of the Covenant of grace, setting forth the Person and work of Christ under the threefold offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, and laying Biblical emphasis upon the nature and necessity of regeneration. It may be said that these two themes, the Atonement and Regeneration predominate in the history of the evangelical church since the Reformation. There is no bond between theology and preaching where these are muted or passed by. Preaching and conduct of worship are the natural fruit of a man’s God-centred theology. From the open­ing doxology or call to worship to the closing benediction everything in God’s house is saying, ‘Glory!’

Prayer in Public Worship² ←⤒🔗

Public prayer is no doubt the most demanding aspect of a minster’s conduct of public worship. It reveals the soul of the minister to his peo­ple as nothing else will do. And it reveals the preacher to his God.

It was the practice in my student days for the professors to favour written prayers and to disparage extempore prayer. We were told that written prayers protect public prayers from formlessness, repetitiveness, and banality. Our attention was drawn to the heritage of Christian prayer available in the Book of Common Prayer and our Church’s Book of Common Order.

No doubt there is positive help for the settled minister who stands before his people twice every Sunday, and offers prayer three or four times in each service, in referring to such sources for the enrichment of the content of prayer, elevation of the purpose of prayer, and pro­tection from the pitfalls of prayer. One discovers that the strands of prayer which have come down to us in those enduring collections of the church are essentially scriptural, doctrinally strong, and profoundly heart-searching. Take, for example, the Te Deum. This may well be memorized for use in adoration. Its elevated language, dignity of doctri­nal confession and awareness of the unity and universality of the church are all couched in biblical words, phrases and concepts. The earliest of the Greek hymns that have come down to us – Hail, gladdening Light – is a choice prayer for the opening of evening worship.

My father, whose influence has proved the formative one in shaping my public ministry, never wrote his prayers. As a student for the min­istry I shrank from doing so. It seemed to me too easy a way out of the soul-exercise of public prayer. I began to feel round for alternatives.

I began to collate and record for easy reference such verse and Scrip­ture portions as offered a variety of Calls to Worship, themes for praise and adoration, guides for the prayer of confession, and outlines for intercession and thanksgiving. As children we had been required to memorize large selections of Scripture. I found that I was instinctively gravitating to such passages in public prayer. This led me to add to them deliberately and to base my ministry of public prayer upon them.

One result of this experience was to convince me that my Scottish antecedents were profoundly right when they rejected a set form of prayers in favour of what was called a Directory for Public Worship. Samuel Rutherford, writing from London, as one of the Church of Scotland’s Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly, could say to a correspondent: ‘Today we introduced the Directory for Public Worship to shoulder out the Service Book.’

The Directory was adopted by the Scottish Church in 1645. Paragraph 4 of the Preface says: ‘The Liturgy ... has been a great means ... to increase an idle and unedifying ministry which contented itself with set forms made to their hands by others, without putting forth themselves to exercise the gifts of prayer, with which our Lord Jesus Christ pleases to furnish all His servants whom he calls to that office...’ Professor G. D. Henderson, in his book, The Claims of the Church of Scotland, declared. ‘For Calvin the read prayer is always a second best.’

The Puritans used to speak of ‘nap-kining-up’ God’s gift of public prayer, until one finds that one has forfeited that gift and become the slave to forms of prayer.

Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones was asked, ‘Do you prepare your prayers?’ He is reported to have answered, ‘I prepare myself.’

The resolve to renounce written prayers will involve the preparing of oneself beforehand, both in the selection of relevant Scriptures and in the heart-searching of private communion with God. It was my prac­tice to jot down on my order of service the opening words of suitable selections of Scripture for each prayer. I often found that these were replaced by others on the immediate inspiration of the Spirit. We have all experienced those sudden inward promptings of the Holy Spirit in public prayer. Calvin wrote. ‘God gives us the Spirit to be the director of our prayers’, and he was there speaking of public prayer in church (Institutes, Book 3). George Whitefield remarked, ‘When the spirit of prayer began to be lost, then forms of prayer were invented.’

Dr Alexander Moody-Stuart’s biography was written by his son. In it occurs this comment of the father on pulpit prayer: ‘This one ordinance shuts us all up to a very peculiar necessity of becoming and continuing to be men of prayer.’

Calvin, in treating of this subject in Book 3 of the Institutes, lays down ‘a rule which can never deceive – that it is not right for us in our prayers to introduce anything of our own, but that our desires must be submitted to the word of God; because He chooses to prescribe what He designs that we should ask.’

Among the wholesome consequences of a practice of Bible-based public prayer is the banishment of any tendency to florid speech, col­loquialisms, stereotypes, and irreverence. Jonathan Edwards refers to this last tendency in the New England revivals of the 1730s: ‘There is in some persons a most unsuitable and insufferable boldness in their addresses to the great Jehovah, in an ostentatious and eminent nearness and familiarity.’

Another invaluable consequence will be the grateful participation of the worshippers. Scripture is the universal alphabet of the redeemed in prayer. It is the idiom in which hearts are strangely warmed and the communion of saints is realized. A brief prayer will introduce the ser­mon, and a brief prayer will close it, thus fencing the preaching of the Word with the solemn sanctions of heaven and protecting the preacher from the tameness of human alternatives and the tendency towards self-display. These are infirmities which the pulpit can subtly foster and the congregation can too easily abet.

For freshness of utterance, for breadth of comprehension, for eleva­tion of thought, for intimacy of heart, there is no prayer like that which forms itself in the words and thoughts of Scripture, chastely framed and reverently offered. It took the agony of the German Church conflict under Hitler to bring these convictions home to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. During the short time of his leadership of the Confessing seminary at Finkenwalde he spent much time in the preparation of a meditation on Psalm 119. He incorporated this, and other Psalms in praise of the Law, into the daily devotions of the seminary. He believed and taught that the language of prayer should, as a rule, be modelled on that of the Psalms. Augustine has left us convincing proof of this in the Confessions.