Jump Start # 2719

Mark 12:37 “David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard Him gladly.”

Our passage today tells us that the common people not only heard Jesus, but they heard Him gladly. Other translations use the expression, they “enjoyed listening to Him.” Now, that’s something. They enjoyed listening to Jesus. I wonder how many would say that these days? Some might say that we need to hear Jesus and we ought to hear Jesus, but gladly? We like listening to music. We like watching our favorite team win. We enjoy good food. We like playing games with the kids or grandkids. But listening to a sermon? For some reason that just doesn’t make the list of enjoyable things to do for some people these days.

A friend of mine was going to speak to a group of young preachers. He had a great outline that he wanted me to look over. As I was reading it, I thought, “What good is preaching?” “Just what does preaching accomplish?” Now, did the audience enjoy listening to Jesus because He told some great jokes? Doubt it. Did Jesus always do shout outs and they hoped He’d call their name? Doubt it. Did Jesus make them feel better? Doubt it. The Lord often said some tough things. On one occasion His disciples said the crowd was offended. Another time, the people walked away from Jesus. The rich young ruler walked away when he didn’t hear what he was hoping for.

What good is preaching? Many are wondering that and you see this illustrated by preachers who no longer preach. They do other things. They tell jokes. They sing songs. They give self-help advice. They do just about anything and everything, except preach. They have moved beyond sermons. Doctrine lies in the dust. They have turned the church from disciples to consumers and the consumer is always right.

So, just what good is preaching these days?

First, it is through the preached word that Jesus becomes real to our eyes and salvation a reality for us. Our hope, our foundation, our future, our anchor rests upon the living word of God. Nothing beats the Bible. Nothing is better than the Bible. The more of the Bible that is in us, the less we fall apart and the greater our faith will be. We need more sermons, not fewer. We need straight forward, crystal clear, very plain preaching that helps us in our walk through this messy world. Encourage your preacher onward.

Second, preaching fortifies a new generation. One generation will hand the keys of this world over to the next generation. Those keys include the church. All it takes is for one generation to fumble spiritually and the domino effect starts. One generation takes one step away from God’s word. The next generation takes just one step away. The next generation takes just one step. In the course of just a few years, a generation will be so far away from truth that they will not even recognize it. And, isn’t that where culture has led us? So, preaching reaffirms that foundation in Christ. Preaching builds faith and hope in your hearts. Preaching shows how the Bible must form our choices and decisions. Future shepherds and leaders need to be cut from the same pattern that God has established and wants. A generation without the word is a generation that will be lost.

Third, preaching gives us real hope for this messy world. Worry, fear and doubt tend to follow us everywhere we go. Disappointment, discouragement and drudgery are not far behind. This world reveals problems but no solutions. We see what’s wrong, but we can’t see how to be right. That’s where preaching comes in. Preaching makes all the difference. It lifts weary hearts. It informs and drives out worry and fear. It motivates and gives us courage to press onward. It builds character and shapes hearts. It explains. It answers. It enlightens. Without Bible preaching, we are left on our own with nothing to hold on to and nothing to look forward to. Our faith is strengthened through Bible preaching. Confidence soars. Hope arises. And, onward we go, facing the giants of today, because of the truths, promises and hope that are established  in God’s word. We don’t need a stack of degrees to counter the arguments of the world today. Our hope is in the word of God. And preaching puts that word right before us. Through good preaching words are explained. Contexts are made clear. And principles are identified.

Fourth, the key to growth, strength and the future lie in the preaching of God’s word. People may show up because the church building is close to their house. They may come because a friend invited them. But what’s going to keep them? They are going to find treasure that they can find no where else. The truths within their own Bible becomes real and practical. The differences we can make in our families and our communities comes from lives that are built upon solid Bible preaching. In this age of quick, convenient and easy, we shouldn’t short cut sermons. We don’t need less, we need more. More preaching. More application. More practical. More to the book. It’s lives that are built upon the rock of Christ that will withstand the storms of life. Those storms can be harsh. They can last a long, long time. But, God’s word can cut through the darkest fog and show us exactly what He wants of us.

