No Bible verses were harmed (--or even touched!) in the writing of this sermon

by Dan Phillips

I attended a Baptist church, years ago. The pastor was evangelical, Calvinistic, very professional (much more professional that I've ever been able to be). He preached topically. Believed in the Bible completely; expounded it seldom, per se. Very neat sermons -- "neat" in the sense of "tidy" and, as I thought at the time, hermeneutically-sealed.

One Sunday, the pastor preached on what happens to the Christian after death. I was eager when I learned of the topic. Here was a subject that surely would force him into the Word. Think of it: we have absolutely no experiential, first-hand knowledge of it, no alternative avenues for gaining knowledge. We are absolutely and totally shut up to Scripture for truth on this topic.

I'll say this. It was the most remarkable sermon I've ever heard. I've never forgotten it. That is, I've never forgotten one particular thing about it: this orthodox, Bible-believing man did not engage with so much as one Bible-verse on the topic at hand. Not one. Not a verse, not a text, not a reference, not a punctuation-mark. Not so much as a leather binding or a place-marker ribbon. Bibles remained closed, if they'd been brought at all.

What we did hear was "We as Christians know," and "We believe," and "We hope." But how do we know these things? Why do we believe them? On what basis do we hope? The Bible might as well have been chained to the public, its contents reserved for some Magisterium to chew up, digest, and dole out, piecemeal, as it saw fit.

I'll admit that providing proofs and substantiation of what I'm saying in my sermons is almost a mania with me. But here's why: my charge is to preach the Word (2 Timothy 4:4). I've been made a steward of something that isn't mine; that is, I didn't create it, and I don't control it. It was given me to give away, to those who have just as much right to it as I (cf. 1 Corinthians 4:1-2). I am to use it feed Christ's lambs (cf. John 21:15-17). I am not called to lord it over their faith (2 Corinthians 1:24), nor to rule as if on my own authority (cf. Habakkuk 1:7). I'm no priest, no prophet. I have nothing to bring the people that isn't theirs by rights, anyway.

And so it is the preacher's burden to open up the Word -- not as if opening a museum, but a picnic basket. My goal isn't for my hearers to stand at a distance and marvel; it's for them to dig in, and be filled.

At the back of my mind in crafting my sermons is always the concern that my hearers will see God's truth for themselves. God forbid that they should believe anything simply because I say it, if I can help it! What an atrocity that would be. How appalled I would have been as a pastor, had I heard one of those in my charge saying "Well, I believe ___ because our pastor says...." My goal is to hear them say, "The Bible says," and then see that they're able to open the Word themselves.

After all, is this not the chasm between Rome and the Biblical Christian? Is it not our conviction that God spoke His word to His people at large (cf. Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Hebrews 1:1-2, etc.), and not to some favored elite subset? What God gave us, did He not mean us to give away (cf. Matthew 10:8)? Do we really want to tell them what God says, as if God had said it to us and not to them? Or do we not want to show them, so that they can see it for themselves?

Of course I'm concerned about the Word being sidelined in churches where it no longer is believed. Of course it's grievous that historically-sound denominations have gone deep into apostasy, and the Word no longer has the place God means it to have even in their confession, let alone practice.

But what is even more grievous are those churches who still formally profess faith in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, but who then sideline it as effectively as the Romiest Romanist. Their leadership agrees with Jesus, formally, about the Bible. Formally. But in practice? In the pastor's own possession and use of the necessary tools? In his employment of those tools towards their designed end? In his vision of the purpose of his sermon, his burden, his goal?

Let's be brutally candid. Might some of our fellow-professors be more honest if they wore Roman robes, and let the "evangelical" Sacraments of stories, sideshows, music, skits, announcements, dance, handbell choirs, prayers and the rest do their work ex opere operato?

Spurgeon has been quoted as telling his people that there's enough dust on the Bibles of some that the word DAMNATION could be written in large letters. Could the same be said of some Bibles in the pulpit, though the word written might instead be ICHABOD?

God grant that our fine Biblical and Reformed theory not be cancelled out by a de facto Roman practice.

(These thoughts tangentially jogged by this post from m'mate CraigS.)

---