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Jurnalul Electronic Al Păstorilor, Rom Ed 37, Editia de toamnă 2020

A ministry of…

Author: Dr. Roger Pascoe, President,
Email: [email protected]

I. Consolidarea Interpretării Biblice
„Cum Să Citim Și Să Înțelegem Biblia” (Partea A 4-A)

Introducere

Aceasta este partea a patra a studiului nostru intitulat „Consolidarea interpretării biblice: Cum să citim și să înțelegem Biblia.” În primele trei părți ale acestui studiu (numerele 34, 35 și 36 ale acestui jurnal) am privit la următoarele aspecte:

Prima parte

1. Trei sarcini de bază în procesul de interpretare biblică

2. Două întrebări hermeneutice importante

Partea a 2-a

1. Interpretarea literală

2. Cum interpretăm anumite genuri literare și procedee stilistice

3. Un singur sens; mai multe aplicații

4. Impactul culturii asupra înțelegerii noastre – cultura antică și cultura contemporană

Partea a 3-a

1. Două extreme: interpretarea culturală vs. interpretarea transculturală

2. Două exemple de interpretare culturală vs. interpretare transculturală

a) Spălarea picioarelor

b) Acoperirea capului la femei

3. Patru reguli pentru înțelegerea și interpretarea chestiunilor culturale

Acum, în partea a patra, vom schița Zece reguli simple ale interpretării biblice. Am găsit cartea lui R. C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture [Cunoașterea Scripturii], p. 63-99, ca fiind de mare ajutor pe această temă.

REGULA #1: Interpretează Scriptura în conformitate cu semnificația intenționată de autor

Dacă ai studiat bine textul, ar trebui să poți formula în scris ceea ce autorul a vrut să transmită primilor săi destinatari. Trebuie să fii în stare să formulezi semnificația mesajului original înainte de ajunge la semnificația sa pentru ascultătorii tăi. Eu recomand să reformulezi pasajul în cuvintele tale (să îl parafrazezi). În felul acesta îți vei da seama dacă înțelegi semnificația textului. Dacă nu o înțelegi, nu vei putea să o exprimi în cuvintele tale. Încearcă să o scrii amplificând semnificația cuvintelor și a expresiilor și explicând figurile de stil în cuvintele tale.

REGULA #2: Interpretează un text din Scriptură în lumina altor texte din Scriptură

Noi credem că Scriptura este de inspirație divină, prin urmare credem și că nicio parte din Scriptură nu contrazice și nu este în conflict cu o altă parte din Scriptură, pentru că Dumnezeu nu se poate contrazice singur.

Principiul acesta (de a interpreta un text din Scriptură în lumina altor texte din Scriptură) este foarte important din două motive. În primul rând, din cauza atacurilor necredincioșilor împotriva Scripturii. Una din principalele acuzații ale necredincioșilor împotriva Scripturii este că aceasta se contrazice singură. Biblia are peste 40 de autori umani și a fost scrisă de-a lungul unei perioade lungi de peste 16 secole, prin urmare, dacă nu ar fi inspirată în mod divin, ar fi foarte posibil să apară în ea contradicții și nepotriviri. Însă interpretând orice text din Scriptură în lumina altor texte din Scriptură, poți să arăți că Scriptura nu se contrazice.

În al doilea rând, interpretarea unui text din Scriptură în lumina altor texte din Scriptură este un principiu important datorită atitudinii cu care creștinii citesc Scriptura. Creștinii nu citesc și interpretează Biblia cu scopul de a găsi nepotriviri în text (ca necreștinii). Mai degrabă, căutăm inconsecvențe în interpretarea noastră asupra textului, care ar putea fi dezvăluite cu ajutorul principiului care spune: „Interpretează un text din Scriptură în lumina altor texte din Scriptură.” Mai mult, citim și interpretăm Scriptura cu o atitudine de supunere față de autoritatea inerentă a Scripturii, față de acuratețea, integritatea și coeziunea textului, așa că dacă există o contradicție sau o inconsecvență în interpretarea noastră, problema e la noi, nu la text.

Așadar, un principiu de bază al interpretării biblice sănătoase este acesta: Pentru a înțelege corect un text din Scriptură, trebuie să aduci în discuție alte texte biblice, fie asemănătoare, fie contrastante. Dacă interpretarea pe care o dai unui text intră în conflict cu învățătura altui text care are un mesaj asemănător sau contrastant, atunci interpretarea ta nu este corectă. Dacă există mai multe opțiuni de interpretare pentru un verset sau un text, iar varianta pe care ai ales-o tu nu este compatibilă cu alte texte similare sau contrastante, atunci acea variantă de interpretare trebuie respinsă și aleasă alta care nu are probleme de compatibilitate.

Respectarea acestei reguli de interpretare biblică ajută în câteva moduri:

(1) Extinde studiul și expunerea textului aducând mai multă lumină asupra sa din alte texte biblice.

(2) Acționează ca un mijloc de protecție care ne împiedică să interpretăm textul într-un mod care să nu fie compatibil cu alte texte biblice.

(3) Ne garantează înțelegerea revelației progresive a lui Dumnezeu din Scriptură. Odată cu trecerea timpului, Dumnezeu S-a revelat tot mai mult pe Sine, ne-a revelat voia Sa, scopurile Sale etc. în Scriptură.

(4) Ne ajută să vedem modul în care Dumnezeu s-a raportat la poporul Său și a lucrat cu poporul în diferite perioade. Așadar, Scriptura nu este numai o descoperire progresivă a revelației divine, ci și o descoperire progresivă a relației lui Dumnezeu cu omenirea.

REGULA #3: Folosește textele majore, clare și multe din Scriptură pentru a le explica pe cele mai puțin clare, mai mici și mai puține.

Revelația Scripturii este progresivă, prin urmare este de înțeles faptul că revelația timpurie poate fi mai puțin clară decât revelația ulterioară, prima fiind parțială și uneori neclară. Acele texte din Scriptură care tratează parțial un subiect nu au autoritate de interpretare asupra textelor mai complexe și mai clare care tratează același subiect. Revelațiile clare și majore le clarifică pe cele mai puțin clare și mai mici.

Aceasta subliniază din nou nevoia de a avea regula #2: Interpretează un text din Scriptură în lumina altor texte biblice.

REGULA #4: Ai grijă atunci când tragi concluzii și faci deducții „logice”.

Regula aceasta este strâns legată de regula precedentă. Ceea ce pare o deducție sau o concluzie logică din Scriptură se poate să nu fie adevărată. Ceea ce ni se pare nouă logic se poate să nu fie logic din perspectiva lui Dumnezeu. În mod clar, dacă învățătura explicită contrazice concluzia ta logică sau ceea ce ție ți se pare subînțeles, atunci învățătura explicită are prioritate. Așadar, este important să cauți învățătură explicită care susține ceea ce tu crezi că reiese din text.

Este atât de ușor să adoptăm interpretări și aplicații ale Scripturii bazate pe deducții logice sau presupuse învățături subînțelese sau concluzii pe care le tragem din text și care nu corespund deloc cu ceea ce autorul a vrut să transmită.

Trebuie să fim foarte atenți în ce privește deducțiile și concluziile; pe de altă parte, însă, trebuie să identificăm principiile generale ce reies din detaliile specifice ale textului atunci când îl studiem. Ai grijă ca acele concluzii pe care le tragi din text să fie principiile fundamentale, universale și eterne revelate în text.

REGULA #5: Nu forța Scriptura să atingă un standard literar nejustificat

Când spun „standard literar nejustificat” mă refer la un standard pe care nu l-ai pretinde de la nicio altă scriere literară. R. C. Sproul se referă la lucrul acesta atunci când spune „citește Biblia ca orice altă carte” (Knowing Scripture, [Cunoașterea Scripturii] 63). Un alt comentator explică lucrul acesta astfel: „Atunci când interpretăm Biblia, să nu avem așteptări mai mari decât de la orice altă scriere literară serioasă” (Mal Couch, ed. A Biblical Theology of the Church, [O teologie biblică a bisericii] 15).

Bineînțeles, Biblia nu este doar ca orice altă carte pentru că: (1) este unică (nicio carte nu este ca Biblia); (2) este divină (nu este niciun autor ca Cel al Bibliei); (3) este inspirată (nu este nicio altă sursă, comunicare, revelație sau putere ca cea a Bibliei).

Totuși, trebuie să o citim ca pe orice altă carte în sensul că Biblia folosește cuvinte scrise, ca orice altă carte – cuvinte care aveau un anume sens atunci când au fost scrise; cuvinte care trebuie să fie interpretate și înțelese în concordanță cu regulile gramaticale obișnuite din acea vreme și care au fost scrise pentru a fi înțelese astfel. De asemenea, nu trebuie să îi atribuim libertăți literare pe care nu le-am atribui altei scrieri literare.

Să reținem însă acest avertisment: chiar dacă înțelegem corect semnificația cuvintelor și gramatica, aceasta nu înseamnă că oricine citește Biblia va ajunge neapărat la concluziile corecte cu privire la ce spune aceasta și la modul în care se aplică în viețile noastre. Pentru aceasta avem nevoie de iluminarea Duhului Sfânt, pe care numai credincioșii Îl au. Necredincioșii pot înțelege cuvintele de pe pagină; pot analiza gramatica textului; pot face o analiză literară pe care ar face-o oricărei alte scrieri literare. Însă necredincioșii nu pot ajunge la concluzii corecte pentru că ei nu au parte de iluminarea Duhului Sfânt (1 Cor. 2:14; Ef. 4:18) – ei nu pot înțelege Biblia decât la nivel de literatură. Chiar dacă au o înțelegere intelectuală, totuși nu au înțelegere spirituală. Astfel, necredincioșii nu se supun autorității Scripturii; trag concluzii greșite din ea; nu pot să vadă semnificația spirituală a Scripturii; nu îi acordă valoarea cuvenită; nu acceptă implicațiile Scripturii în privința credinței și a trăirii; și nu vor accepta aplicarea Scripturii la viața lor. Pentru a acorda Scripturii valoarea cuvenită, pentru a ajunge la concluzii corecte cu privire la ce spune ea și pentru a o aplica relevant la viața noastră, avem nevoie de iluminarea Duhului Sfânt.

Atunci când spun „să nu forțezi Scriptura să atingă un standard literar nejustificat”, mă refer la faptul că structurile sale gramaticale (cuvinte, expresii, propoziții etc.), contextele sale (istoric, cultural, politic etc.) și genurile sale literare (poetic, narativ etc.) trebuie analizate în același fel în care analizăm orice altă scriere literară, însă prin împuternicirea Duhului Sfânt. Această metodă obiectivă de interpretare biblică ne ferește de interpretarea subiectivă, mistică și neștiințifică, prin care cititorul poate face textul să spună tot ce vrea sau gândește el.

REGULA #6: Citește și interpretează Biblia dintr-o perspectivă aplicativă personală.

Nu te întreba „Ce înseamnă aceasta pentru mine?”, ci „Cum se aplică la mine lucrul acesta?” Când ne punem această întrebare, nu doar descoperim aplicația actuală și relevantă pentru noi, ci în primul rând aflăm cum s-a aplicat textul la oamenii cărora le-a fost adresată inițial scrierea. Văzând cum autorul și-a construit argumentul și cum l-a aplicat la situația de viață a primilor săi destinatari (i.e. de ce scria, ce problemă trata etc.), descoperim modul în care s-ar putea aplica la noi înșine, respectând limitele sensului original al textului.

Vă rog să rețineți această limitare: deși un adevăr poate fi aplicat în multe moduri, totuși aplicațiile sunt limitate la învățătura originală a autorului. Nu ai autoritatea de a aplica Scriptura oricum vrei tu, tot așa cum nu ai autoritatea de a o interpreta în orice mod vrei tu. Cineva spunea: „Există mai multă erezie în zona aplicațiilor decât în zona explicațiilor.”

Așadar, trebuie să citim și să interpretăm Biblia dintr-o perspectivă aplicativă personală, identificând semnificația originală dată de autor textului respectiv (și ceea ce primii săi destinatari au înțeles); identificând situația de viață a primilor destinatari (și cum li s-au aplicat cele scrise în text); și apoi aplicându-l în mod corespunzător la propria noastră cultură și situație de viață (i.e. într-un mod care corespunde cu situația originală și în concordanță cu acesta).

REGULA #7: Identifică genul literar și procedeele stilistice și interpretează-le în mod corespunzător.

Am definit deja ceea ce eu numesc interpretare literală, mai ales când este vorba despre procedee stilistice (cum ar fi figurile de stil) și genuri literare (cum ar fi poezia, genul apocaliptic, alegoria etc.). Fiecare gen literar trebuie interpretat în mod corespunzător. De exemplu, poezia ebraică trebuie interpretată în concordanță cu structurile și tradițiile sale - ex. paralelismele etc. (ex. Ps. 2:4; Prov. 1:20; Gen. 4:23; Is. 55:6-7). Trebuie să facem diferența între proverb și lege. Ca și proverbele noastre, nici cele ebraice nu au fost intenționate să fie truisme universale pentru toți oamenii din toate timpurile, ci principii generale care sunt universal valabile pentru cei care trăiesc o viață evlavioasă.

REGULA #8: Studiază cu multă atenție structurile gramaticale și sensul cuvintelor

Nu poți interpreta în mod corect Scriptura dacă nu acorzi o importanță deosebită gramaticii – (1) părți de vorbire (ex. substantiv, verb); (2) forma fiecărui cuvânt (ex. singular sau plural; timpul prezent sau viitor etc.); (3) semnificația și folosirea cuvintelor în contextul lor și relația dintre ele (i.e. sintaxa) pentru a forma expresii, propoziții și paragrafe. Nu forța cuvintele să spună ceea ce vrei tu să spună sau ceea ce crezi tu că înseamnă, pe baza semnificației lor contemporane. Trebuie să înțelegi cuvântul așa cum a fost folosit în contextul său literar, cultural și istoric original. Nu uita că uneori cuvintele își schimbă semnificația de-a lungul timpului.

Acordă atenție cuvintelor care se repetă, cuvintelor importante și cuvintelor-cheie. Cuvintele și expresiile care se repetă de obicei îți spun ceva despre ceea ce autorul vrea să scoată în evidență și / sau subiectul textului (ex. Fil. 1:27; 2:2,3,5; 3:15,16; 4:2,7). Cuvintele importante ar putea fi: (1) Termeni teologici (ex. justificare); sau (2) Verbul principal dintr-o propoziție; sau (3) Conjuncții și prepoziții. Cuvintele nu pot fi interpretate făcând abstracție de folosirea lor. Așadar, asigură-te că determini sensul unui cuvânt analizând forma și folosirea sa în context. Când ai un cuvânt cu sensuri multiple, trebuie să te uiți la contextul său, precum și la alte folosiri ale cuvântului în Biblie pentru a-i determina sensul.

REGULA #9: Citește și interpretează Biblia din perspectivă cristologică.

Ce vreau să spun prin aceasta este că trebuie să citim Biblia din perspectiva Noului Testament. Fiecare mesaj trebuie să indice înspre Hristos sau înspre viața creștină în Hristos. În fiecare predică accentul trebuie să cadă pe mântuire (cf. Bryan Chapell, “Fallen Condition Focus [Accentul pe condiția omului după cădere]” (FCF) în Christ Centered Preaching [Predicarea cristocentrică], 1994). Iar accentul acesta nu este numai pe mântuirea celor pierduți, ci și pe creșterea credincioșilor pentru ca ei să devină așa cum îi dorește Dumnezeu. Chapell afirmă că „o înțelegere corectă a unui pasaj precum și esența unei predici presupun focalizarea pe condiția omului după cădere” (Bryan Chapell, 42).

Din punct de vedere teologic, scopul fiecărei predici trebuie să coincidă cu scopul textului biblic, care este „un aspect al condiției umane care cere învățare, mustrare și / sau mângâiere din Scriptură” (Chapell, 43). Urmărind acest obiectiv, fiecare predică va urmări același scop.

REGULA #10: Citește și interpretează Biblia din perspectivă teologică.

Caută indicii în text despre adevărul (adevărurile) exprimat(e) de autor. Întreabă-te: (1) Ce doctrină (teologie) discută autorul? (2) Care este adevărul dominant ce reiese din text? Nu încerca să impui textului preferințele tale doctrinale! Nu citi în text mai mult decât scrie! Întreabă-te: (1) Ce spune textul despre Dumnezeu? (2) Ce spune despre relația omului cu Dumnezeu? (3) Ce spune despre modul în care trebuie să trăim pentru Dumnezeu? Dacă nu găsești în text răspunsul la aceste întrebări, probabil că nu știi care este ideea teologică a textului.

Dificultatea acestei sarcini depinde adesea de genul literar. Genul non-didactic poate fi mai provocator atunci când trebuie să identifici învățătura textului – să luăm, de pildă, Cântarea Cântărilor sau cartea lui Iona. Cartea lui Iona vorbește despre modul în care lucrează Dumnezeu cu un profet îndărătnic? Sau despre suveranitatea lui Dumnezeu în toate circumstanțele – în natură (furtuni, plante și viermi), asupra marinarilor păgâni, asupra profeților îndărătnici și a neamurilor păcătoase etc.?

Din acest punct de vedere, trebuie să fii foarte atent atunci când interpretezi textele narative și să te asiguri că înțelegi învățătura lor. Trebuie să extragi ideea teologică din detaliile narațiunii.

