Some Reflections on Preaching

I’ve been thinking about my last two sermons. My sermon of two Sundays ago, ‘Expectations’, was all about Jesus’ expectations of us, His Church. I thought that I made His demands of us quite clear, at least in one area, and that a failure to meet those expectations will have serious consequences. Then last week’s sermon, ‘Love One Another’, was about how we cannot meet His expectations and what provisions have been made for that. If someone had only heard the first sermon he might conclude that I was being too harsh. If someone just heard the second sermon he might conclude that I was being too easy. But if you put them together you might see the tension of living as disciples of Jesus in a fallen world.

One goal of Gospel preaching is to help the people of God feel the tension and respond well to it. We are called to be a holy people, and yet what we find, day after day, is that we are nothing of the sort. We are sinners, and we will be sinners until the day that we die. We live inside that tension, called to be what we are not and cannot become, but called nonetheless. How can we deal with it? How are we to respond to it? Too many Christians do not respond to it very well. There are those who try to hide from it, covering it over with misapplied truths which lead to downplaying the high expectations. But, on the other side, there are those who are crushed by it. They see both the high expectations and their daily failures at meeting those expectations and dark thoughts about themselves fill their souls.

How are we to deal with this tension without collapsing to one side or the other? The Gospel provides the answer. To be sure, Jesus has expectations of us. They are expectations of holy living that we are to strive for. But because of the Gospel we strive as those who know that our acceptance by the Father is not determined by how well we do. Jesus has covered our sins, our failures at meeting the expectations. So, we are not crushed when we see our failures anew. We know that we are loved, notwithstanding our lack of success. But our sin is no excuse to stop our striving. Jesus calls us to follow Him as a holy people. So, we work hard to become holy disciples, something that we know we will never attain. We’ll make progress, but we’ll never achieve the goal – not in this life. But we work hard, depending on Jesus to provide what we need for that striving – and He does provide. But the tension remains. When do we push, and when do we rest? When do we compromise and say, ‘I really am too busy to add working at this part of holiness right now’ (an admission that, when it comes to this new area, we are in sin and will remain there for a time)? And when is that just a lame – and sinful! – excuse? There are no quick and easy rules to follow, rules that claim to answer every question. Our hope is that the Spirit of Jesus will guide, using His Word. But that means that we follow a trail that we do not know. We cannot see beyond the next step or two. And that can be scary. However, and this is a big ‘however’, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.’ The tension is resolved (not ‘erased’) moment by moment by the grace of Jesus. All we need to do is trust Him for it.