My best friends are preachers, and they are good, good preachers. Some folks are intimidated and even scared of preachers. We don’t bite. I was on an airplane once. A man sat down beside me. He asked me what I did. I told him I was a preacher. He got up and found another seat. Some will do that. But not us.

Do you remember the first preacher you ever met? Many of us were little kids and the preacher seemed to be about three hundred years old and had a loud, booming voice. Loren Raines, in Indianapolis, is the first preacher I ever knew. I was a little kid. He moved on and has since moved to the next world. I never really got to talk to him. Years later, I was given a couple of books that had his signature in it. And, I realize that I now stand in his shadows. To the little ones that run around our church building, I must seem to be three hundred years old. But I try to talk to all of them. I want them to know my name. I want them to not be afraid.

God didn’t send movies. He didn’t float pictures down from Heaven. He sent preachers. Noah, Moses, the prophets, the apostles and even our Jesus were all preachers. There is something special about that preached word. It can stir the heart and it can lead us to the Lord.

There is a lot of good that comes from preaching.

Roger

Jump Start # 2290

Mark 12:37 “David himself calls Him ‘Lord:’ and so in what sense is He his son?” And the great crowd enjoyed listening to Him.”

Our passage comes from the temple teachings of Jesus. He began with a question, “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?” Having quoted a passage, Jesus repeated the question, “In what sense is He his son?” The answer is not given. A thought is created. A dilemma. It was time to put on the thinking caps. If the Christ is before David, how could He be his son? This was not a riddle. This was not a thought to stump the audience. This had everything to do with Jesus being both Lord and Christ. Eternal, as God, and in line to the throne, David’s throne.

But what I find interesting is how Mark ends this passage. The great crowd enjoyed listening to Him. The ESV translates this: “And the great throng heard him gladly.” I like what we find in the KJV. There it reads, “And the common people heard him gladly.” The word “common” does not mean ordinary but large. It was a massive group of people that heard Jesus. The crowds around the Jewish leaders were shrinking, but around Jesus, the crowds were swelling.

But, there remains the sense in which it was truly the ordinary, common person that came to hear Jesus. It was the fishermen. It was merchants. It was parents with sick children. It was day laborers. Jesus was not found giving academic lectures to a group of scholars. His lessons illustrate this. The prayer that He taught His disciples to pray, is short. Short in length and filled with common words. His parables, His sermon on the mount, were directed to the everyday person. Stories that they could relate to. Stories that they could remember. Lessons that hit them personally and to the heart. Things that all could understand and all could use.

I was looking at a PhD thesis from the University of Glasgow. The title was: “The soteriological significance of the cross of Jesus: metaphor, meaning and salvation.” It was actually a pretty good piece about the symbolism of the cross. But that title is enough to choke on. I expect if my opening PowerPoint slide on Sunday read, “The soteriological significance of the cross,” the congregation would take up a quick collection to send me on a one-way vacation. Jesus understood His audience. He knew where people were and how to connect with them. The depth of Jesus is not in the use of big words or a large vocabulary, but in the priceless meaning of His message. A friend went to hear someone preach. The preacher was a real intellectual. The thought was that you needed a Bible in one hand and a dictionary in the other. I asked my friend what he got from the lesson. His response was it was impressive. “I don’t know what he said, but it was impressive.” We preachers need to remember who is in our audiences. We stand before the lost. We preach to truck drivers, nurses, moms, as well as engineers and doctors. We preach to an audience that thrives on bullet points, visual images, and short text messages.

Three thoughts come from this:

First, Jesus surrounded Himself with the common people. This was His audience. The parables connected so well, because that was the lives of His audience. They were sowers. They were servants. They were common laborers. Certainly the Jewish hierarchy stood in the audience, but so did the guy who dug wells, built fences, and traveled the same road that the good Samaritan did. Good people. Moms and dads. Hard working people. Jesus learned the trade of a carpenter, a common laborer. Paul, as well as Aquila and Priscilla, were tent makers.