II. Consolidarea Conducerii Biblice
„Slujind Stăpânului Nostru Într-O Lume Care Îl Urăște: Un Studiu Exegetic Pe Ioan 15:18-27”

Ca lideri creștini, adesea ne confruntăm cu respingere atât din partea bisericilor, cât și din partea lumii. A fi creștin poate fi un lucru provocator și adesea chiar intimidant, nu-i așa? Lumea este atât de împotrivitoare evangheliei și lui Hristos. Uneori, animozitatea lor ne face să ne fie teamă să rămânem fideli lui Hristos. Dar iată încurajarea – Isus a zis: V-am spus aceste lucruri ca să aveți pace în Mine. În lume veți avea necazuri; dar îndrăzniți, Eu am biruit lumea” (In. 16:33).

Așadar, ce facem noi, ca lideri ai poporului lui Dumnezeu, să ne încurajăm bisericile să-L mărturisească pe Hristos atunci când cultura în care ne găsim este atât de ostilă? Acesta este subiectul nostru în acest articol: „Mărturisirea lui Hristos într-o lume care Îl urăște” (In. 15:18-27). Sper ca acest studiu biblic să vă ajute și să vă încurajeze, în acest context în care devine tot mai dificil să-l mărturisești pe Hristos în mod public în lumea aceasta.

În pasajul nostru, Isus tocmai Își îndemnase ucenicii să rămână în El (15:1-11) și să se iubească unii pe alții (15:12-17). Isus merge mai departe acum, avertizându-i cu privire la ura lumii împotriva Sa și, prin urmare, și împotriva lor, urmașii Săi (15:18-25) și îi încurajează să depună mărturie despre El în mijlocul acestei uri (15:26-27).

Principiul pe care îl învățăm din acest pasaj este că „În ciuda împotrivirii din partea lumii, Îl putem mărturisi pe Hristos cu credincioșie.” Observăm trei principii teologice în acest text…

I. Lumea Îi Urăște Pe Urmașii Lui Hristos (18-20).

Observați că 1. Lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos pentru că L-a urât pe Hristos mai întâi (15:18). „Dacă vă urăște lumea, știți că pe Mine M-a urât înaintea voastră” (15:18). Când Isus spune, „dacă” vă urăște lumea, nu vrea să spună că poate vă va urî sau poate nu. Acest „dacă” este unul cauzal, nu un „dacă” condițional. Lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos – nu există îndoială în privința aceasta.

Ucenicii experimentaseră deja lucrul acesta. Ei știau ce se întâmplase cu omul născut orb și cu părinții lui în capitolul 9. Ei știau că părinții orbului „se temeau de iudei; căci iudeii hotărâseră acum că, dacă va mărturisi cineva că Isus este Hristosul, să fie dat afară din sinagogă” (9:22). Iudeii pur și simplu intimidau oamenii, deoarece aceștia experimentaseră puterea vindecătoare a lui Isus. Iudeii erau hotărâți să reducă la tăcere mărturia despre ceea ce făcuse Isus pentru fiul lor. În zilele ce urmau, ucenicii aveau să experimenteze o ură și mai mare din partea lumii. Există o ură înnăscută ce izvorăște din cei ce opun cu înverșunare lui Hristos. Adevărul este că lumea îi urăște pe creștini pentru că L-a urât pe Hristos. Lumea este plină de bărbați și femei a căror ură satanică pentru Hristos se manifestă în ura lor față de urmașii lui Hristos.

Isus Își încurajează ucenicii spunându-le: „Dacă vă urăște lumea, știți că pe Mine M-a urât înaintea voastră (15:18).” Mângâierea creștinilor care au parte de ură din partea lumii este faptul că suferă alături de Mântuitorul lor. Isus S-a confruntat mai întâi cu ura din partea lumii, iar creștinii suferă pentru Hristos acum. Apostolul Pavel spune că acesta este un privilegiu, un dar: „Căci, cu privire la Hristos, vouă vi s-a dat harul nu numai să credeţi în El, ci să şi pătimiţi pentru El” (Fil. 1:30). Isus nu ne cheamă să experimentăm lucruri pe care nu le-a experimentat El mai întâi. Din cauza suferinței și a împotrivirii, mulți din ucenicii lui Isus L-au părăsit (In. 6:66). Nu au putut suporta împotrivirea, respingerea, umilirea, pedeapsa fizică. Mulți creștini din zilele noastre întâmpină această provocare.

Așadar, 1. Lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos pentru că L-a urât pe Hristos mai întâi; 2. Lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos pentru că noi am fost aleși de Hristos (15:19-20). „Dacă ați fi din lume, lumea ar iubi ce este al ei; dar, pentru că nu sunteți din lume și pentru că Eu v-am ales din mijlocul lumii, de aceea vă urăște lumea” (15:19). A fi „din lume” înseamnă a te identifica cu lumea, a susține credințele și principiile sale morale, a-ți însuși obiceiurile și caracterul lumii. Dacă faci asta, Isus spune că „lumea ar iubi ce este al ei”. Dacă ai trăi după standardele lumii și ai fi motivat de ele, lumea te-ar accepta ca pe unul de-al ei. Însă adevărul este că lumea nu te acceptă. De fapt, lumea vă urăște „pentru că nu sunteți din lume.” Motivul pentru care nu sunteți din lume este că Isus v-a „ales din mijlocul lumii.”

Ai înțeles? Isus spune că există un singur motiv pentru care nu ești acceptat de lume și nu ești supus acesteia, și anume pentru că „Eu v-am ales din mijlocul lumii”. Acesta este harul suveran și îndurarea Sa față de ucenicii Săi. Ucenicii erau despărțiți de „lume” nu pentru că era ceva bun sau merituos în ei în fața lui Dumnezeu, ci pentru că ei fuseseră aleși de Isus în mod suveran. Și la fel cum Isus i-a chemat pe ucenici în mod suveran, tot așa îi cheamă pe toți credincioșii de astăzi să vină la El, să fie urmașii și reprezentanții Lui. Și asta este ceea ce ne face să fim diferiți de lume. Noi am fost chemați din mijlocul lumii de Dumnezeu și puși deoparte pentru El, pentru ca El să ne folosească în mod exclusiv pentru scopurile Sale.

Repetând ceea ce le spusese deja în 13:16, Isus spune: „Aduceți-vă aminte de vorba pe care v-am spus-o: „Robul nu este mai mare decât stăpânul său’” (15:20a). Ucenicii lui Isus nu se pot aștepta la un tratament mai bun decât a primit Isus Însuși. El nu a fost scutit de persecuție și nici noi nu suntem. „Dacă M-au prigonit pe Mine, și pe voi vă vor prigoni; dacă au păzit cuvântul Meu, și pe al vostru îl vor păzi” (15:20b). Cu alte cuvinte, modul în care lumea se raportează la Isus este același mod în care se va raporta și la noi, urmașii Lui. Dacă L-au persecutat pe El, îi vor persecuta și pe urmașii Lui. Și invers, dacă au ascultat cuvântul Lui, vor asculta și cuvântul urmașilor Lui. Pe scurt, lumea va reacționa față de tine în același fel în care a reacționat față de Isus.

Lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos - 1. pentru că L-a urât pe Hristos mai întâi; 2. pentru că creștinii au fost aleși de Hristos din lume și 3. Lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos pentru că lumea nu Îl cunoaște pe Dumnezeu (15:21). „Dar vă vor face toate aceste lucruri pentru Numele Meu, pentru că ei nu cunosc pe Cel ce M-a trimis” (15:21). Lumea îi va persecuta și îi va urî pe cei ce poartă numele lui Isus, „pentru că ei nu cunosc pe Cel ce M-a trimis.” Nu îl poți cunoaște pe Dumnezeu decât prin Isus Hristos. Dacă Îl urăști pe Isus, înseamnă că nu Îl cunoști pe Dumnezeu – „Cel care L-a trimis.” Oricine Îl cunoaște cu adevărat pe Dumnezeu știe că Isus este singurul Său Fiu etern, pe care L-a trimis în lume. Dacă ar fi știut că Isus era Cel trimis de Dumnezeu, nu s-ar fi purtat așa cu El. Biblia spune că „Tatăl a trimis pe Fiul ca să fie Mântuitorul lumii” (1 In. 4:14).

Așadar, primul principiu teologic din acest pasaj este că lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos. Însă, observați al doilea principiu teologic…

II. Nu Există Scuză Pentru Ura Lumii Împotriva Lui Hristos (15:22-25).

1. Nu există scuză pentru ura împotriva lui Hristos cauzată de cuvintele pe care El le-a rostit (15:22-23). „Dacă n-aș fi venit și nu le-aș fi vorbit, n-ar avea păcat; dar acum n-au nicio dezvinovățire pentru păcatul lor” (15:22). Adevărul este că ar fi trebuit să știe cine era Isus. El a venit ca să li-L facă cunoscut pe Dumnezeu și a făcut lucrul acesta prin cuvinte și prin fapte. Dacă Isus nu le-ar fi revelat cine era El prin învățătura Sa, atunci ei nu s-ar fi făcut vinovați de păcatul respingerii Sale ca Mesia al lor, pentru că ar fi fost neștiutori – „n-ar avea păcat.” Însă, pentru că Isus le-a descoperit cine era, „acum n-au nicio dezvinovățire pentru păcatul lor.” A-L respinge pe Isus este un lucru de neiertat; oamenii aceștia sunt vinovați. De ce? Pentru că Isus le-a spus clar adevărul despre cine este El și cine este Dumnezeu. Și totuși, ei tot L-au respins. Și nu există nicio scuză pentru lucrul acesta. Nicio persoană care s-a născut vreodată în lumea aceasta nu va avea vreo scuză pentru respingerea lui Isus atunci când va sta înaintea marelui tron alb de judecată al lui Dumnezeu – nimic de spus, nicio scuză, nicio justificare. De ce? Pentru că au auzit adevărul și l-au respins.

„Cine Mă urăște pe Mine urăște și pe Tatăl Meu” (15:23). Nu poți să Îl cunoști pe Dumnezeu decât cunoscându-L pe Hristos și crezând în El. Dacă Îl urăști pe Isus, Îl urăști și pe Tatăl. Evreii din vremea lui Isus pretindeau că Dumnezeu era Tatăl lor, însă ei L-au respins pe Isus, nerecunoscându-L ca Fiul lui Dumnezeu, Mesia. Lucrul acesta este imposibil, pentru că Isus și Tatăl sunt una. Poți să spui că Îl cunoști pe Dumnezeu, însă dacă Îl respingi pe Isus, Fiul lui Dumnezeu, Îl respingi și pe Dumnezeu Tatăl. Așadar, oamenii și grupurile religioase care pretind că se închină lui Dumnezeu, însă neagă divinitatea lui Hristos, ispășirea Sa substitutivă pentru păcate, învierea Sa din morți etc., nu Îl cunosc și nu pot să Îl cunoască pe Dumnezeu.

Așadar, 1. nu există scuză pentru ura împotriva lui Hristos cauzată de cuvintele pe care El le-a rostit. Și 2. nu există scuză pentru ura împotriva lui Hristos cauzată de lucrările pe care El le-a făcut (15:24-25). „Dacă n-aș fi făcut între ei lucrări pe care nimeni altul nu le-a făcut, n-ar avea păcat” (15:24a). Cuvintele lui Isus (15:22) sunt o dovadă incontestabilă a cine este El și la fel sunt și lucrările Lui. Cuvintele și lucrările Sale au fost unice. Dacă nu ar fi făcut semnele miraculoase pe care le-a făcut, atunci, spune El, „n-ar avea păcat.” Însă Isus a făcut „lucrări pe care nimeni altul nu le-a făcut” și din acest motiv oamenii sunt responsabili de modul în care răspund față de El. „Dar acum le-au și văzut, și M-au urât și pe Mine și pe Tatăl Meu” (15:24b). Răspunsul oamenilor din vremea lui Isus a fost să-L respingă în timpul vieții Sale, precum și la moartea Sa. O astfel de respingere era de neiertat pentru că dovezile cu privire la persoana Sa erau de necontestat. Respingându-L pe El, Îl respingeau și pe Cel care L-a trimis pe El.

Și astăzi se întâmplă tot așa. Avem dovada cuvintelor și lucrărilor lui Isus chiar în fața noastră, în Scriptură. Așadar, orice om este responsabil de modul în care răspunde în fața acestei dovezi. Ce vedem în textul acesta este că adesea dovezile nu sunt suficiente pentru a-i convinge pe unii oameni de faptul că sunt păcătoși și au nevoie de un Salvator. Atât de împietrită este inima omului!

„Dar lucrul acesta s-a întâmplat ca să se împlinească vorba scrisă în Legea lor: «M-au urât fără temei»” (15:25). Iată un adevăr tragic de trist – „M-au urât fără temei.” Oamenii care ne urăsc de obicei au un motiv. Însă în cazul lui Isus, L-au urât fără temei. Aceasta arată incredibila împietrire și răutate a inimii umane! Isus a făcut bine oamenilor fără bani și fără plată. Le-a făcut bine și celor care nu Îl cunoșteau, vindecându-i pe cei bolnavi, hrănindu-i pe cei flămânzi și înviindu-i din morți pe unii din ei. El a adus un mesaj de har și îndurare. El a venit să ni-L facă cunoscut pe Dumnezeu.

Urându-L pe Isus fără temei, vrăjmașii Lui au împlinit, fără să știe, două lucruri: (a) au fost responsabili pentru moartea Lui; și, în același timp, (b) au împlinit planul veșnic de mântuire al lui Dumnezeu. Dumnezeu a folosit faptele rele ale oamenilor pentru împlinirea voii Sale desăvârșite, astfel încât ființele umane sunt responsabile pentru moartea lui Isus, și în același timp, prin moartea Sa, Dumnezeu oferă viață veșnică rasei umane. Aceasta este dragostea magnifică a lui Dumnezeu și harul Său!

Ce am învățat până aici? În primul rând, lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos (15:18-20). În al doilea rând, nu există scuză pentru ura împotriva lui Hristos (15:22-25). Așadar, noi, ca lideri ai lui Hristos în biserica Sa, cum Îl slujim cu credincioșie și cum mărturisim despre El într-o astfel de lume plină de ură? Iată încurajarea…

III. În Ciuda Urii Din Partea Lumii, Îl Putem Mărturisi Pe Hristos (15:26-27).

1. Îl putem mărturisi pe Hristos datorită împuternicirii Duhului Sfânt (15:26). În Ioan 15:18-25, Isus i-a avertizat pe ucenici că va veni persecuția și le-a explicat motivele pentru care vor fi persecutați. Acum, în 15:26-27, Isus îi încurajează pe ucenici, spunându-le de unde ne va veni puterea de a-L mărturisi pe El în mijlocul împotrivirii și persecuției. Așa cum le spusese la începutul capitolului 14, Isus le amintește din nou că mângâierea și puterea noastră în fața opoziției este Duhul Sfânt. „Când va veni Mângâietorul, pe care-L voi trimite de la Tatăl, adică Duhul adevărului, care purcede de la Tatăl, El va mărturisi despre Mine” (15:26). Isus le-a promis că atunci când se va întoarce în cer, le va trimite pe „Mângâietorul… de la Tatăl.” Aceasta, bineînțeles, este ceea ce s-a întâmplat la Rusalii.

Duhului Sfânt este, prin natura Sa, „Duhul adevărului” (15:26b). La fel cum Cuvântul lui Dumnezeu este adevărul și Isus este adevărul, tot așa și Duhul Sfânt este adevărul pentru că Persoanele Sfintei Treimi sunt una. Așadar, natura Duhului Sfânt este adevărul însuși, iar lucrarea Duhului Sfânt este aceea de a „mărturisi despre Mine.” Acesta este unul din principalele roluri ale Duhului Sfânt astăzi în lume. Isus spune în 16:8: „Și când va veni El, va dovedi lumea vinovată în ce privește păcatul, neprihănirea și judecata.” În lume, Duhul Sfânt mărturisește despre păcătoșenia cumplită a rasei umane, despre îndurarea inimaginabilă a lui Dumnezeu și despre miracolul de neînchipuit al răscumpărării lui Hristos. Duhul Sfânt este „Duhul adevărului”, care mărturisește despre adevărul lui Dumnezeu.

Așadar, 1. Putem depune mărturie pentru Hristos datorită împuternicirii Duhului Sfânt și 2. Îl putem mărturisi pe Hristos datorită relației noastre cu El (15:27). „Și voi, de asemenea, veți mărturisi, pentru că ați fost cu Mine de la început” (15:27). Ucenicii urmau să experimenteze foarte curând lipsa totală a mărturisirii despre Hristos, atunci când toți L-au părăsit și au fugit. Însă la venirea Duhului Sfânt, ei vor fi îmbărbătați și împuterniciți să mărturisească fără teamă. Bărbații speriați care L-au părăsit pe Hristos vor fi în curând bărbați curajoși, care-L vor mărturisi pe Hristos fără teamă chiar până la moarte, datorită relației lor cu El de la început.

Ca și ucenicii, pentru că avem o relație personală cu Hristos, suntem împuterniciți de Duhul Sfânt să mărturisim fără teamă despre harul lui Dumnezeu. Putem mărturisi despre condiția morală jalnică a rasei umane. Putem mărturisi despre harul salvator al lui Dumnezeu în Hristos. Și toate acestea în mijlocul împotrivirii din partea lumii. Ca lideri ai bisericii, responsabilitatea noastră astăzi este să fim un exemplu în ce privește mărturisirea lui Hristos chiar și în mijlocul împotrivirilor. Fiind ucenicii Săi, Duhul Sfânt locuiește în noi și suntem puși în lume pentru a mărturisi despre cine este Isus, de ce a venit, ce a făcut, unde este acum, precum și despre iminenta Sa întoarcere. Noi mărturisim despre El de fiecare dată când ne rugăm înainte de masă. Mărturisim despre El de fiecare dată când spunem altora despre Hristos. Mărturisim despre El atunci când ne opunem celor care Îl înjosesc pe Hristos. Mărturisim despre El prin stilul nostru de viață, prin vorbirea noastră, faptele noastre, prioritățile noastre, asocierile noastre, obiceiurile noastre. În tot ceea ce spunem sau facem, trebuie să urmărim să Îi aducem glorie lui Dumnezeu prin Domnul nostru Isus Hristos.

