“They Will Know That A Prophet…”

 

“As for them, whether they listen or not – for they are a rebellious house – they will know that a prophet has been among them.” (Ezekiel 2:5).

 

It seems to me that our standard of preaching spans the spectrum, from the presumptuous to the uncertain apologetic. On both ends we fail to submit to the Word of God and speak as His ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20), we fail to speak “as the oracles of God” (1 Peter 4:11). Perhaps either way we make too much of the earthen vessel (2 Cor. 4:7), either covering up its weaknesses with theological and religious bravado or highlighting its uncertainty so as to abdicate responsibility and elicit sympathy.

 

One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard regarding preaching was, “Be yourself and forget about yourself.” That is, God made you to be you, not to be somebody else (Psalm 139), and though we should learn from others, we will never be another person, we can only truly be the person that God made. Yes, for sure our Father and Lord Jesus are always molding us into their image by the Holy Spirit and the Word, so when we say “be yourself” we mean be the person you are in Christ, a person who is, by His grace, growing in Him.

 

The next part, “forget about yourself,” means that we stand before others with one primary audience, and that is God. We are to be His servant, not the servant of man (Gal. 1:10). The congregation is, however, an important secondary audience, in that we are to model faithfulness to God and His Word, and in fact we ought to be able to say to our congregations and small groups, indeed to everyone, “Follow me, as I follow Christ,” (1 Cor. 11:1; 2 Th. 3:7, 9).

 

There is a holy tension in these things, one for which only the grace of Christ is sufficient. As we “forget about ourselves” in speaking the Word of God, we surrender ourselves to Jesus Christ, we submit ourselves to Him and His Word, and we trust the Holy Spirit in both the delivery of the Word and the response to the Word.

 

(Whether it is a speaker or a singer or someone leading in prayer, why O why do we begin with a focus on ourselves? “Pray for me as I try to sing this song.” “I’ll do my best with today’s message.” On a similar note, I was taught not to begin a message with prayer because, “If you aren’t ready by then then you aren’t ready.” And may I ask, do we need cute stories with which to begin a message? While they may have an occasional place in the beginning of a message, if we are gathered to hear the Word of God then ought we not to command sober attention? I doubt that the State Department begins an important communique to another country with a joke or cute story. A nice story can have its place in a message to relieve tension – as long as it is relevant; we are not entertainers; we are the servants of the Most High God.)

 

Scott Gibson used to say, “If there is a mist in the pulpit, there is a fog in the pew.” What he meant is that if the preacher is uncertain about what he is saying that the congregation will be more uncertain and confused than the preacher. I seem to be hearing more “apologetic preaching” than I recall hearing before, that is, preachers displaying uncertainty about what they are saying – the Bible says that we are to speak “as the utterances of God,” not as messengers who are uncertain of the message.

 

Does this mean that we are never to speak of textual ambiguity? Of course not, there are some things that are just not clear and we ought to be an example of how to negotiate those passages, but even then there ought to be a confidence in the Word of God – for these instances ought to be the exception and not the rule. We certainty ought to understand the thrust of any extended Biblical passage – otherwise we are simply not ready to preach it or teach it – we ought to see Jesus Christ in it.

 

Preaching and teaching the Word of God takes courage. Do we have courage to speak God’s Word? In Joshua 1:6 -7 Yahweh says to Joshua, “Be strong and courageous…be strong and very courageous.” If we are to lead God’s People, indeed if we are to live goldy lives of obedient discipleship, we must have courage. Do we have it? Are we displaying it? Are we modeling courage in our words and deeds?

 

Oswald Chambers wrote that every day we wake up on a battlefield. Paul writes:

 

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ…” (2 Cor. 10:3 – 5; see also Eph. 6:10ff).

 

It takes courageous obedience to Christ to speak His Word and live against the grain of this world and much of what passes for Christianity.

 

When people encounter our preaching and teaching, when they intersect with our lives – do they know that “a prophet has been among them”?