I wonder if sometimes we preachers spend so much time in our offices reading academic dissertations that we no longer know what runs through the mind and the heart of our audience. We are consumed with the date and authorship of Daniel and the audience that we stand before is worried about affording their kid’s braces. We want to teach a quarter of classes exploring the development and changes of Calvinistic thought from the reformation to modern days, and what folks are hoping for is a practical class on dealing with discouragement. We are not encouraging “dumbing down,” but rather speak to where the people are and speak in such a way that it is helpful to them. Have you ever considered what is keeping folks up at night? It’s not concern about the differences between Premillennial and Postmillennial doctrines. It’s money. It’s raising kids. It’s marriage. It’s jobs. It’s life. It’s guilt. It’s worry. It’s fear. And, have you ever noticed that those are the very topics that Jesus addresses over and over.

Second, the common people heard Him. There is a difference in hearing and understanding. We can hear things, but we may not know what a person is talking about. I have become part of a very medical family. My wife is a nurse. My daughter is a nurse. My daughter-in-law is a nurse. My son is about to become a nurse practitioner. When we go out to eat I ask for two tables. One for me and the other for the medical convention held by my family. When they talk medical, there are times I have no idea what part of the body they are talking about. The common people heard Jesus. Nehemiah tells us that they read from the book from the law of God, translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading (Neh 8:8). They understood. Depth is great. I love to lower the nets, but one must do so in such a way that the audience understands. The challenge to the teacher is to make difficult things simple. The common person in the audience today really doesn’t care all that much about what Greek word is used. He wants to know how he can take that passage and live it everyday to please the Lord. Sermons without application are nothing more than lectures. If a lesson is not practical, what use is it?

Third, the common people heard Jesus gladly. There was a sense of joy. Jesus was fresh, new and so different from the rest of the rabbis. They were long, dry and loved to quote old dead authors. We must not follow that direction. They loved to hear Jesus. It wasn’t because He tickled ears, because He didn’t. But they could see what He was saying. They could remember what He was saying. They could use what He was saying.

I wonder if we have that same gladness in our hearts? Do we love to read the Bible? Do we love to hear sermons? Do we assemble out of duty or out of joy? Do we hang on to the words of God or is the message forgotten by the time we sit down to eat lunch?

The common man heard Him gladly. What a powerful compliment to the greatest preacher of all time.

Roger

Jump Starts # 1229

Mark 12:37 “’David himself calls Him ‘Lord’; so in what sense is He his son?’ And the large crowd enjoyed listening to Him.”

  Our verse today comes from a setting in the Temple. Jesus was teaching. Twice He asked a question. The first time, “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?” Then He quotes David saying, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand.” Then the second question, our verse, “So in what sense is He his  son?”

Tough questions. Jesus didn’t answer it. He wanted them to think. He wanted them to work things out in their minds. This wasn’t a question of trivia. This wasn’t who can stump who. This question had everything to do with Jesus. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the son of David. How can He be the son of David? The answer had to do with prophecy, position and understanding Jesus.

What I want to see from this verse is the expression, “And the large crowd enjoyed listening to Him.” The crowd was large and the crowd liked listening to what was being said. Those are the dreams of every public speaker—a large crowd that enjoys listening to what is said.

There are two central thoughts: The speaker and the listeners.

First, the speaker, Jesus

1. What Jesus said was interesting. He wasn’t boring. He didn’t use a bunch of stale facts and dry statistics. He didn’t repeat things that they already knew. He made them think. He challenged them. He got them using their brains. Jesus was fresh. You can take a serious topic and make it inviting and interesting. People enjoyed listening to Jesus because He had something worthwhile to say. He wasn’t screaming at the audience. He wasn’t destroying them mentally.