Observații Finale

Iată de am învățat din pasajul acesta: 1. Lumea îi urăște pe urmașii lui Hristos pentru că L-au urât pe El mai întâi (15:18-20); 2. Nu există scuză pentru ura împotriva lui Hristos cauzată de (a) cuvintele pe care El le-a rostit și (b) de lucrările Sale (15:22-25); totuși, 3. În ciuda urii din partea lumii, Îl putem mărturisi cu credincioșie pe Hristos, (a) datorită împuternicirii Duhului Sfânt (15:26) și (b) datorită relației noastre cu El (15:27). Aceasta este mângâierea și încurajarea noastră.

Fie ca aceasta să fie încurajarea și provocarea noastră astăzi, mai ales pentru cei care conduc și păstoresc poporul lui Dumnezeu. Isus ne-a avertizat că nu va fi ușor să mărturisim despre El. Însă ne-a încurajat și ne-a echipat să facem aceasta, chiar în ciuda urii din partea lumii. Fie să Îi fim credincioși Lui în lumea aceasta care Îl urăște!

III. Schițe De Predici

Titlu: Scrisori Către Cele Șapte Biserici: Sardes- Creștinism Nominal (Apoc. 3:1-6)

Tema: Biserica poate arăta un creștinism de fațadă chiar și atunci când e aproape să moară

Punctul I: Există o diferență între reputație și realitate: „Știu faptele tale: că îți merge numele că trăiești, dar ești mort.” (3:1)

1. Reputația bisericii („numele”) era aceea de biserică vie

2. Însă în realitate era „moartă.”

Punctul II: Există o legătură între trezire și lucrare (3:2)

1. Biserica aceasta trebuia să „se trezească” – „veghează”

2. Biserica aceasta trebuia să „lucreze” – „întărește ce rămâne

Punctul III: Trebuie să ne amintim și ne pocăim (3:3-6)

1. Trebuie să ne amintim trecutul – „Adu-ți aminte, dar, cum ai primit și auzit!” (3:3a)

2. Trebuie să recunoaștem prezentul – „Ține și pocăiește-te!” (3:3b)

3. Trebuie să ne concentrăm din nou asupra viitorului

a) Mulți din cei care dorm vor fi luați prin surprindere de judecata lui Hristos – „Dacă nu veghezi, voi veni ca un hoț, și nu vei ști în care ceas voi veni peste tine.” (3c)

b) Câțiva sfinți vor primi aprobarea lui Hristos – „Totuși ai în Sardes câteva nume care nu și-au mânjit hainele” (3:4a)

Acestor puțini sfinți credincioși, Hristos le promite că…

- „Ei vor umbla împreună cu Mine, îmbrăcați în alb, fiindcă sunt vrednici. Cel ce va birui va fi îmbrăcat astfel în haine albe.” (3:4b-5a)

- „Nu-i voi șterge nicidecum numele din Cartea vieții.” (3:5b-c)

Concluzii: „Cine are urechi să asculte ce zice bisericilor Duhul” (3:6).

Related Topics: Pastors

A Call To Preach The Trinity

 PREACHING DOCTRINE: 

