Context-sensitive preaching?

by Dan Phillips

I'll be brief.

Something stood out to me in my last reading of Acts 10, in the apostle Peter's ministry to Cornelius. Now, Peter's apostleship separates him from us. But he was a man of like passions, and as an apostle he was an elder, which is to say a pastor (1 Peter 5:1). These are points he has in common with many of us. There is much in what he does that we find both cautionary and instructive.

This encounter is an example, I think, of the latter. Why has Peter come to Cornelius' house? Well, it wasn't due to a mere notion or a thought; and it wasn't in response to a holy mumble or hunch. Peter comes to Cornelius in response to two bona-fide supernatural encounters: his own, and Cornelius'. Peter had direct revelation from God preparing him for the encounter (10:9-17). The encounter itself was instigated by Cornelius' vision of an angel of God (vv. 3-6).

Peter is an apostle, one who receives direct revelation and speaks the word of God.

So what does Peter do when he walks in the door? Does he say, "Glad to see you all here. I know exactly what to say, because I say exactly the same thing in exactly the same way everywhere I go. So sit down, shut up, and listen up"?

Not so much. Nota bene:

"So, may I ask: for what reason did you send for me?" (Acts 10:29b).

He offers a question, not a pronouncement. He finds out something about his audience. He inquires, and learns who they are, where they are "itching," what has provoked this encounter. Then what Peter says is aimed at them, not at some invisible, incorporeal and immutable target. He speaks to them, nor merely in front of them.

Of course Peter preaches the same Jesus, the same Gospel, the same salvation he always preaches. But there was not a set, inviolable formula—or if there was, the Holy Spirit neglected to give us consistent examples of the apostles hewing to it.

For Peter isn't the only example of this in the book of Acts. Take brother Philip, sent by the Holy Spirit to the eunuch's caravan. He doesn't say, "I see you're reading. How nice. So, anyway, there's something I have to tell you, before you get back to whatever that is there....."

Notice what Philip did, for it's golden: "...and beginning from this scripture he told him the good news of Jesus" (8:35). The eunuch was reading in Isaiah 53 (—how great was that?), and had some questions. Philip connects with those questions and that Scripture, and preaches Jesus.

Or take again the obvious example of Paul, again and again. In the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch, Paul preaches Jesus straight from Torah (13:15-41). But in the next chapter, this same apostle connects with the would-be worshipers by preaching in connection with that sin (14:15-17). And then again, in Athens, confronted with the philosophers, Paul quotes from their own writers so glibly that they call him a spermologos, a "seed-picker" who can peck out a quotation here and there (v. 18).

And so, when the apostle preaches to them, what he says is absolutely and firmly based in Scripture, without even one direct allusion. Students of the Old Testament know that everything Paul says comes straight from that source, and he brings it crashing down on their hostile Weltanschauung. But he connects the unchanging message with the changing audience.

And there's the point. We preach an unchanging message to audiences with unchanging fundamental needs, but changing portals of perception. We preach about, but we also preach to.

We err, and serve neither God nor man well, if we lose sight of either truth.

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