The speaker has a responsibility to make things interesting. Preaching is communicating. The person that studies that, learns people and understands the importance of word selection, tone inflections, rhythm, the use of questions, illustrations, length, organization of thought, will do well. On top of that, the topic must be interesting. Jesus was the master teacher. He was interesting. What He said was interesting. Bored preachers, teaching boring topics in a boring manner, kills the audience. They can assume the audience just isn’t interested, but the reality may be that they simply are not interesting. Work on that. Learn. Listen to some of the better preachers, both in and out of our fellowship. Study what works and what doesn’t work. Don’t become a sideshow clown who resorts to tricks in order to keep the audience  spellbound. Jesus preached. The power and  influence was in His words. It’s not the loudness of a sermon that makes it right. Hurting people’s ears does not strengthen your arguments.

The people enjoyed listening to Jesus because He was interesting.

Second, the audience.

1. People enjoyed listening to Jesus because they wanted to hear Him. There is a responsibility upon the audience. The most interesting speaker gets no where if the listeners are bored and would rather be somewhere else. I must be interested. Herein lies some of our problems today. Our entertainment driven society, with 100 channels on TV, shows us how fickle and fleeting our interests can be. When watching TV, if I’m not liking what I see, I flip to another channel. Channel surfing ought to be an Olympic Sport. This has made our attention span short. Fewer and fewer people are reading today.  We want visuals.

I went to hear a friend preach this week. He’s good, very good. He connects well with the audience, knew his material and was very smooth in his delivery. What he said was interesting, practical and very helpful. It was good for me to be there. Listening to him taught me some things as well as demonstrating the effective nature of how to be interesting. I enjoyed listening. I enjoyed it because I wanted to be there. I enjoyed it because it was well worth my time. I enjoyed it because I left a better person. Those things are up to the audience and not the speaker. When a person comes because they are pressured, and they sit there bored, and they do not care what the Bible says, and they are stewing in a sour attitude, it doesn’t matter if even the Lord was speaking that morning. They will not enjoy listening because they have made up their minds that they were not going to enjoy the experience. They leave unchanged. They leave believing that it was a waste of time. They wished that they were at home in bed or doing something much more worthwhile in their minds, playing video games. The heart of the listening is as important as the message of the speaker.

The seed that fell upon the honest and good heart, in the parable of the sower, is what produced a bountiful harvest. That heart was honest and it was good. It was ready to listen. So all of this tells me that my mindset has much to do with the success of a sermon to me personally. If I’m tired, bored, stressed, worried or hurried, then the sermon won’t have much of a chance with me. It may be the very thing I need, and yet it fails because I failed. Do I come wanting to hear and learn? Do I come anticipating “enjoying” the experience? How I come, determines the outcome.

2.  We must also realize that enjoying a sermon doesn’t save a person. You may really like how the sermon was delivered. You may even remember a story or a quote from it, but unless it changes you and you obey Christ, you will not be saved. Years ago, preachers said that sitting in a church house will no more make you a Christian than sitting in a chicken house will make you a chicken. Just listening, just enjoying isn’t enough. It’s becoming. It’s allowing those words of Christ to stir my heart to lead me to obedience and change. That’s the true purpose of a sermon. It’s not giving information. It’s not a college lecture. It’s changing lives for Jesus. Many a person may listen to a sermon, but nothing happens. The poor preacher often blames himself when it’s the heart of the listening that lies at fault. Stubborn wills and pride often keep a person from changing. When God’s word intersects with that honest and good heart, then and only then, men are persuaded to become like Christ.

Most preachers would rather hear, “That was helpful,”  than, “good sermon, preacher.” What makes it a good sermon? You enjoyed it, that’s fine. How about, you became better because of it.

They enjoyed listening to Jesus. Later, they wouldn’t like what Jesus said. Some would walk away. Some would twist His words and accuse Him of blasphemy. But others, believed.

The making of a sermon is an art. The listening of a sermon can be life changing.

Roger