A Call To Preach The Trinity
Introduction
When was the last time you preached or heard a sermon on God – his nature, character, purposes, plans, ways, and will?  I suspect for some it may have been a long time.  Sadly, we hear and preach all too few sermons about God.  And yet, those are the sermons that we, and our people, need the most.  J. I. Packer states: “The average Anglican clergyman never preaches on the Trinity save, perhaps, on Trinity Sunday.”   Why is this?  Why is there such a lack, or even absence, of preaching on doctrine and, in particular, the doctrine of God and of the Trinity?  Let me propose several reasons.  
First, many preachers do not “fight the good fight of faith” any more (1 Tim. 6:12).  They do not contend for our Christian confession in advancing truth, correcting error, and opposing heresy.
Second, I venture to suggest that some preachers do not preach the doctrine of the Trinity much anymore because they do not understand it, it is difficult to explain, and it takes hard work – in research, sermonizing, and application.
Third, perhaps some preachers don’t preach about God anymore because they are driven by a consumer-oriented mentality, preaching what the people want to hear, not what they need to hear.  These are surely the days to which Paul referred when he said that “the time would come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Tim. 4:3-4).  No wonder Paul exhorted Timothy to “hold fast the pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13).  No wonder he warned against those things that are “contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Tim. 1:10-11).  No wonder he pressed home the need for “sincere faith,” from which some had strayed having turned aside to idle talk, “desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm” (1 Tim. 1:5-7).  No wonder he insisted that the leaders of the church be men who are “bold in the faith which is in Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 3:13), men who “hold fast the faithful word” so that they “may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict” ( Tit. 1:9).  No wonder he urged Timothy to “instruct the brethren in these things” so that he would be “a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine” which he had carefully followed (1 Tim. 4:6).  No wonder he warned about those who would “not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to doctrine which accords with godliness” (1 Tim. 6:3).
It is not my intention in this paper to “proof text” my way to the doctrine of the Trinity, nor to show you “how” to preach the Trinity, but rather to issue a clarion call to preach the Trinity by (1) developing a biblical basis for preaching the Trinity; (2) providing some reasons why we must preach the Trinity; (3) suggesting a preferred approach to preaching this doctrine; (4) motivating you with some goals for, and benefits from, preaching the Trinity; and then (5) drawing some conclusions.
It is the thesis of this paper that just as the biblical authors did not present a systematic theology of God and the Trinity, but assumed and acknowledged it as their understanding of God was enlightened and filled out by God’s progressive revelation of himself, so we should preach the Trinity in like manner, preaching the nature, character, and ways of God as he has progressively revealed himself to us.
First, then... 
I.  The Biblical Precedent for Preaching the Doctrine of the Trinity
Even a casual consideration of Jesus’ teaching quickly and clearly indicates his  emphasis and focus on God.  Consider His high priestly prayer: “This is life eternal,” Jesus said, “that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn. 17:3).  Or, consider His Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37).  Or, consider His response to Satan: “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve” (Matt. 4:10).  Or, consider how he, the Son of God, led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, defended his Father and his own deity (Lk. 4:1-13).  
More particularly, in his dialogue with Nicodemus, Jesus openly and clearly articulated the work of  the Trinity in redemption as he outlines the work of the Spirit in  regeneration (Jn. 3:8), the work of the Son in the crucifixion (3:14-15), and the work of God himself in the plan of redemption (3:16-17).   Of course, Jesus himself made no secret of his deity, which always incited the wrath of the Jews against him (e.g. Jn. 5:16-18; 10:33-38).  
Jesus’ lengthy discourse with the disciples in John 14-16 and his pursuant high-priestly prayer in chapter 17 give us his most detailed and explicit teaching on the Trinity.  Here, he carefully and intricately unfolds the doctrine of the Trinity by moving from his unity and oneness with the Father (Jn. 14:7-11; cf. also 12:45) to the unity and oneness of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (14:16-17).  Bringing comfort to their saddened hearts as they reacted to the news of his departure, Jesus promises them another Comforter, “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name” and who would “abide with them forever” (14:16, 26).  This “Holy Spirit,” Peter Toon comments, “...is described in personal terms as he who dwells within the disciples, teaches them, and bears witness to and glorifies Jesus.”   This is the Spirit of truth, who would proceed from the Father and who would “testify of Me,” Jesus says (15:26).  To have eternal life is to know not only the Father but also the Son (17:3), who had finished the work of redemption which the Father had given him to do, had manifested the Father’s name and given the Father’s word to his disciples (17:4-6), who now needed to be kept by that self-same word, the word of truth (17:17), and who would now enjoy a mutual indwelling with the Father and the Son similar in character to the mutual indwelling that exists between the Father and the Son (17:21, 23).
Further, Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples was a trinitarian commission.  As the Father had sent him, so he was sending them, and then he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn. 20:21-22).  His final instruction as to the nature of the disciples’ commission continues this trinitarian theme, as Jesus declares that they were to baptize disciples from all nations “in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:18-20).
The gospel writers preached about, were focused on, and were absorbed with, God.  From the time of Jesus’ birth, to his baptism, death, resurrection, and ascension, they present a trinitarian God.  They declare the God, who through the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit, became flesh and dwelled among us, “Immanuel, God with us” (Matt. 1:23; cf. Isa. 7:14).  They tell us about the Word, who pre-existed his incarnation, who was with God and who was God (Jn. 1:1).  They faithfully record that Jesus, upon whom the Holy Spirit descended at his baptism, was affirmed by God the Father as his beloved Son in whom He was well pleased (Lk. 3:22).  Indeed, the transfiguration of Jesus was such a powerful testimony of Jesus’ deity to the disciples of the inner trio that it indelibly marked their ministry (Lk. 9:28-36).
The God whom the Gospel writers believed, followed, and preached was none other than the triune God as both Peter (“You are the Christ the Son of the living God”) and Thomas (“My Lord, and my God”) boldly confessed.  
 The apostle John openly declared, was focused on, and absorbed with, God, not only in his gospel, but also the epistles and Revelation.  Perhaps more explicitly than any of the other gospel writers, he declares the truth of the Trinity concerning the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Christ, and the Father (e.g. Jn. 14:17-23).  For John, understanding who God is and believing in Him is of prime importance.  For John, to know God is to know him as Trinity.  “Then he [the Spirit through one of the seven angels] showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1-5).
Stephen preached, was focused on, and absorbed with, God.  This is  powerfully evident at his martyrdom when, “being full of the Holy Spirit,” his final experience on earth, as they stoned him to death, was to gaze into heaven and see the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55-59).  That’s where his life was lived – in the presence of the triune God.
The apostle Peter preached, was focused on, and absorbed with, God.  He preached a trinitarian God who raised up Jesus from the dead and exalted him in ascension to his own right hand, having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:32-33).  He preached the gospel of our trinitarian God who anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power and who raised Him up on the third day, and showed Him openly; the God to whose command Peter and the apostles responded by preaching to the people and testifying that it is He, Jesus of Nazareth,  who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead, to whom all the prophets witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins (Acts 10:38-43).  
This is the God who elected us according to his foreknowledge in sanctification of the Spirit for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:2); the God who raised Jesus from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope might be in God (1 Pet. 1:21).  This is the triune God whom Peter witnessed on the holy mountain of transfiguration when he heard the voice of God declaring from heaven that Jesus Christ was his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased (2 Pet. 1:16-18).  
The apostle Paul preached, was focused on, and absorbed with, God.  He emphatically teaches the primacy of preaching about God, who he is and what he has done.  In Romans, Paul preached the gospel of our trinitarian God concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was “born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:1-4).  Paul preached about a trinitarian God who demonstrated his love toward us by sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8:3) to die for us while we were still sinners in order that, through His death, we might be reconciled to Him, and whose Spirit has poured His love into our hearts (Rom. 5:5-11).  He preached about the God whose Spirit now indwells us, and by whose power he will give life to our mortal bodies, just as He raised Christ from the dead (Rom. 8:9-11).  Paul’s God is the God whose Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God and who helps us in our weaknesses by interceding for us in agonizing, unutterable prayers; the God who foreknew us and predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son, and who has called us, justified us, and will glorify us; the God who did not spare his one and only Son but delivered him up for us all; the God who freely gives us all things and from whom we can never be separated (Rom. 8:13-32).
In Corinthians, Paul preached the testimony of our trinitarian God concerning Jesus Christ and him crucified, not to convince or impress his hearers with human wisdom or oratory but to demonstrate the Spirit’s power so that their faith would not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (1 Cor. 2:1-5).  Paul’s gospel was the wisdom of God in a mystery which can only be known through the Spirit of God who alone reveals to us the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:8-14).  Paul’s God is the trinitarian God whose Spirit baptizes us into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12), in which there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit, differences of ministries, but the same Lord, and diversities of activities, but the same God who works all in all (1 Cor 12:4-6).  Paul’s God is the trinitarian God who always leads us in ministry triumph in Christ (2 Cor. 2:14) and whose Spirit has engraved on the tablets of our hearts that we are epistles of Christ (2 Cor. 3:2).  The trinitarian God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shone into our hearts by his Holy Spirit to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).  This is the God in whose trinitarian name and character Paul blesses the saints (2 Cor. 13:14).
In Galatians, Paul’s God is the trinitarian God who sent forth his Son, born of a woman, and who has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts (Gal. 4:4, 6).  In Ephesians, Paul’s trinitarian God is the Father who elected us before time began (Eph. 1:4-5), the Son in whom we have redemption (1:7), and the Spirit who has sealed us and guarantees our inheritance (1:13-14).  Paul’s God is the trinitarian God to whom we have been reconciled through the cross of Christ in one body, through whom we have access by one Spirit to the Father, and in whom the whole building of the church body is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Eph. 2:16-22).  Paul’s trinitarian God is the Father to whom we direct our prayers, so that his Spirit may empower us in the inner man and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith (Eph. 3:14-16).  Paul clearly and unequivocally declared the doctrine of the Trinity as “one Spirit...one Lord...and one God and Father of all” (Eph. 4:4-6).  
In Timothy, Paul exalts the God whose Son, Jesus Christ, is “the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the God who alone is wise” (1 Tim. 1:17), “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see, to whom be honour and everlasting power” (1 Tim. 6:15-16).  Paul’s insists that “there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).  Paul’s God is the trinitarian God of salvation – the Father, whose kindness and love toward us has appeared and by whose mercy he saves us through the washing and regeneration of the Holy Spirit, whom he has poured out on us abundantly through his Son, Jesus Christ our Saviour (Tit. 3:4-8; cf. Tit. 2:11-14). 
 The writer of Hebrews declared, was focused on, and absorbed with, God.  He wrote of the God who spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets and who has in these last days spoken to us by His Son (Heb. 1:1-4).  This author affirms the trinitarian work of salvation by the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, to cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:13-14).  
For the N.T. authors, then, the notion of a triune God was intuitively obvious such that they saw no need, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to inscripturate a systematic formula.  “What the Bible provides is not a developed doctrine of the Holy Trinity and not even proof texts for developing such a  doctrine.  Rather the whole New Testament stands as a witness to a basic Trinitarian consciousness in the hearts of the writers and of the early Christian church.”  
Evidently, from the moment the apostles understood the truth and reality that the One whom the wise men and shepherds worshipped was the one true God who alone is truly worthy of worship (and who, as God, received their worship); from the moment they comprehended the implications of his calling of them to follow him; from the moment they grasped the truth of his perfect, sinless life, his performance of miracles, his radical teaching about the principles for living in his kingdom, his outright claim to deity, his prophesy and fulfillment of his death and resurrection, his ascension to heaven and his promise to return again, together with the coming and powerful indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise (Jn. 16), so that they themselves performed miraculous deeds - from that time forward their Judaic notion of one God underwent a dramatic shift, but a shift that was, for them, understandable, acceptable, logical, and which needed no systematic explanation.  As Paul Rees states, “Nothing short of this three-personal God does justice to the experience of the early Christians.”   Their explanation of who God is did not lead them to deny their belief in the one true God of Israel, nor to abandon their notion of the one sovereign Creator, nor to add Jesus as a second God, but to “accept and confess a mystery” and to confirm their conviction of God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit – one God in three eternal, co-existing, co-equal persons.  “These persons had a trinitarian Christianity even before they had a trinitarian theology.”   Peter Jewett writes, “Being inchoate Trinitarians from the start, Christians became conscious Trinitarians in the end.  Confessing with the prophets of Israel that the Lord their God was one, and with the apostles of Christ that Jesus is Lord, they eventually came to unite these truths, so fundamental to their faith, in the doctrine that God is the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  
So then, the biblical precedent and basis for preaching the Trinity is enormous.  In addition, we have, of course, the model of the Reformers and Puritans, who also declared, were focused on, and absorbed with, God.  I do not have the time to develop this here, but just to note that they regularly preached on the nature, character, and attributes of God.  They were transfixed by God.  Luther, Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and others all give united testimony to their absorption with God both in their personal and public lives.  One only needs to read a sample of Jonathan Edwards’ sermons to safely conclude that they focus on the nature and character of God both in their content and in their application.  He was possessed by the glory of God, and obsessed with declaring God in his sovereignty, beauty, glory and majesty at every opportunity.  
Alas, such is not the case today.  Why do we hear so little preaching about God the Father – his attributes, his purposes, his ways?  Why do we hear so little preaching about God the Son – his person, his redemptive work, his teachings?  Why do we hear so little preaching about God the Holy Spirit – his deity and present operations in our lives and in the world?  I think it is because contemporary preaching in many evangelical churches has been caught by, and caught up in, the spirit of the age – in a culture that wants “how to” sermons that focus on us, our needs, our lives, our well-being, our success.  It is anthropocentric preaching, not theocentric or Christocentric.  It panders to our supposed “felt” needs not “real” needs.  It is market driven, not God centred.  It has corporate objectives, not kingdom directives.  It is therapeutically oriented, not spiritually motivated.  
Doctrinal preaching has long fallen out of favour.  It is considered a subject for theologians, not congregations.  It is discussed in seminaries, not churches.  It is articulated by denominational leaders, not church members.
II.  Why Preach the Doctrine of God and the Trinity?
One of the concerns about preaching doctrine, specifically the doctrine of the Trinity, is that the general attitude today is that doctrinal preaching is boring, irrelevant, of no practical value for the Christian life, and, in the ultimate analysis, incomprehensible anyway.  But the truth is that if our people do not know God – who He is, what He is like, and how He acts – they cannot adequately, properly, or fully live their lives in God’s world, under God’s control, and for God’s glory.  
How can we possibly strive for, much less achieve, our primary goal in living – namely, to glorify God in thought, word, and deed, if we do not know Him?  As J. I. Packer rightly puts it: “Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.  This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”   
We are compelled to preach the doctrine of the Trinity because this doctrine throughout history has been and continues to be maligned, distorted, mocked, and perverted.  How can our people properly distinguish between truth and error if we have not taught them the truth about God?  How can they discern the error, if not outright heresy, of liberal theologies, such as Open Theism, which propose a God who is different from the God of the Bible, if we have not taught them the truth?  How can they adequately and appropriately respond to Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to their doors with the age old Arian heresy, if we have not taught them the truth about God?  The reality for many Christians is that they can’t properly respond to, nor adequately discern, theological error.  
We are compelled to preach the doctrine of the Trinity because there are many false prophets, deceivers and antichrists in the world (1 Jn. 4:12 Jn. 7).  Some of them are trying to tell us that we can and should properly refer to God as female by using the female pronoun “she.”   Such terminology is foreign to the Bible and must be counteracted.  In the spirit of the age others in the egalitarian movement propose that God be referred to as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier rather than as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in order to be non-gender specific.  The fact that God is genderless and that He is described in Scripture as having some attributes associated with females does not authorize us to refer to him as “she.”  I understand that God is not defined adequately by any of our pronouns: God is spirit, wholly other than we are in his essence.  He is not defined by male gender or genitalia; nor are males more like God than females; nor does referring to God as Father imply any sort of male privilege or preference.   But Scripture throughout refers to God as “He,” being consistent with the gender of Father and Son.
Unless we properly instruct our people in this doctrine, how will they be able to “test the spirits whether they are of God” (1 Jn. 4:1)?
We are compelled to preach the doctrine of the Trinity because to be wrong about God is to be wrong about one’s eternal destiny.  This is a doctrine that clearly has eternal consequences if we get it wrong.  It will lead to destruction if we believe in a god who is not the God of the Bible.  The truth of the gospel can only be retained and maintained so long as we uphold, defend, and boldly proclaim the truth about God – the truth about God in election, salvation (justification and sanctification), and glorification.  We must preach the one, true gospel of Christ, not a gospel of a different kind (Gal. 1:6-10).
We are compelled to preach the doctrine of the Trinity because the doctrine of the Trinity is fundamental to the Christian faith and separates it from all other belief systems.  “The doctrine of God is the doctrine which is basic to all others and...the doctrine of the trinity is basic to the doctrine of God.” We are compelled to preach the doctrine of the Trinity because, as Paul Rees, puts it, “nothing short of it fully satisfies my heart.”  We need to hear about and inculcate the truth of:
(1) the grace of Christ – that grace that has met my need (2 Cor. 8:9); 
(2) the love of God – that love that deigned to send his Son to be my substitute; and 
(3) the fellowship of the Holy Spirit – that fellowship of believers, “who are indwelled and baptized by the Spirit into one body and who are now the testimony of Christ on earth.” 
We are compelled to preach the doctrine of the Trinity because the responsibility is ours, as preachers and church leaders, to preach on this challenging but fruitful subject not only for the edification of God’s people but for the worship and glory of God.
We are compelled to preach the doctrine of the Trinity because, as John Piper rightly asserts, true expository preaching is trinitarian since, as he says, “the goal of preaching is the glory of God, the ground of preaching is the cross of Christ, and the gift of preaching is the power of the Holy Spirit.” 
III.  Suggestions for Preaching the Trinity
Of all the doctrines to preach on, the doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps the most challenging, because it is a difficult concept to understand and explain, and because it is hard to relate to life. 
The first challenge is: “How do you approach such a topic homiletically?”  If you take a systematic approach, your sermon quickly sounds like a list of proof texts, which becomes tedious for the congregation and seems more like a seminary lecture than a sermon.  Such a clinical, academic approach can also detract from the impact of awe and worship that should result from preaching this topic.  Just as Sidney Greidanus astutely points out concerning miracles, that “a turgid apologetic for miracles, or, worse, any rational explanation of miracles may scuttle the sense of ‘wow’ (that it is designed to evoke) and, therefore, be homiletically inappropriate,”  so, it seems to me, a systematic explanation or dissertation would not be an appropriate homiletical approach to the doctrine of the Trinity.  I am not in any way minimizing the need for, or the benefit of, systematic theology, nor am I suggesting that we should not teach our people dogmatics.  Rather, I am suggesting that since the doctrine is not presented that way in Scripture, we would be wise to follow the pattern of Scripture, which pattern is more likely to evoke a response of wonder that it surely should.
Therefore, I would suggest that rather than a systematic approach to preaching the Trinity in a congregational setting, you take a biblical theology approach – i.e. teach the truth of the Trinity as it unfolds throughout the Bible, tracing the biblical history of God’s progressive revelation of who He is.  Deal with who God is, how He acts, what He likes and dislikes, and what He has done (i.e. God’s nature and character and works as Scripture progressively reveals them), all of which can only be explained ultimately in trinitarian terms, which, of course, makes clear why the concept of Trinity is everywhere assumed and acknowledged in the N.T.  You may preach on the divine attributes of the Trinity – omniscience, omnipresence (Ps. 139), omnipotence, immutability (Mal. 3:6), eternality (Psalm 136:1?), perfection (Matt. 5:48), self-existence, sovereignty (Matt. 5:21), worthiness (Rev. 4:11) and so on.  You may preach on the trinitarian God as our Creator, and our the Judge.   You may preach on the moral attributes of the Trinity – holiness (Isa. 6:3), righteousness (Rom. 3:22), and justice (2 Thess. 1:6).  You may preach on the love of God (1 Cor. 13:8), his mercy (Deut. 4:31), compassion (Matt. 9:36), goodness (Matt. 19:17), kindness (2 Sam. 9:3), truthfulness, faithfulness (Deut. 7:10), trustworthiness (Amos 5:24).  You may preach on the ways of God – his revealed will, his chastisement, his comfort and compassion.  Or, you may preach on “the pleasures of God” (to use John Piper’s phrase) - what brings him joy, what incites his anger.
These aspects of the nature, character, and ways of God are now often, and sadly, unfamiliar to some of our congregants, but were at one time regularly preached.  Take, for example, the fourth question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism which asks: “What is God?”  The answer: “God is spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”  These simple catechisms are no longer taught or memorized, so that if you ask someone to tell you what, for example, “justification” means, most Christians could not give you a succinct answer.
Such a sermon series on the doctrine of God would be quite lengthy, but appropriately so given the subject matter.  And it would be out of this series that you would then be able to draw logical conclusions about God, one of which would be that the God of the Bible is a triune Being.
I would suggest that the biblical theology approach to preaching the Trinity is the most commendable, most edifying, and most relevant.  It allows you to follow specific passages and preach them expositorally, so that the people can see from the text what you are talking about.  As your sermon series progresses over the weeks and months, they will see the progressive revelation of Scripture concerning the nature, character, and ways of God, from the Judaic view of the oneness of God in the O.T. (e.g. Deut. 6:4; 4:35Isa. 43:10; 44:6-8; 45:5-6; 21-22) to the oneness-and-threeness of God as revealed in the N.T.  Gradually, they will begin to see the connection between the “Lord” of the Shema and “the living and true God” of the Christian confession (1 Thess. 1:9; cf. alsoEph. 4:61 Cor. 8:4; Mk. 12:29).  
By preaching the Trinity this way you will open up to your people the progression of revelation in Scripture from a God who is holy and just, punishing sin and rewarding righteousness, to a God who fulfilled his promise to redeem his people in and through his Son, whom He sent to be the Saviour of the world; from a God who is transcendent and awesome, to a God who cares and provides for his people; from a God who is love and light, in whom mercy and truth unite, to a God who has revealed himself in his word, in which we see his purposes and plans laid out; from a God who has sent his Spirit to indwell us so that we are capable of living for his glory, to a God who will complete salvation history at our glorification. In sum, a God who alone is worthy of all our praise.  
Let me issue two caveats about preaching the Trinity using a biblical theology approach.  First, we need to be careful when preparing sermons, not to make a sharp distinction, which we so often do, between the O.T. and N.T.  They are one Word of God; they are a unit with historical, theological, and revelatory progression and continuity.  Granted, when we turn the page from Malachi to Matthew we might well ask: “What happened?”  Nevertheless, our hermeneutical and homiletical task is to preach both Testaments as one revelation from God, in which we see:
(1) the typological connections between the O.T. and the N.T. (such as institutions like the tabernacle, events like the feasts and offerings, and people like Moses and Joseph) as salvation history unfolds; 
(2) the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the coming Messiah fulfilled in the New in Christ; 
(3) the offices of the O.T. which point forward to their fulfillment in Christ as prophet, priest, and king; 
(4) the progression of salvation history from the O.T. toward its eschatological goal in the New;  and 
(5) in the specific case of our topic, the trinitarian inferences in the O.T. which become more evident in the New.  Thus, we move, as Sidney Greidanus puts it, not so much “from the lines drawn from the O.T. to the N.T. but in the prior move in the opposite direction – the move from the fullness of the N.T. revelation to a new understanding of the O.T. passages.” 
Therefore, our task is to preach this unfolding of God’s self-revelation by faithfully communicating the O.T. understanding of God and tracing it through to the New Testament trinitarian understanding as it developed.  
Further, this biblical theology approach to preaching the Trinity requires great sensitivity to the various literary genres in which it is presented in Scripture.  We must let Hebrew narrative or gospel genre, for example, shape how we preach the truth of the passage, being sure to find their theocentric purpose – namely, “to show God at work in His creation and among His people.  The narratives glorify Him, help us to understand and appreciate Him, and give us a picture of His providence and protection.”   We must interpret and explain the Psalms and Prophets in accordance with their respective genres and in the light of unfolding redemptive history.  In O.T. prophetic literature, the central focus is on the coming King in His kingdom (e.g. Isa. 42:4).  Thus, we need to look for corresponding references and inferences.  Nevertheless, we must be careful to interpret these texts in the way the original audience would have – namely, associating the person with the immediate referent before associating him with the fulfillment in the N.T.  
Of course, once such passages have been exposited accurately we can draw the appropriate theological conclusions.  Then, we will see how these O.T. truths become clearer through the incarnation and teachings of Jesus (whose most extensive teachings on the Trinity occur in his discourse with the disciples in John 14-16) through to the book of Acts where their understanding of God develops and a more complete expression of that understanding is recorded.  We can trace this natural development and see the apostles intuitively coming to grips with the concept of God without stating it in systematic form, so that, ultimately, the progressive unfolding of truth led them to the only rational conclusion that adequately synthesized their experience and data and concluded with their universal presupposition as to the trinitarian nature of God.  
Second, we need to be careful not to reverse the order in which the doctrine of God is developed by trying to teach the systematic doctrine of who God is before we have preached the biblical history of who God is and what He is like, as revealed in his acts in the world and the biblical authors’ understanding of God.  Therefore, let us preach the doctrine as it unfolds in Scripture, declaring God’s mighty acts in history, culminating in the apex of redemptive activity at the cross and resurrection, showing how God is present and active and what His relationship is to the human race and his creation in general before we try to synthesize all of that into a systematic unit called the doctrine of the Trinity.
If you take this homiletical approach that I am suggesting, as your people listen to you preach the biblical theology of God in the context of biblical history, they will come to understand that even though the systematic theology and creedal articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity was developed over the first three or four centuries in response to heretical teachings about God  that were beginning to surface in the second and third centuries,  and that even though universal, formal adoption of a single creedal statement by orthodox churches did not occur until the fourth century,  nonetheless, the doctrine and concept of God as Trinity is pervasive throughout the N.T.  As Darrell Johnson explains it, “What really triggered the theological process was what ordinary people experienced when they encountered Jesus Christ...The doctrine of the Trinity is not the result of philosophical speculation carried out in ivory towers, cut off from real life.  It is the result of ordinary believers trying to make sense of the facts of God’s self-revelation and trying to live in the light of those facts.”    Or, as Alister McGrath points out, “The doctrine of the Trinity is the end result of a long process of thinking about the way in which God is present and active  the world…The scriptural witness to and Christian experience of God came first, and reflection on it came later.”   
So much, then, for the first major challenge in preaching the Trinity – namely, “How do you approach the topic?”  The second major challenge in preaching the Trinity is: “How do you apply this doctrine to people’s lives?”  How do you make such a doctrine relevant to contemporary Christian life?  How do you overcome the “so-what” hump of your audience?  Doctrine must always be related to life when we preach or teach.  As Peter Toon points out, “If we give the impression that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is only and solely the doctrine of the immanent or ontological Trinity then we run the risk of its confession being irrelevant to Christian worship, life, and service.”   
We can and must relate the doctrine of the Trinity to some very practical aspects of the Christian life, by showing how our understanding of the Trinity uniquely applies to our Christian worldview and mission.  For example, when preaching the Trinity, you would probably want to apply the doctrine to such topics as:
1.  The creation of the world and the Trinity.  The godhead unitedly created the universe.  The Father planned it; the Son implemented it; and the Holy Spirit empowered it.  Most importantly, the human race was created in God’s image.  Since we are created in God’s image, we are to reflect the many dimensions of God’s nature and character.
2.  Our human existence and the Trinity.  God providentially cares for and controls the universe that He has created.  For “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  As John Calvin says: “It is perfectly obvious... that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.” 
3.  Our salvation and the Trinity.  God the Father through the Spirit delivered his Son into the hands of wicked men.  He went to the cross and rose again, and in so doing, reconciled the world to himself.  In this the love of God is manifest to the world in that, through him, our sins are expiated and we have eternal life (Jn. 3:161 Jn. 4:9).
4.  Our Christian lives and the Trinity.  Our lives are intimately related to, bound up in, and united to (1) the Father’s care, provision, protection, love, goodness, and holiness; (2) the Son’s truth, grace, liberty, and forgiveness; and (3) the Spirit’s guidance, illumination, teaching, power, and comfort.  “The doctrine of the Trinity gives expression to the fact that...God has opened himself to us...in such a way that we may know him in the inner relations of his Divine Being, and have communion with him in his divine life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”   
The Father sends the Spirit in the name of the Son to indwell believers, sanctifying us, illuminating us, and empowering us for godly living.  God is in us, so that, as new creatures in Christ we are “partakers of the divine nature” (1 Pet. 1:4). Therefore, because God is holy, so we are to lead holy lives.  Because God has given us his illuminating Spirit, we are able to fully and properly understand the truth that God has given us.  “The Father is light, the incarnate Son is light, and believers are called to live and walk in the light...For one to see the light, to have the light shine in his heart, and to walk in the light, he needs the illumination of the Holy Spirit of light.  In other words, light shines upon and within him from the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit” 
5.  Our Christian community and the Trinity.  Our fellowship, relationship, and unity are intimately bound up in the relationship of the Trinity (1 Jn. 1:3Eph. 4:3-6).  God is not an isolated God but one who lives in relationship with his creation and his people in particular.  He is a God of intimacy, “Immanuel, God with us.”  The intra-trinitarian intimacy and relationship is to be reflected in the Christian community.  Our fellowship with each other is made possible through our fellowship with the Father and the Son (1 Jn. 1:3).  Because God is love and first loved us, we love Him (1 Jn. 4:19) and because love is of God, we love one another (1 Jn. 4:7) and demonstrate that love in fellowship and mutual care.  As Jewett points out, “when we are admonished to ‘maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (manifest in the one body which is the church [Eph. 4:3]), we are being admonished in our Christian communal life to imitate the communal life of God himself.” 
6.  Our Christian worship and the Trinity.  Our worship is truly Trinitarian when we render worship and prayer to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.  Such worship is not possible with any other concept of God.  Peter Toon states, “True worship must be offered to the Father through (i.e. according to the truth which is in) Jesus and by / in the Spirit, who is given by the Father...To worship in Spirit and in truth is to worship the Trinity by the Trinity.”   In the language of the seraphim, we worship God and cry: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isa. 6:3).  As Darrell Johnson writes, “The Father draws near to us to draw us near to himself so we can praise the Son the way he does.  The Son draws near to us to draw us near to himself so we can worship the Father the way he does...The Spirit comes upon us to fill us with his passion to see the Father and Son glorified.” 
7.  Our Christian mission and the Trinity.  Because God is love and we are of God, we love the world he has made.  We are ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20), so that “as He is so are we in the this world” (1 Jn. 4:17).  Jesus said: “As the Father has sent me, I also send you” (Jn. 20:21).  We are “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14) even as Jesus himself was the Light of the world, reflecting the God who is light.
Let me also suggest that preaching the doctrine of the Trinity gives you an opportunity to make relevant certain creeds, hymns, and spiritual songs by utilizing them in your services to underscore the doctrine on which you are preaching.  I recommend that you adopt regular recitations of the various orthodox creeds, especially in this case as they relate to the Trinity (e.g. the Apostles’ creed, the Nicene Creed, or the Athanasian Creed) to provide support to and a framework for your doctrinal preaching.  Incorporate into your services the singing of the great hymns of the faith that declare powerfully the triune nature of our great God.  If we encourage our congregations to participate in worship by reciting these creeds and singing these hymns, they will at the same time, become familiar with our basic Christian doctrines and especially the doctrine of God, so that they should be able to give an answer of the hope that lies within them – particularly, what they believe about God.
IV.  The End for Which We Preach the Trinity
Our pursuit of God must be practical more so than theoretical – i.e. “to know and enjoy God himself”   (cf. Psalm 119:12, 18, 97, 103, 125).  In other words, our goal is to know God personally and practically and the means to that end is the knowledge and experience of God.  The more we know about God, the more our lives will reflect his nature and character in our own godliness and manner of life.  Our knowledge about God is then reflected in our values, our priorities, our speech, thought, and behaviour, our worship, our prayer, and our occupation with God.
Our pursuit and preaching of the truth about God must have as its aim not merely the knowledge about God, but to know Him – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The duty and delight of the preacher must be to preach about the God who created us, redeemed us, guides us and keeps us, and the God who is coming for us.  Our duty and delight must have as its proper object not theological knowledge or academic pursuit as an end in itself, for that can lead to arrogance, spiritual pride, and intellectual superiority, and is self-centred, not God centred (cf. Jer. 9:23f) - but our proper object is to have the knowledge that leads us into a deeper relationship with God.  Our motive and objective must be to know him more fully, love him more deeply, and follow him more devotedly.  This is the grand goal of preaching and of preaching the Trinity in particular.
I believe that the pastor who regularly preaches about God will do his congregation a great spiritual service, the benefits of which will become readily apparent.  There will be an increased zeal for God among your people, evidenced in (1) evangelism; (2) the advancement and defence of the truth and opposition to false teaching; (3) in corporate worship, (4) in Christian fellowship, and (5) in congregational unity.
There will be an increased occupation with God.  The orientation of their lives will change.  They will begin to think biblical thoughts about the ways and character of God in the day-to-day events of their lives.  They will live in the atmosphere of God, thinking, acting, and speaking as children of God.  Their thought lives will improve as they meditate on the glories of God.  Their lives will be enriched as they live in awe of God.  As you preach about God, you should find increasing evidence of their inner peace with God, their willingness to “be still and know that I am God,” their dependence on God not self, their spiritual maturity, their relationships, and attitudes.
VI.  Conclusions
This, then, is why I am issuing this clarion call to preach the Triune God whom we know, worship, serve, and obey – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”
Until and unless we understand, believe, and acknowledge that (1) God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; (2) that the Father, our Creator, is God; (3) that Jesus, our Redeemer, is God; (4) that the Holy Spirit, our Comforter, is God; and until we understand, believe, and acknowledge the truth of our triune God, we can never  effectively proclaim the Gospel of God or truly worship the God whom we trust for eternity.
There is, as Steven Lawson’s title to his book says, a “famine in the land”  – a famine of expository, doctrinal preaching.  I whole-heartedly affirm Timothy George’s exhortation that “The recovery of doctrinal preaching is essential to the renewal of the church.”   He goes on to say:
“The presupposition in doctrinal preaching is that the God who has once and for all come in Jesus Christ and once and for all spoken in Holy Scripture still comes and still speaks to His people through the faithful proclamation of His Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.  ‘Doctrine’ is not an abstract formulation of belief divorced from this saving reality and divine revelation.  To the contrary, it is the irreducible content of this very reality, conveyed through God’s authoritative, infallible Word and elucidated through what the church of Jesus Christ believes, teaches, and confesses on the basis of that Holy Word.” 
Similarly, John Piper writes, “Our people are starving for God”   “They are starving for the grandeur of God, and the vast majority do not know it.”   Our task, then, is to so declare God to our hearers in all the aspects in which he has revealed himself to us, so that the hunger of their hearts and minds is satisfied and they are wholly occupied with Him.  This demands preaching that is trinitarian in its exegesis and proclamation.  As Piper says, 
“If anyone in all the world should be able to say, ‘I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power and glory,’ it is the  herald of God.  Who but preachers will look out over the wasteland of secular culture and say, “Behold your God!”?  Who will tell the people that God is great and greatly to be praised?  Who will paint for them the landscape of God’s grandeur?  Who will remind them of the tales of wonder that God has triumphed over every foe?  Who will cry out above every crisis, ‘Your God reigns!’?  Who will labor to find words that can carry the ‘gospel of the glory of the blessed God’?
“If God is not supreme in our preaching, where in this world will the people hear about the supremacy of God?  If we do not spread a banquet of God’s beauty on Sunday morning, will not our people seek in vain to satisfy their inconsolable longings with the cotton candy pleasures of pastimes and religious hype?  If the fountain of living water does not flow from the mountain of God’s sovereign grace on Sunday morning, will not the people hew for themselves cisterns on Monday, broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13)?” 
The overriding need is not for more “how-to” sermons but for more of God.  Let us, then, resolve that through our preaching, our people will know God more intimately, see him more clearly, live for him more devotedly, worship him more passionately, and love him more deeply so that, with the Psalmist, they cry: “One thing I have desired of the LORD, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in His temple” (Ps. 27:4).  
No preaching accomplishes this task better, it seems to me, than preaching the Trinity.
 
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 1. London: James Clarke & Co., Limited, 1957.
Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991)
Fee, Gordon D. and Douglas Stuart, How To Read The Bible for All Its Worth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993.
George, Timothy. “Doctrinal Preaching” in Handbook of Contemporary Preaching, ed. Michael Duduit. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992.
Goldsworthy, Graeme.  Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000.
Greidanus, Sidney. The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature.  Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988.
Jewett, Paul K.  God, Creation, & Revelation: A Neo-Evangelical Theology. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991.
Johnson, Darrell W. Experiencing the Trinity. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2002.
Lawson, Steven J. Famine in the Land. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2003.
Martin, Dana. “God in Three Person” in Best Sermons, vol. 6, ed. James W. Cox (San Francisco: Harper, 1993)
McGrath, Alister E. Understanding the Trinity. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988.
Packer, J. I. Knowing God. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973, 1975 edition, 16th impression 1987.
Piper, John. The Supremacy of God in Preaching. Grand Rapids; Baker Book House, 1990.
Rees, Paul.  Stand Up in Praise to God. Grand Rapids:  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1960.
Toon, Peter. Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1996)
 

Jacob: When God Turns Darkness into Dawn (Expository Sermons On O.T. Characters)

This series of sermons will cover some of the main O.T. characters, beginning in Genesis with Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph. These sermons will not cover every account or incident in the lives of each person, but are selected (1) to give an overview of how God worked in their lives to accomplish his purposes; and (2) to learn important lessons about character and conduct as it relates to the people of God.

Amongst many other lessons in this series, one thing becomes abundantly clear, that the human heart does not change: it remains deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9). Nonetheless, God in his grace continues to reveal himself, often in remarkable ways, to finite, frail, and failing human beings whom he uses to represent him, to communicate his instructions and plans, to provide leadership to others, and, generally, to carry out his purposes as the drama of redemption unfolds through the progress of salvation history.

We will study characters like Joseph, who was ridiculed, sold as a slave, falsely accused and imprisoned, yet, ultimately, he was vindicated and exalted. We admire him and aspire to emulate his faith, patience, and steadfast endurance despite the circumstances, and, more importantly, we grow in our understanding of God and his ways with us. Conversely, we will study characters whose behavior and responses may surprise us, but in whom God still displays his grace and through whom God still sovereignly acts.

I hope that this series will bless you as much as it has me. It was a pleasure to preach these sermons and it is now a pleasure to share them with you in written form. May the Lord use them to encourage and inspire you as you serve him and faithfully “preach the word.”

Related Topics: Character Study, Christian Life

1. When the Sun Sets: Jacob Meets God (Gen. 27:41-28:22)

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Introduction

Mother Teresa is quoted as saying that, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer. It’s the feeling of being uncared for, unwanted, of being deserted and alone.” (Leadership Magazine, vol. 1, no. 4). A 1990 U.S. census reported that 23 million American adults lived alone and that since 1970 this figure had increased by 91% for women and 156% for men.

At some time in your life you’ve probably felt lonely, forsaken, deserted, abandoned, let down, betrayed. I remember when, as a university student, I went to Germany to work for the summer, and how homesick I felt during that time.

Perhaps your experience has been more than homesickness or loneliness. Perhaps you have experienced alienation from family members, fellow students, work colleagues, or perhaps even the church. Perhaps you’ve known the pain of an unfaithful spouse. Perhaps you’ve suffered parental rejection by rebellious teenagers. Or, perhaps you’ve been deeply hurt when you’ve been let go from a company that you served faithfully for many years. Undoubtedly, many of you know the pain that loneliness, isolation, and rejection can inflict.

It’s one thing to be lonely (that’s bad enough) but it’s another thing to be rejected. Jacob experienced rejection during a dark period in his life. What we are going to see here is that when we come to a dark, forsaken place in our lives, that’s where God draws near and the dark, forsaken place becomes the house of God. Sometimes…

1. When We Are Forsaken, We Flee Into The Darkness Of Rejection (Gen. 27:41-28:9).

Rejection may all start with something as common as a family problem (27:41-28:5). Jacob faced severe dysfunctional family problems. It all started with favoritism – Isaac loved Esau but Rebekah loved Jacob (25:28). And from there, things went steadily down hill in the family relationships. First, Jacob faces his brother’s savagery (27:41). Esau hated Jacob for defrauding him of his father’s blessing. His plot to kill Jacob is a crime similar to Cain’s, except that Cain’s crime was born of uncontrollable passion and rage whereas Esau’s was premeditated revenge.

In addition to his brother’s anger, Jacob is manipulated by his mother’s scheming (27:42-46). Rebekah always seems to find out what’s going on. She found out about her husband’s intention to bless Esau (27:1-5). Now she finds out about Esau’s intention to kill Jacob (27:41). Jacob’s mother is a master-schemer. First, she devised a scheme for Jacob to get Isaac’s blessing instead of Esau. Now, she devises a scheme to protect Jacob from Esau’s wrath - she will send Jacob to her brother Laban’s house in Padan-Aram for a while, too far away for Esau to hunt Jacob down.

She assures Jacob that his brother’s fury will subside in “a while” (27:44). “He’ll soon forget what you have done to him. Just give him time to cool off, for his temper to subside. It should only be a few days. Then, when it’s all clear, I’ll send for you and bring you back again.” In fact, “a little while” turned into 20 long years and she never did send for Jacob to come back. As with most schemers, Rebekah rationalizes her action: “Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?” (27:45b). “If you stick around, Jacob, you’ll be killed. Then Esau will be executed for murdering you. You wouldn’t want your dear old mom to suffer the loss of both her sons in one day, would you?”

Then, Rebekah convinces her husband of her scheme. First, she took advantage of Isaac’s poor eyesight (27:1f.) Now she takes advantage of his disapproval of Esau’s wives - “the Hittite women” (27:46; cf. 26:34). She says to her husband: “I am weary of living, Isaac, now that I have two Hittite daughters-in-law married to Esau. And if Jacob marries one as well, then what would I do. Poor me, my life wouldn’t be worth living.”

Jacob’s problems started with his brother’s anger, then his mother’s scheming, and finally Jacob is failed by his father’s subservience (28:1-5). Isaac is completely dominated by Rebekah’s manipulative arguments and he fails miserably in his responsibility as the leader in his home. With no mention of God or prayer (a) Isaac forbids Jacob to marry a Canaanite (28:1); (b) he orders Jacob to go to Padan-Aram to find a wife among his cousins, Uncle Laban’s daughters (28:2) – it was common then to marry a cousin – (c) Isaac blesses Jacob with the same blessing Abraham received from God (28:3-4); and finally (d) he sends Jacob away (28:5). We never hear that Jacob ever sees or speaks to his mother again.

Rejection may all start with something as common as a family problem, and rejection may all end up with something as unusual as a forsaken place (28:10-11). This is where the text of our story begins. 10 Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. 11 And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep” (28:10-11). It’s bad enough to be rejected by your family but it’s worse when you have nowhere to go but a forsaken place. Years ago, one of our daughter’s school friends was put out from her family due to some disagreement. We took her in and she lived with us until things got straightened around. Jacob has no one to take him in and, to add to his rejection and desertion, he doesn’t appear to have any true relationship with God either.

Jacob is about 40 years old now. He was born and raised in a religious family. He knows about God but there’s no evidence that he knows God personally. He had head knowledge about the God of his grandfather and father but little or no personal relationship. There is no record of any encounter with God yet in his life - no revelation from God, no word from him - and spiritual issues and disciplines weren’t evident in his life. In fact, there’s no mention of any relationship with God at all.

But all that is about to change, not because Jacob is seeking God but because God is seeking Jacob. Before Jacob finds a wife God finds him. Jacob’s purpose in this trip gives way to a higher purpose - the establishment of a relationship with God based on faith. What is of most importance is not whom he will meet at Haran but whom he will meet on the way to Haran. He certainly didn’t expect to meet God on the highway to Haran anymore than Saul expected to meet God on the highway to Damascus. Jacob wasn’t thinking about calling on the Lord, he was thinking about calling it a day because “the sun had set” (28:11). It had set in more ways than one, both literally and metaphorically, for Jacob is about to enter the nighttime of his life.

So, he comes to “a certain place” (28:11). It’s a “certain” place because it was a place prepared by God, a forsaken, deserted, dark, remote place where he would meet no one but God. There are no motels here, no restaurants, no comforts of home – just the stars above and the ground beneath. This wasn’t a town, it was just a place, obscure, desolate; a place that is unnamed and unknown to men but special to God. That’s where Jacob lay down for the night with a stone for a pillow. If ever Jacob felt alone, deserted, miserable, rejected, and forsaken it must have been now. The stone pillow must have made him long for the comforts of home; maybe he even felt a tinge of homesickness. But this is where he would have the greatest experience of his life; this is where he would encounter God.

Sometimes, when we are forsaken, we flee into the darkness of rejection. But often…

2. In The Darkness Of Rejection, We See The Light Of God’s Revelation (28:12-15).

The whole tone of the story changes here. What had formerly been narrated in the past tense (28:10-11) now shifts to the present (28:12-13), and what the narrator has seen Jacob doing (28:10-11) now suddenly shifts to what Jacob himself saw.

In the darkness of our lives God often reveals to us his presence (28:12). No sooner did Jacob fall asleep than he dreamed “…and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it” (28:12). During my teenage years I lived in the City of Bath in England. Every day that I went to school I had to climb up “Jacob’s Ladder,” steps up the side of a steep hill that led to my school. If you have ever been to Bath you will probably have seen Bath Abbey. Carved into the stone on the front of Bath Abbey is a depiction of Jacob’s Ladder with angels ascending and descending.

Jacob’s dream isn’t about steps up the side of a hill or a staircase carved into the stone of a church. It’s about a ladder that joins heaven and earth. Its bottom rests on earth (where Jacob was) and its top reaches to heaven (where God was). The Tower of Babel also extended to the heavens (Gen. 11:4). It was the product of human invention, of delusions of grandeur, of human ambition and pride, the attempt by man to reach up to God. Jacob’s ladder also extends to the heavens, but it was made by God (not men) and angels were climbing it (not men). It is God’s means of reaching down to men (not men’s attempt to reach up to God). This is a ladder that makes God’s presence known. The inhabitants of heaven who dwell in God’s presence are going up and down it; heaven itself is accessible and open.

Have you ever experienced anything like this? Have you been so drawn into the presence of God that you have felt as though heaven has opened up to you? Do you know that God is accessible, that he wants to make himself known to you, to communicate a message to you?

In the darkness of our lives, God often reveals to us his presence. And in the darkness of our lives God often reveals to us his person (28:13a). God initiates contact with Jacob so that he might know him. “And behold, the Lord stood above it (the ladder) and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac’” (28:13a). He is the God of the first and second generations of Jacob’s family. The question that is inferred is: “Will he be the God of the third (Jacob’s) generation as well?” He is the “God of Isaac,” Jacob’s father, the one Jacob deceived and took advantage of. The question that is inferred is: “Will Jacob try to deceive and take advantage of God as well?”

Perhaps you’re the third generation in your family. Your grandparents were Christians and so were your parents. The question is: “Is the God of your grandparents and parents your God too?” Are the spiritual values of your parents and grandparents your values too? Are you walking in their footsteps of faith? So often, the second and third generations throw spiritual things on the scrap heap of life as outdated, worthless traditions of the past, irrelevant. That’s how spiritual darkness creeps into families and churches and societies. Perhaps you need to examine your own life to see whether you are following in the footsteps of faith, those who have gone before, or whether you have lost your zeal for God.

In the darkness of our lives, God often reveals to us his presence and his person. And, in the darkness of our lives God often reveals to us his promise (28:13b-14). The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. 14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (28:13b-14).

God faithfully repeats his threefold promise, the same promise he gave to Abraham (Gen 12:1-3). First, the promise concerning the land (13b) - the inheritance that God had promised to Abraham is still secure. Second, the promise concerning the nation (14a) - the descendants God promised to Abraham will still be numerous. Third, the promise concerning all mankind (14b) - the influence God had promised Abraham will still prevail and spread to all the families of the earth through Jacob and his descendants.

Despite his bad behavior, notice that Jacob is included in the chain of blessing. This is the fifth reference to a patriarch as the source of worldwide blessing (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4). Previously Jacob had been occupied with obtaining the blessing for himself, but here he is the source and means of blessing to be bestowed on others. When Abraham received the promise of this blessing he was married but childless. Here, Jacob is both unmarried and childless!

Often in the dark times of our lives we think that God has abandoned us; we think God’s promises have failed; we think God’s word is unreliable. But that’s just the lie of Satan, who wants to disrupt our relationship with God and our trust in him. The truth is that when we encounter God in those dark and lonely times of life, we find that his word never fails and that he never changes. His promises and plans may not occur when we expect or how we expect but they are still the same. Our lives may take twists and turns that we find dark and depressing at times but he remains faithful - He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

In the darkness of our lives, God often reveals to us his presence, his person, his promise, and God often reveals to us his provision (28:15). Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” God will unilaterally and unconditionally provide for Jacob. God will provide for Jacob’s need for companionship: “I am with you” - even though your family isn’t. God will provide for Jacob’s need for protection: “I will keep you wherever you go” - even though no on else cares about you. God will provide for Jacob’s guidance: “I will bring you back to this land” - even though you’ve just been sent away from it. God will provide for Jacob’s comfort: “I will not leave you - even though your family has let you down - until I have done what I promised you.”

In Jacob’s darkness these were sweet words. Though he felt totally abandoned and alone, God brought him comfort. Though his mother and father were not with him, God was with him. Nothing can happen to Jacob until God has fulfilled his promise through his divine provision.

When we are forsaken, we often flee into the darkness of rejection. In the darkness of rejection, we see the light of God’s revelation. And…

3. The Light Of God’s Revelation Brings Us To The Ultimate Realization (28:16-22).

“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it” (28:16). First, we realize we are in the presence of God. This was a great discovery: God was present here! He wasn’t just present in the dream but he was present in “this place.” Jacob had just met God! He thought he was alone in a forsaken, deserted, desolate place but he was wrong. He discovered that God was here. He is shocked to discover God’s presence when he thought he was alone, just as Isaac was shocked to discover Jacob’s presence when he thought he was alone with Esau (27:33).

We often discover God in the places we least expect. It has been my experience that we learn more about God in those unexpected circumstances, those forsaken places, than anywhere else because those are the times when we must “be still and know that (he) is God” (Ps. 46:10). What Jacob had not known before is now a reality. He seems ashamed that he wasn’t aware of God’s presence before: “I did not know it.” He says to himself, “How could I have missed it. How could I have been so dumb. The God of my grandfather and father is real, alive, near, in this very place.”

This is a personal encounter with God. It’s one thing to dream, but it’s another to know the reality. It’s one thing to envision God, but it’s quite another to hear God speak and to know his presence. This isn’t a nightmare that makes Jacob’s heart pound, but which has no lasting significance. No! God has met him and God has spoken. God has revealed to him his eternal plan! His plan to bless all the nations of the earth. His plan of redemption for the human race!

No wonder Jacob is filled with fear! And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’”(28:17). That’s what happens when you encounter God face to face. God’s presence instils fear into the human heart - fear of his awe-inspiring presence, fear of his perfect holiness and our sinfulness, fear of failing him and being disobedient to him. That’s why Peter feared the Lord, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Lk. 5:8). Job feared the Lord: “Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). Isaiah feared the Lord: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”(Isa. 6:5).

If you haven’t trusted Christ for salvation, you too should be filled with fear - a fear that drives you to repentance, to confession of sin, to God for forgiveness through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. This wasn’t just an “awesome place” it was “none other than the house of God.” This wasn’t just a lodging place for Jacob for the night. This was God’s house and God’s house must surely mean that this is the gate of heaven,” the place where God dwells!

In the light of God’s revelation, we realize that we are in the presence of God, and we realize we need to worship God. “So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it” (28:18). Jacob builds a monument. A stone becomes a statue. A pillow becomes a pillar for God. Faith is always expressed in action. This monument would be a permanent reminder of this discovery both for him and for all those who came behind him.

“He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first” (28:19) – Bethel (the house of God), the very same place where Abraham had stopped years before when he himself was on a journey from Ur to Canaan, where he had called on the name of the Lord (Gen. 12:8b). This isn’t a forsaken, desert place of darkness anymore. This isn’t a place where Jacob stopped because “the sun had set” (28:11). This isn’t a foreign place anymore where he had lodged while fleeing from a family problem. This is now “the house of God!” His whole perception of the place has changed since he met God. What was formerly known as Luz (a place of refuge) becomes for Jacob a place of spiritual refuge – Bethel, the house of God. That’s how it is when we encounter the living God. Our whole perspective on life and circumstances changes. When we enter into a faith relationship with God and grasp the reality of God’s presence, person, promises, and provision in our lives everything changes.

In the light of God’s revelation, we realize that we are in the presence of God, that we need to worship God, and we realize we need to dedicate our lives to God. Jacob sealed his devotion with a vow of dedication. 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, ‘If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, 21 so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, 22 and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you’” (28:20-22).

This is not a conditional commitment: “if God… then I.” No! This is not an “if” of doubt but an “if” of reason. Jacob is making a vow of dedication in which he repeats what God has just said. He is saying: “I cannot do this alone. God must help me. And if the Lord God is with me and keeps me in this way in which I am going and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear so that I return in peace to the house of my father and the Lord becomes my God, then by God’s grace the stone which I set up as a pillar will be the house of God and out of gratitude for all that God gives me I will give him back one-tenth.”

This vow includes two expressions of his newfound faith. First, worship - he would always worship God at Bethel. He will never fail to remember what happened there and to worship God wherever he is. Second, service - before it ever became the Law, he commits to serve God by giving to God some of God’s rich provision for him. Here Jacob dedicates his life to God. He recognizes that he is totally dependent on God. The one who had used his own resources to the full to manipulate his father and his brother now is completely out of resources and at God’s mercy. Just as Esau was once dependent on Jacob in his desperate hunger, now Jacob is utterly dependent on God. That’s why he repeats God’s promise (cf. v. 15). If God will accompany me (and he has promised that he will); if God will protect me (and he has promised that he will); if God will sustain me (and he has promised that he will); if God will guide me (and he has promised that he will); if the Lord will be my God (and he has promised that he will); then, since all of that is true, “of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.” This is Jacob’s vow of dedication.

Final Remarks

What a marvellous thing to discover who God is, even when that happens in the dark experiences of our lives. Many of you have probably had that experience. Perhaps you are going through it right now and you’re finding that it isn’t pleasant. But it’s necessary as it stretches you and makes you dependent and challenges the reality of your faith and relationship with God.

For 18 years I suffered from undiagnosed Lyme disease, whose lingering effects continue to this day. It was so bad sometimes that I could barely lift my arm off the arm of my chair. Eventually I had to quit my work. That was a particularly dark period in my life. But it was in that dark place that I learned more about God than I had ever learned in the light.

We discover God in Bethel experiences. We discover God when we’re completely alone, totally beyond ourselves, with no one and nothing to count on but God. Remember our thesis for this sermon: When we come to a dark, forsaken place in our lives, that’s where God draws near and the dark, forsaken place becomes the house of God.

We all need a Bethel experience where God reveals himself to us in powerful ways, when we realize that God is a holy, awesome God, when his presence and person fill us with holy “fear”, when we realize our insignificance and his greatness.

Bethel experiences are not comfortable. It’s not just a matter of making a decision or walking to the front or raising a hand, but it’s a matter of knowing God in the remoteness of our experience, when the sun has set on our lives and darkness envelopes us. It’s a matter of knowing his presence, his person, his promises, his provision in a powerful and life-changing way.

If you’re not a Christian, you need to meet God personally. Salvation is personal - no one else can do it for you. You need to personally experience God’s saving grace expressed most fully through Christ on the cross in order to enter “the gate of heaven.” God’s grace through Christ is available to all (2 Pet. 3:9) but it is only effective in those who believe (Jn. 1:11-12).

If you’re a Christian, how well do you know God? You met God when you got saved, but what about since then? Have you learned about the ways and character of God in the dark experiences of your Christian life? Have you grown in your faith during those times? Has God become particularly precious to you through your heartaches and trials?

A Bethel experience changes your life forever because that’s when you respond to God’s revelation. That’s when you experience God intimately. That’s when you enter the “house of God.” That’s when you express your devotion to God, make a lifelong commitment to God. That’s when you worship the Lord. And it manifests itself in a practical expression of thanks for God’s grace and the dedication of our lives to God.

Have you been radically changed by a Bethel event so that your life is devoted to following Christ, so that you follow him in practical ways by using your gifts for him, by being baptized, by worshipping God from your heart, by standing in awe of his holiness, by giving your time, talent, and treasure to God out of the abundance he has given you and out of thanksgiving for his free gift of salvation?

May this be true of each of us today! May each one of us be able to say of our dark experiences of life: “How awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”

Related Topics: Character Study, Christian Life

2. Leah: The Woman No Man Loved But Every Woman Envied (Gen. 29:15-35)

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Introduction

When has your boss ever said to you: “Name your salary”? This only seems to happen in Hollywood or in sports. But, that’s what Laban said to Jacob. Laban didn’t have to pay Jacob for his work because Jacob was a houseguest (and houseguests usually worked for their keep), but he offers to do so. Laban appears forthright and generous but he has ulterior motives: (1) to make money through Jacob’s entrepreneurial talents; and (2) to change the uncle-nephew relationship to master-servant in order to control Jacob. So he says to Jacob: “Name your wages.”

Little did Laban know what Jacob’s answer would be. Nor did he dream of the impact it would have on his daughters, particularly Leah. In this story of “Leah: The Woman No Man Loved But Every Woman Envied,” the subject is about depending on God when you are rejected. The overall teaching for us in this story is that: “When you turn your focus from yourself to God, God pours out his blessing upon you.”

As we study this story, please notice some of the literary devices and structure that the story-teller uses, such as the intrigue and irony, and the parallelism between (1) Esau (Jacob’s older brother) and Leah (Rachel’s older sister); (2) between Jacob (the trickster) and Laban (the master trickster); and (3) between Jacob’s birth family and his own marital family.

The first picture in this story is of …

1. Leah: The Woman No Man Loved (29:16-30).

Leah is unwanted by three people. First, Leah is “disregarded” by her cousin, Jacob (29:16-20). Jacob already knows what he wants Laban to pay him. He doesn’t want Laban’s money; he wants his daughter - not Leah the older daughter but Rachel the younger. Jacob, the younger brother, is in love with Rachel, the younger sister. Just as Esau, the older brother, stood between Jacob and the blessing, so here Leah, the older sister, stands between Jacob and his bride.

Jacob probably knew the problem he was up against - that it was customary for a father to give his older daughter in marriage before the younger. But before he ever laid eyes on Leah he had fallen in love with Rachel. It was love at first sight (29:11). It wasn’t as though he looked at both daughters and said: “Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?” Jacob was smitten by Rachel from the first time he saw her. Comparing her to her older sister only confirmed his decision – there’s no contest. When Leah shows up, he isn’t attracted to her at all – 17 Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. 18 Jacob loved Rachel. And he said, ’I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.’” (29:17-18). Whatever “weak” means I’m not sure, but the context is clear. Leah was physically unattractive (at least in Jacob’s eyes), whereas Rachel was beautiful. He completely disregards Leah, but that poses a dilemma for Jacob: “How can I get Rachel when she is the younger daughter?” This is a love story with this distinct and complicated twist.

True to his character and upbringing, Jacob devised a plan. It was a very shrewd plan - one that would appeal to Laban’s economic interests and one that is so attractive that perhaps Laban would set aside the custom of giving the oldest daughter in marriage first. He says to Laban: “I’ve got a proposal for you” (Aside: “This is a deal you can’t refuse”). “I will serve you for seven years for your younger daughter Rachel” (29:18).

If Jacob is shrewd, Laban is even more shrewd. Laban agrees to Jacob’s proposal without hesitation. That’s the first sign that the deal perhaps wasn’t as good as Jacob thought. Seven years’ labour was a large amount of money. And as to the problem of giving his younger daughter first, Laban could deal with that when the time came - he could figure out a way around that if he had to. Besides, this may give him an opportunity to solve one of his big problems – how to marry off his unwanted daughter, Leah. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one proverbial stone – get rich and get rid of Leah all at the same time.

So he leaves himself some wiggle room in the deal. Thus, his answer is ambiguous and vague: “It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me” (29:19). Notice, Laban does not say: “It’s a deal” to Jacob’s proposal. Nor does he refer to Rachel by name (only “her,” which could refer to either Leah or Rachel). Jacob has every reason to presume that Laban is in full agreement, but such is not the case.

So Jacob serves the seven years. Such is his love for Rachel that “they seemed to him but a few days” (29:20). Nothing was too much for him to have her as his wife - he was so in love that he didn’t even notice the time. When the seven years are up he called for his “wages.” He had fulfilled his obligation to the letter and his love for Rachel had not diminished one iota.

Leah (the woman nobody wants) is “disregarded” by her cousin, Jacob. And second, Leah is “discarded” by her father, Laban (29:21-27). Her father doesn’t want her either. So, he puts on a wedding feast (29:22), making it look as though he is fulfilling his end of the bargain. But all of this is just part of his “seven year” plan.

Leah now becomes the tool of Laban’s trickery. …in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and he went in to her” (29:23). How did Laban pull this off? Probably because of two factors. First, the wedding chamber was probably dark at night; and second, Jacob was probably suffering from the inebriating effects of the wedding feast. With these as his cover, Laban substitutes Leah for Rachel, just as Rebekah had earlier substituted Jacob for Esau. How ironic is this? Anyway, Jacob culminates the marriage without knowing that it was Leah, not Rachel.

In the morning light, Jacob discovers the shocking truth, “Behold, it was Leah!” (29:25a). Jacob is now the victim of his own deceptive methods. As they say, “What goes around comes around.” Jacob had pretended to be Esau in front of his father; now Leah pretends to be Rachel next to Jacob. Jacob had pretended to be his older brother; now Leah pretends to be her younger sister. Not only was Jacob tricked, but Leah and Rachel were tricked as well and that by their father! The dysfunctionality of this family continues.

Leah must have been totally embarrassed and Rachel must have been totally incensed – after all, she had waited for Jacob for 7 years! Helpless to do anything Jacob accosts Laban: “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?” (29:25b). Now he understands what Esau must have felt like when he had swindled him out of his birthright. If Jacob was a swindler, Laban was a master swindler. Laban certainly “knew when to hold them and when to fold them” as they say.

Now, he reveals the trick that he had had 7 years to devise. “It is not so done in our country (29:26), he says to Jacob. “Perhaps back in Canaan you can usurp your older brother (wink, wink), but here in our country, we don’t give a younger sister before the firstborn sister. Our customs have been followed for hundreds of years. Who do you think I am? I’m a prominent man in the community you know. What would people think if I didn’t treat my oldest daughter right?”

God works mysteriously in his redemptive ways. Laban is a cruel father and a deceptive master but God used Laban’s cruelty and trickery to bring about Jacob’s ultimate good – namely, his humility and dependence upon God.

Perhaps there’s a Laban in your life right now and you’ve asked the Lord to remove it or him. Remember, God uses Labans to conform us to the image of his Son and for our eternal good. Just when Jacob thought he had it made, just when he had achieved his ultimate goal, just when life was turning from sour to sweet, “Behold, it was Leah.” What total disillusionment that must have been.

What you set your hopes on in this world invariably disappoints. It always fails to keep its promises, it can’t satisfy your deepest longings whether that is marriage, riches, education, or achievements. “Rachel” always turns out to be “Leah” if God isn’t in it. What we grasp for in the world retreats from us and fades. Like the wind, it slips through our fingers. Your spouse may be good, your education may be superior, your achievements may be sterling, but if your focus is on yourself in the morning it will always turn out to be Leah – not what you expected, merely a substitute.

This often sets up a cycle. Either, you start a cycle of grasping for more, blaming someone else, and becoming cynical, saying: “If there’s nothing in this world that ever satisfies me, what’s the use?” Or, you turn to God who alone can satisfy your deepest longings. To trust in relationships, achievements, or possessions is idolatry – the worship of something other than God. To look for lasting joy, satisfaction, and meaning in this world is foolishness. Jacob thought a beautiful wife was the answer: “She will give me what I never had at home. She will give me back a sense of self-worth, achievement, honour.” But “behold, it was Leah!”

And if Jacob is disillusioned, how do you think Leah felt about all of this? - that the only way her father could get rid of her was by way of a dirty, cheap trick; that her father wanted to get her married off at any cost; that because of her appearance, the only way her father could find a husband for her was by an act of total deception in the dark of night; that no man wanted to voluntarily marry her - nobody truly loved her. And what do you think Rachel’s reaction to all of this was? All these years she thought she was going to marry the man of her dreams, only to have her hopes dashed on the wedding night. How had her older, unattractive sister upstaged her? When did she find out? It must have been on the wedding night or else the secret would have been out. What would happen now? Would Jacob accept Laban’s counter-proposal or would Jacob head back to Canaan with Leah and leave her high and dry? And, if Jacob did accept Laban’s offer, could she accept sharing her husband with her sister?

It’s bad enough for Leah (the woman nobody wants) to be “disregarded” by her cousin, Jacob, “discarded” by her father, Laban, but now, thirdly, Leah is “displaced” by her sister, Rachel (29:28-30). Now Laban says to Jacob: “Listen, Jacob, have I got a deal for you! This will blow you away - I’ll give you Rachel as well as Leah. How do you like that! I’m a man of my word you know. I wouldn’t think of deceiving you and not keeping my part of the bargain. All you have to do is two simple things. First, spend the first week with Leah (the bridal week), and then, second, agree to serve me for another 7 years. That’s all. And just to show you goodwill, I won’t make you wait 7 more years for Rachel. After all, we agreed that you could have Rachel at the end of 7 years and you’ve already served that many. I’ll trust you, Jacob. I’ll give you Rachel at the end of this week, even before you serve the extra 7 years for her” (29:27).

Jacob, of course, agrees to the new deal. His love for Rachel was genuine and deep. So, he fulfills his obligation to Leah for the week and then marries Rachel as his second wife in return for agreeing to serve Laban for another seven years (29:28). But Jacob’s problems had only just begun. He was married to one woman he didn’t love but who wanted his love at any cost and who would be a lifelong reminder of Laban’s trick. He was married to another woman whom he loved dearly but who was barren. In addition, he was obligated to work for another seven years to fulfill his obligations to a man who had defrauded him.

Meanwhile, Leah’s darkness just gets progressively darker. Because of these two schemers, her life becomes a soap opera of favoritism, jealousy, competition, and distrust, which led to unhappiness, tension, stress, anxiety, and anger. This was the beginning of a rotten marriage because it began under false pretences and because her husband loved someone else - “Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah” (29:30). It’s a bit like the Prince Charles and Princess Diana story.

Do you see how the parental favoritism showed by Jacob’s parents to their children now becomes marital favoritism shown by their son? What had produced friction in Jacob’s parents’ family now causes friction in his own family. And Leah’s darkness reaches pitch black. She isn’t wanted by her husband – he disregards her. She isn’t wanted by her father – he discards her. And she isn’t wanted by her sister – she displaces her. Leah is truly “the woman that nobody wants.”

Perhaps you can identify with her. Perhaps someone in your workplace got a promotion ahead of you and you were disregarded. Perhaps your husband doesn’t appreciate you for who you are or he found someone else more interesting and you’ve been pushed aside and you feel displaced and discarded. Perhaps your children don’t show respect for you and are disobedient to you and you feel demeaned and used by them. Perhaps the church hasn’t given you the opportunity to use your gifts as you would like to, or people haven’t been as friendly to you as you think they should and you feel distanced and alone. That’s how Leah felt and that’s how Jesus felt. He was disregarded – He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (Jn. 1:11). He was discarded – they cast him out, saying, We do not want this man to reign over us” (Lk. 19:14). He was displaced – they chose Barabbas, a robber, rather than him (Matt. 27:21). “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). So, he knows all about you. He knows the deepest feelings of your heart. He knows the rejection, the rudeness, the insults, perhaps even the persecution you have suffered. And be sure of this, he cares more about you than anyone else in the world ever can or will. That was true in the life of Leah. You see, when the Lord steps into the picture, Leah “the woman nobody wants” becomes…

2. Leah: The Woman Every Woman Envied (29:31-35)

How can things change so radically? How such a turnaround? Because God turns darkness into dawn. First, we see that the Lord’s eye of compassion sees her (29:31) – When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb” (29:31a). Though Leah was not loved by Jacob, she was loved by God. As God had sovereignly chosen Jacob (the second born) over Esau (the first born), so now he chooses Leah (the unloved) over Rachel (the loved).

First, the Lord’s eye of compassion sees her, and second, the Lord’s hand of mercy blesses her (29:31b-35). God’s love for her is evidenced by his action on her behalf. During the second 7 years that Jacob worked for Laban, Leah produced 7 children. In fact, she has four sons in a row (having sons was the ultimate blessing in child birth), while Rachel remains childless. Notice that Jacob isn’t mentioned either in any of the acts of conception or in the naming of the children. “God opened her womb (29:31b). He is the source and means of her fruitfulness and blessing. Leah may not have had Rachel’s beautiful looks but Rachel does not have Leah’s fruitful womb. Leah doesn’t covet Rachel’s looks but Rachel covets Leah’s fertility (30:1).

Look at Leah’s first four sons and what it tells us about Leah and about the deep longing of so many wives for a healthy marital relationship. Her first son she calls Reuben, for she said, ‘Because the Lord has looked upon my affliction; therefore now my husband will love me’”(29:32). Leah wanted recognition from her husband. She wanted to be seen by him but he doesn’t see her. But God sees the underdog, the despised, the outcast, the vulnerable (just as he did Hagar) and when he sees he acts. God looked upon Leah and she desperately hoped her husband would too.

Her second son she calls Simeon - “Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.’ And she called his name Simeon” (29:33). Simeon means “heard.” Leah wanted communication with her husband. She wanted to be heard by him but he doesn’t hear her. She is still unloved; nothing has changed try as she might to please him. She couldn’t share her pain with Jacob but she did with God. He heard her cry. He was her source of strength. He knew all about her and he had blessed her with this son.

Her third son she calls Levi – Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, ‘Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.’ Therefore his name was called Levi” (29:34). Levi means “attached.” Leah desperately wants affection from her husband. She hadn’t been loved by her father or any other man, so surely Jacob would at least become “attached” to her now that she had given him three sons. She was still living in hope that though she could not attract Jacob with her beauty, she could attract him through her fertility. The truth is, she gives Jacob sons but he doesn’t give her love.

But on what basis did she think she could procure her husband’s love? Did she really think that by producing sons she would earn Jacob’s respect and love? No! Despite all her hopes and desperate attempts to gain her husband’s attention and affection Jacob continued to love Rachel and reject Leah. He was sexually intimate with Leah but emotionally and spiritually detached. She desperately searches for the keys to a healthy relationship - recognition (Reuben), communication (Simeon), and affection (Levi), but she doesn’t find them in Jacob.

Her fourth son she calls Judah, which means “praise.” Leah realizes she’s not going to win Jacob’s love through her own efforts so, when all else fails, she turns to God! Instead of focusing on herself and this overriding compulsion, she now focuses on God. He is the only one she can rely on, the only one who loves her unconditionally, the only one who can make her fruitful. Now she no longer laments her condition. Instead she says, “This time I will praise the Lord” (29:35b). “This time I’m not going to focus on myself but on God.” And, as we noted at the beginning, “when you turn your focus from yourself to God, God pours out his blessing upon you” because God turns the darkness of our lives into the dawn of his blessing.

God’s blessing is beyond anything Leah could have ever imagined. From the womb of an unloved woman and from the pain of an unexpected and unwanted marriage, come two wonderful O.T. institutions – the priesthood and the monarchy. From the line of Levi (her third son) would come the Levitical priesthood (including Moses and Aaron). And from the line of Judah (her fourth son) would come the principal line of monarchy from which ultimately would come the Messiah! – “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Rev. 5:5). Leah would be the great, great etc. grandmother of Jesus, the Saviour of the world, the Deliverer, the promised Messiah! She became the woman every Jewish woman would envy, because every Jewish woman would have wanted to be a mother in the Messianic line!

Leah thought that bearing children was the answer - the answer to her unattractiveness, nothingness, and rejection. “For then,” she reasoned, “my husband will love me and take notice of me. Then I will be worthy.” But it didn’t work that way. If you think you can find meaning in life, happiness, significance, and self-worth in a spouse, you’ll be emotionally dependent and your life will go to pieces when he or she doesn’t turn out to be what you expected. In your achievements you’ll be disillusioned and cynical when you get overlooked and someone else gets the promotion, the pay raise, the recognition. If that’s you, then you’re just like Leah. You need to recognize that idols and achievements only make the disillusionment of the world far worse and that God is the only source of true and lasting joy, happiness, love, recognition, and meaning in life.

When Leah turned to God she ceased bearing children” (29:35c). Why? Because when God became real to her through his great power in her she no longer needed to bear children to find what she was searching for. Instead, she had the God who gave her the children. Leah came to the realization that even though her father treated her cruelly and discarded her, even though her husband disregarded her, and even though her sister displaced her, God was her refuge and solace. He had saved her by his grace. Only when she took her eyes off self and fixed them on God, only when she stopped relying on her achievements in bearing children, only when she turned to the Creator of her children and said: “This time I will praise the Lord”(29:35b), only then did she find release, joy, insight. Only then did her dark life turn into the dawn of God’s blessing.

And when Leah turned everything over to God, God blessed her beyond her wildest imagination. She would be the one whose progeny would ultimately give birth to Jesus. Through her son, Judah, the Messiah would come. Leah “the woman nobody wants” became Leah “the woman every woman envies,” the mother of the Redeemer’s line! She went from a nobody to a somebody.

Concluding Remarks

When you learn that you are bankrupt, helpless, and hopeless, that you can’t climb Jacob’s ladder to heaven by your own efforts, and when you turn your focus from yourself to God, then God pours out his blessing upon you. He is the answer to your deepest longings.

When you realize that you can’t earn what you yearn for (whether it be your spouse’s recognition, communication, or affection, or your bosses’ commendation), and you turn to God, then God sees you and comes to your aid. Remember: “When you turn your focus from yourself to God, God pours out his blessing upon you.”

God loves those who are unloved and unwanted. He pours his grace into the lives of the outcasts and the despised. He is the Father to the fatherless, the husband to the widow, and the protector of the vulnerable. He exalts the humble, feeds the hungry, and gives strength to the weak.

If you’re searching for meaning and happiness, God recognizes your condition. He communicates the answer in the gospel through his Son. He loves you with an everlasting love.

If you feel disregarded, discarded, and displaced, will you turn your focus from yourself to God? His eye of compassion will see you and his hand of mercy will bless you. He will satisfy your every longing in the person of Jesus Christ and you’ll say: “This time I will praise the Lord” (29:35b). After you’ve tried and tried to find meaning and happiness in life by your own endeavours, when you turn to God you’ll find that Jesus Christ is all you want and all you need.

Related Topics: Character Study, Christian Life

3. When The Sun Finally Rises: Wrestling With The Past (Gen. 32:22-32)

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Introduction

Perhaps your past has brought you to a point in your life of complete helplessness and hopelessness; when everything seems black and you don’t know where to turn; when you want to forget the past because it only brings you pain. Sometimes, the experiences and hurts of the past just don’t seem to go away, do they? The memories still stare you in the face as if it were yesterday. Old attitudes and habits still plague you.

Perhaps you’ve spent your life in an attitude of self-sufficiency, “I’ll-do-it-my-way,” “I-don’t-need-God” kind of attitude. But now you’re not so sure anymore. Perhaps you’ve perpetuated the habits with which you grew up. Your home life was anything but stable, perhaps abusive even. And now you realize that you’re just a carbon copy of all that you despise about your past and you desperately want to leave it all behind. Or, perhaps you’ve worked all the angles; you’ve taken all the tax breaks (interpreted the income tax rules liberally), and you’ve gained a measure of success and status.

But all of a sudden your life has come unravelled. Your empire has come tumbling down, and like Humpty Dumpty “all the kings horses and all the kings men can’t put it back together again.” Perhaps you’re facing the night of your life right now.

Well, remember this: The night of agony always comes before the dawn of relief. That’s the primary teaching of our text. The darkness of dread precedes the light of liberty. Chaos of conscience goes before the calm of communion. The trauma of struggling blocks the tranquility of resting. The turmoil of striving pre-empts the security of trusting.

A few years ago I had a frozen shoulder. I had never heard of such a condition before. One morning I woke up and thought I had slept on my shoulder the wrong way. But it didn’t go away. In fact, it gradually got worse so that by the time I went to the doctor, it was fully frozen. The pain was excruciating. In fact, one time I was waiting for my wife in a store, and someone brushed up against me, making me move my arm quickly. I nearly passed out, the pain was so bad. When I began physiotherapy treatment, the physiotherapist said, “I’ll have to hurt you to make you better.” In other words, the night of agony always comes before the dawn of relief.

Twenty years have now passed since Jacob tricked his brother, Esau. And many more years than that have transpired since he chased his twin down the birth canal, grabbing onto his heel for all he was worth. And so began a life of fancy footwork. Up to this point, Jacob has been running away, but ...

I. Running From The Past Doesn’t Solve Your Problems (32:22-24a).

Jacob was a product of his past ambition. From his birth he couldn’t stand to be in second place. He had to be number 1 and he set out to prove that he was the best. He cheated his twin brother twice (first, out of his birthright and second, out of his father’s blessing), pulled the wool over his old father’s blind eyes, and conned his father-in-law out of the best livestock. Jacob was a product of his past ambition.

And Jacob was a product of his past environment. He had been raised in a dysfunctional home. He observed his parents’ divided affections – his father Isaac loved Esau; whereas his mother, Rebekah, loved him, Jacob. He recognized his father’s lack of leadership and godly example. He learned from his mother how to stretch the truth convincingly. And then there was his twin brother, who was so much like him and yet so different: Jacob was a mother’s boy; Esau was a “man’s man.” Jacob was level-headed (Mr. Cool, the strong quiet type) and ruthless to get his own way; Esau was rough and ready, an outdoorsman, but complacent about life (he undervalued the things that mattered, like his birthright). Jacob was the product of his past.

So, when things turned ugly at home, Jacob began running. He ran to uncle Laban’s house where through cunning and clever manipulation he prospered. By this time he had 12 children and he had accumulated a significant net worth.

But, when things turned ugly again, he began running again. When Laban wasn’t looking Jacob loaded up his animals and his family and left without even saying “goodbye.”

And so you can see how Jacob’s past shaped his values and character. For him the end always justified the means. Friends and family were treated just like anybody else - if that meant stealing, fraud, scheming, treachery, so be it. With friends like him, who needs enemies?

But God is at work again in his life. When God tells him to return to his family in Canaan, Jacob thinks it’s a great idea to escape from Laban’s clutches, manipulation, and jealousy. But what he didn’t know is that God was saying: “Jacob, it’s time! Time to deal with your past!”

Running from the past doesn’t solve your problems because (1) the past has a way of catching up with you (22-23). It caught up with Jacob here at the river Jabbok. So far, he had gotten what he wanted but at a great cost. We don’t know if he ever saw his mother again and he had certainly severed his relationship with his brother. Up to now, he hadn’t worried about meeting Esau again. He could patch things up; he could buy him off with presents. After all, he was wealthy now (32:1-5). But Esau’s wrath has been festering for 20 years. When he hears that his brother is returning, his anger boils over.

Jacob’s men return from taking peace offerings to Esau and they report that Esau is coming with 400 men (32:6)! Jacob intuitively knows that this isn’t a welcome home party. Esau means business: this is all-out war! Jacob’s fancy-footed, slick-handed scheming now looks pretty inadequate. He has just run right into a brick wall, and with no more tricks up his sleeve, he has to face the music. He has to look himself square in the face and he has only one place to turn – that’s to God!

He could have kept running, I suppose, but he didn’t. Perhaps by this time he was sick of running, tired of the sleazy side of his character, hated who he was and wanted to put it right. Perhaps he had finally reached the end of himself and his self-sufficient, self-improving, ambitious lifestyle. Or, perhaps he knew that he had just run out of options: he’d tossed the dice just one too many times. Whatever the reason, he played his last card (22-23) by dividing his company into two, so that if Esau got one party the other could escape (cf. 32:7f.), and he sent them on ahead while he was left alone.

Running from the past doesn’t solve your problems because (1) the past has a way of catching up with you and (2) eventually you have to stop running. There comes a time when you’re “left alone” (24a).

To be “left alone” with God is both frightening and exhilarating. Jacob had been alone with God once before when he was on the run at Bethel, as we noticed in a previous article (“When the sun sets: Jacob meets God,” Gen. 27:41-28:22). That time it was exhilarating. There was the vision, the ladder, the angels. And God’s promise to Abraham from years ago was renewed so that Jacob declares: “Surely, the Lord is in this place. And I did not know it…How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the very gate of heaven” (28:16). That was exhilarating and undoubtedly Jacob made a genuine commitment to serve God at that time. But he still has issues to deal with. He still has the old “end-justifies-the-means” ethics to deal with. He still has his old scheming character that he had inherited from his mother to deal with. He still has the past to deal with before God.

Last time his encounter with God was exhilarating, but this time his encounter with God is frightening! Now he meets God again – not at Bethel, but at the river Jabbok. Jabbok is the place where we stop running and fighting; the place of intense blackness - the midnight of the soul; the place where the moment of truth dawns - that we’re completely spent, no more ideas, the past has caught up to us, we’re at the dead end in the road, we’re trapped in the web of our own weaving; the place where we are alone; the place of wrestling; the place of a meeting with God.

Running from the past doesn’t solve your problems but…

II. A Meeting With God Brings You To Your Senses (32:24b-29).

Jacob wrestled tenaciously and desperately all night “until the break of day” (24b). Perhaps he wrestled about his past behaviour and habits - his duplicity, lies, scheming, fraud; about his present predicament which loomed large - his pending meeting with Esau; about his future destiny: “How could he change once-and-for-all and face the future? How could he be a man of integrity, at peace with God and other people?” You can be sure of this, a meeting with God stops you in your tracks (25). When God “wrestles” with you, you don’t go anywhere. You may struggle but you can’t get away.

Many of you have probably experienced a night of wrestling with God. Some people are very content with the way they are - complacent, no longing for God, no hunger for him. But others would do anything to change the way they are and what they’ve done. Great people have wrestled with God in the night of their lives. After his tryst with Bathsheba, David cried out in the agony of his soul: “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Sam. 12:13). After his seduction by Delilah, Samson pleaded with God: “O Lord God, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once” (Judges 16:28). After Elijah had succumbed to Jezebel’s threat, he moaned: “I, even I only, am left and they seek my life, to take it away” (1 Kgs 19:10). After Peter had denied the Lord with oaths and curses, he “went out and wept bitterly” (Lk. 22:62).

Some people come to Jabbok and decide to keep on running. They never face their past – only live for the present – and they don’t care about the future. They banish the past into the closet with all the other skeletons of their lives. They just rationalize what happened - make lifelong excuses: “I was a victim! It wasn’t my fault. There are lots worse than I.” They keep on running hoping that in the end they’ll escape. But there is no escape from God.

Some people decide to keep on running, others decide to wrestle this thing to the ground. They’re at the Jabbok where God stops them in their tracks. In fact, the only way to overcome your past is to “wrestle” with God. Maybe that’s where you are right now. Perhaps you’re plagued with regrets - about your family, about relationships. Or, you’ve abused your position of power - in your family, your church, your work. Or, perhaps you have a secret sin that for years you’ve tried to cover up or beat, but you can’t. Maybe you’ve neglected God in your Christian life and you have lived like an unbeliever; you’ve hurt someone and never been reconciled; you’ve suffered from abusive relationships that torture you; you’ve engaged in immoral behaviour that torments you; your shady business dealings keep you awake at night; your cheating on exams gives you cold sweats; your unfaithfulness to your spouse haunts you; you have character traits that you long to change – a poisonous tongue, a bitter spirit, a hot temper, or a critical attitude.

And now you’re at the point you can’t stand it any longer. Your conscience is driving you crazy if you don’t deal with it. You can’t cover it up any more nor can you ignore it. Now, naked and exposed under the midnight sky you wrestle with God. The veneer is stripped off; you look yourself straight in the mirror and you’re forced to face it head on - no more hiding down the dark alleys of your past, no more mind games, but a head-on confrontation with God.

Be aware your hip may be dislocated in the process (25). Jacob had been a survivor. He had always won out. Every time there was a dispute, he came out smelling like a rose. Every time he was in a fix, he came up with a solution. But now he would have an experience like none other. God would permanently wound him.

When you wrestle with God you may be wounded. You’ll certainly lose; God always conquers. And sometimes he has to cripple you. When you wrestle with God, you feel his body next to yours. You feel his power as he inflicts a wound. And when you feel that stabbing pain in your hip, you know the reality of his presence and his power. Wounds bring contrition, repentance, yearning for God. A. W. Tozer put it like this: “I doubt that God can use a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”

Where was your first Jabbok? When have you been wounded as you wrestled with God? When did you feel the stabbing dislocation of your hip as God deals with you and your past? When were you driven to call on God in your trouble?

A meeting with God (1) stops you in your tracks and (2) a meeting with God makes you cry for a blessing (26-29). Jacob knew all about the blessing of God. He knew how God had blessed his grandfather, Abraham, with a son at 100 years old. He knew how his father, Isaac, had been delivered from the jaws of death on Mt. Moriah. And he himself had received a blessing from his father. To wrestle with God is to plead with God for a blessing.

If you’re in pain today that others have inflicted on you, then cry from the bottom of your heart: “O, God, I will not let you go until you bless me! Rid me of the pain from all those years of abuse. Take away the torment of my mind. Remove the pangs of conscience that hang like a thick cloud.”

Perhaps you’re the perpetrator of sin – you’ve inflicted pain on others. Then cry to God in the agony of your soul: “O, God, I’m sick of the past. I need a second chance, a new beginning. I hate who I am and what I have done. I desperately want a fulfilling life. I want to put right the wrongs I have done. I desperately want to know You. Change me, O God!”

If you need to get right with God about anything, say: “O, God, I will not let you go unless you bless me! Forgive the sin of my life - my self-sufficiency that left you out; my infidelity, lusts, envy, covetousness; the pornography I’m addicted to; my pride; my unfaithfulness to my spouse; my cheating; my fraudulent habits; my deceitfulness; the abuse of my body with drugs and sex.”

God will honour your cry and bless you (27-29), just as he honoured Jacob’s cry and blessed him. And he’ll radically transform your life. He’ll bless you with a new name, a new identity (28). God asked Jacob: “What’s your name?” (27). That seems like a strange question for God to ask – didn’t he know Jacob’s name? Perhaps God asked Jacob his name to remind Jacob of the last time he had been asked that question, “Who are you?” (27:18). That question was asked by his old, blind father and Jacob had lied to him. Now he is before an all-seeing God and he gives his correct name. He acknowledges who he was and God responds with a great promise: “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (28).

Jacob’s name told the story of his life. It was his identity as a usurper, whose birth portrayed what his life would subsequently be - the second-born twin who sought to overtake his first-born brother by grabbing onto his heel as he exited the birth canal; the one who would seek to trip others up and overtake them.

You need to acknowledge your old name, who you really are. Then, God will give you a new name – a new name that will take away the stigma of the old life; a new name to remind you that, formerly, you took charge of your life but that you struggled with God and finally prevailed; a new name that acknowledges that now “God is the ruler of your life.”

Running from the past doesn’t solve your problems but a meeting with God brings you to your senses, so that now…

III. Facing The Future Gives You Renewed Hope (32:30-32).

(1) You can face the future with renewed hope when you’ve “seen the face of God” (30). God breaks through our past and opens the future so that we can say: “I have seen God face to face and yet my life has been delivered” (30).

The place of wrestling is the place of divine appointment. It’s the place where we suddenly realize that the person with whom we wrestled is none other than God, that we have actually met God face to face and lived to tell the tale!

Have you ever seen God face to face? No one can see God and remain unchanged. You’ll get a new name and you’ll lose your independence. You’ll walk with a limp and lean on a cane for the rest of your life. To walk with God means to lean on him, to claim his power. Remember, Esau is always at the gate threatening, swaggering, waiting to throw us off the path. He’s the Judas (betrayer), the Diotrephes (pre-eminence), the Demas (loved the world), the Alexander the coppersmith (opposer). Whenever he shows up, he whispers: “We’re at the Jabbok again.”

You can face the future with renewed hope (1) when you’ve seen the face of God, and (2) you can face the future with renewed hope when the sun finally rises (31). As an aside, notice how the author has book-ended this segment of Jacob’s life with these two expressions: “The sun had set” (28:11) and now “the sun rose” (32:31).

Jacob emerges from the night and “the sun rose upon him” (31a). When God breaks through our past, the darkness of night becomes a beautiful sunrise. Sorrow may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning (Ps. 30:15).

Perhaps the sun hasn’t shone much in your life recently. You may have spent a lot of time in darkness, desperately longing for the sun to finally rise. Is that what you want more than anything today, to walk out of this service into the sun rise of your life? To feel the sunshine of God’s love shine upon you? To know the beauty of God’s truth as it infiltrates your soul? To bask in the radiant heat of God’s all-embracing mercy and power?

As he goes to meet Esau, Jacob “limped on his hip” (31b). The limp serves two purposes: (a) it reminds us that we can’t stand on our own, that we’re totally dependent on God, that we must lean on him. Every time you take a step, get out of bed, put your shoes on, you’ll know that a life lived for God is a dependent life. So, it reminds us that we can’t stand on our own, and (b) it preserves us from ever trying to run again. It ensures that we stay close to God.

The subsequent practice by the Israelites of not eating “the sinew of the thigh” (32:32) would surely have served as a constant reminder to them of what happened to Jacob that memorable night when God changed him from one who was running away to the man who was returning to be the leader of God’s people.

Final Remarks

Remember our thesis: The night of agony always comes before the dawn of relief. This scene closes at the dawn of a new day. In the early morning sunlight we see Jacob limping into the sunrise across the Jabbok, ready to face Esau with courage and joy. Now his life can begin anew. If you need to settle things with God and with other people, don’t continue to fight it, to put it off, to rationalize it. Don’t think there will be a better time. There’s never a better time than now.

Don’t be afraid that it’s too late or it’s too complicated. No amount of years is too long for God to span. It took Jacob years to deal with his habits, attitudes, and self-reliance until God wrestled him to the ground. And he has gone down in history as the father of the Israelites. No life is too far gone for God to bless.

If you had to choose whether to bless Jacob or Esau, whom would you choose? You’d probably choose Esau, because we look on the outward appearance. But remember that God looks on the heart, for where we see a cheat God sees a champion; where we see a runner God sees a wrestler; where we see a liar God sees a leader.

God sees into your life with all its past and he wants to bless you for the future. For you that may seem like a daunting task, but, as Max Lucado puts it: “For God… it’s all in a night’s work.”

If this message today has touched a cord in your life, why not make a commitment to God now, whether you have suffered pain or inflicted pain; whether you’ve been running or you’ve stopped running? Remember, God pours healing into hearts that are hurting; God gives grace to people in pain; and God extends mercy to sinners and saints who repent.

Perhaps this was what the hymn writer had in mind when she wrote:

I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord;
no tender voice like thine can peace afford.

I need thee, O I need thee; every hour I need thee!
O bless me now, my Savior, I come to thee.

Related Topics: Character Study, Christian Life

網上牧師雜誌 – 中文版(繁體), TCh Ed, Issue 33 2019 年 秋季

2019 秋季版

A ministry of…

作者: Roger Pascoe 博士, 主席,
聖經講道學會
劍橋, 安省, 加拿大
郵箱: [email protected]
電話: 1-519-620-2375

第一部分:加強講解式講道

“強化應用” (第二部分)

介紹

在本雜誌的上一版,我們討論了怎樣強化講道的應用部分。在這一版,我們將繼續這個主題。

作為傳道人,我們應該記住神學是完全實用的,因此也必須實際應用在我們的講道中。真理不僅僅意味著知識,它也意味著實踐。真理的實踐必須成為我們講道的重要部分。這就是我們所說的應用。

但是許多傳道人往往發現,決定如何應用他們所宣講的真理使之既與今天的聽眾相關,同時又符合經文,是一件很難的事情。所以,這裡有些想法可以幫助你在講道中採取相關的應用。

A.發現好應用的有效提示[1]

首先,審視經文中的情況。問如下問題…

#1:當時的問題、事件或環境是什麼?

  • 聖經作者是寫給誰的?
  • 為什麼作者在那個時候寫信給這些人?
  • 需要指出的問題、狀況、試煉或痛苦是什麼?
  • 作者責備、糾正、勸告或解釋的本質是什麼?

#2:聖經給出的解決方案或要求的行動是什麼?

  • 作者是如何指出問題的?他給了他們什麼指導?
  • 神直接向他們指出了嗎?如果是,那麼神指示他們做什麼或者成為什麼?

#3:人們的反應是什麼?

  • 聖經作者期望或者要求什麼樣的回應?
  • 人們如何接收資訊以及他們對解決方案如何反應?
  • 他們對作者的指導有什麼樣的態度?

第二,審視當下的情況。問如下問題…

#1:今天人們的需求和問題有什麼相似之處?

  • 我們和經文中的人有什麼相似之處?
  • 他們的生活狀況和我們今天有什麼相似之處?要具體。

#2:對當下的狀況,經文中是如何解決的?

  • 關於這個問題,聖經告訴了我們什麼?
  • 哪些聖經原則可以應用到我們自己身上?

#3:今天我們該如何回應?

  • 基督徒該如何回應經文關於這個問題的指導?
  • 當下我們應該做什麼來糾正這個問題?在我們的態度、信仰、優先考慮的事情、價值觀、意志以及關係中,有我們需要糾正的東西嗎?
  • 我們必須做什麼來順服神的話?

第三,你講道的實際應用要具體

  • 我的會眾在他們的生活中如何處理相似的問題?
  • 我們和經文中的人有什麼相似之處?
  • 我期望我的會眾有什麼反應——認罪、悔改、遵行、懷疑、拒絕、生氣、發問、反對、接受、順服?

當你問這些問題的時候,試著通過明確地指出當前情況的類型給以回答。對於他們如何將真理應用到自己的生活中,要試著給出具體的指導。

應用要在你會眾的生活中具體、真實。想出可信的,實際的例子,哪怕因為保密的原因你不能說出實際情況,在這種情況下,如果合適的話,你可以請求某個人做一個與主題相關的個人見證。

所以,當你考慮經文中真理的實際應用時,要準備好回答自己問題和挑戰的答案。神想要整個會眾做什麼、相信什麼以及改變什麼?神在會眾每個人的生活中要他們做什麼、相信什麼或者改變什麼?神想要他們成為怎樣的人?

並且要常存盼望,例如,聖靈在我們裡面,幫助我們順服真理;我們的命定是確定且牢靠的,最終我們會從試煉中得到救贖;我們能因在基督裡的信心和未來的盼望而有喜樂。

最後,說明你建議你的會眾採取什麼樣的行動。要具體並舉例子。 他們需要採取什麼樣的行動才能使真理進入他們的生活,使他們活出神子民該有的樣子?他們應該採取什麼樣的具體措施?並在這個過程中向他們提供幫助。這是你作為牧師的責任,不是簡單地告訴他們根據聖經真理他們該如何做,而是切實説明他們實現這個目標。

比如,如果這個主題與基督徒忍受苦難有關,試著給他們一些具體的建議來應對這些考驗他們信心的難處(身體上的、精神上的或者情感上的等等)。例如,(1)他們可以來記一些相關的、使人有信心的經文(2)他們可以和基督徒朋友一起禱告,互相幫助;(3)他們可以將他們的難處與諮詢師、牧師或者聖經學習小組分享。給出經文,說明為什麼擔當彼此的難處是合乎聖經的。

結論

.記住,並不是每一段經文都可以直接轉變成應用。換句話說,你不能假設當時聖經裡發生的事情和現在的完全一樣,或者我們必須像他們當時的反應一樣。你如何過渡到今天的應用取決於經文。這就是你必須忠實于聖經作者意圖的地方。

B.好應用所具備的特點

1. 好的應用會突出信息的迫切

它必須有一種緊迫感,那就是必須現在就採取行動—比如,信從福音,順服神的意志,停止有罪的習慣和接觸等。

2.好應用會反映信息的強度

我所說的強度指講道中那些強調—鼓勵人們對神話語以及傳道人的勸戒做出積極回應。這不是一次愉快的爐邊談話,而是呼召。耶穌的比喻總是呼召人們做出某種行動,例如好撒瑪利亞人:“去照樣行吧”(路10:37)

3.好應用會與信息的目的相呼應

應用必須與講道的目的直接相關。它必須來源於講道的目的也指向講道的目的。無論你為你的講道定了什麼目的,你的應用必須通過使人們的生活有切實的不同來實現這個目的。

4.好應用會激發出信息的動機

任何一場講道的目的之一就是推動你的聽眾採取某種行動。你想要激發的動機就是那個能夠觸摸心靈,引導思路,刺痛良知、引導意志並付出行動的東西—不是通過掌控或者威脅,而是聖靈引導的、被真理喚醒的對神話語的回應。“我們最終的目的是推動意志,使它轉到另一個方向,加快它的步伐,使它能夠按著神誡命的方式歌唱” [2]

5. 信息能夠説明人們意識到自己的問題,並面對和處理。好應用能夠強化資訊這方面的功能。

在應用中,資訊以個人和直接的方式説明聽眾意識到自己的問題(不再是間接或者非個人的)。他們可能面對真理“原則”沒有回應,因為它是間接或者非個人化的。但是,當面對真理的“實踐”時,回應是不可避免的,是必須的。

.講解式的講道的本質就是讓人們意識到自己的問題,並去面對和解決,不論是直接或者間接。在大多數講道中,這種應用有兩種形式。例如,先知拿單斥責大衛(撒下12),以間接的應用(講故事)開始,但是以直接的應用結束:“你就是那個人”。耶穌在他的應用中也通常是直接的。

間接的方式,有的時候人們可能聽過就忘了,他們錯過了重點而不知道如何回應。但通過直接的方式,你不至於會冒這樣的風險。提後3:16-17似乎表明,聖經真理的應用應該(1)直接明確,而非間接和暗示;(2)說服並指責,而非建議和容忍(使徒行轉中使徒的講道)。

6.好應用使信息產生說服力

應用的主要目標是說服聽眾遵守真理,無論它是在整個講道中,還是在最後,或兩者皆有。講道中的解釋是為接下來的應用打基礎。因此一篇講道既是資訊性,又有改變性。

說服的能力來自於聖靈將神的話作用于人的心靈、思想、意志和良心。說服的工具是傳道人將真理與生活結合,以至於聽眾看到改變的必要性,並被說服去做些什麼。

當聖靈開啟人對神話語的理解,並通過傳道人的應用展示神話語的實際,這就是改變的強大催化劑。

為了使應用具有說服力,真理的講解和它的應用都必須被恰當地、禮貌地、謙卑地呈現出來,以便聽眾能夠接受。

7.好應用會從信息的解釋中浮現出來

應用必須被經文驅動,正如解釋被經文驅動一樣。 不要使用經文任意彈出你想要的應用。這是對你的讀者和經文缺乏誠信。你的應用一定要出自經文,與經文作者的意圖相符,並且你應用的要點與經文的主要觀點一致。

不要使用經文達到你自己的目的。這是對經文的亂用。當應用用於生活的時候,它不能以任何方式歪曲經文。這才是誠信地使用經文。這需要很多的訓練。搞明白基於經文的應用跟搞明白經文的意思同等重要。

注意,應用必須來源於經文,與此同時應用的範圍需要被“擴展”,如此,經文中隱含的意義才可能應用于生活的諸多方面。因此,一段經文,只有一個意思,卻可以有很多應用。

8.好應用會顯露信息中牧師的要點。

好應用引導人們去該去的地方。它會在人們受傷時關心他們,在人們違背的時候責備他們,在人們饑餓的時候餵養他們,在人們危險的時候保護他們。

9.好應用會使信息中抽象的真理具體化

不要擔心舉具體的例子會導致有的聽眾認為與他們無關—也就是說,他們可能認為既然你並沒有提到與他們相關的例子,因此他們就不需要有回應。在這裡,聖靈彌補這個空缺。聖靈會使用你給出的例子,使聽者的思想和良心中浮現出他們需要糾正或改變的東西等。

應用要具體,把真理與生活聯繫起來。為了有效地做到這一點,你必須關注生活中的一些情況,在這些情況下,特定的真理以特定的方式應用。作為傳道人,你的任務就是使聽眾明白這點並敦促聽眾遵行。不要停留在概念層面。很多傳道人都如此,他們很難從神學的抽象層面,來到具體的、有形的、生活的層面。

結論

不要忽視應用。在講道之前要回顧你的講稿,看看裡面有多少應用。足夠嗎?每一個主要原則都有應用嗎?我的導師,Stephen Olford 博士曾經敦促我們說,應用應該占講道的50%!

C.應用的參考準則

1.找尋真理、應許、命令和例子

應許、命令和例子的給出不僅僅是教義上或者理性上的認同。它們要被反復灌輸到生活中。聖經中的真理需要來相信並遵行。

對聖經真理的唯一正確的回應是信心,這不僅表現在被動地接受原則,而且表現在理解它們對生活的意義並活出它們(也就是應用)。注意,真理和例子可能是明確的,也可能是隱含的。

例如,一個明確的原則是:“你應該愛人如己”(利19:18). 雖然一個明確的原則是什麼或者說了什麼毫無疑問的,但它在生活中的表現可能因文化而異。我們的任務就是去發現這個具體的真理在今天我們所處文化背景下的應用。

一個隱含的原則可能是那些需要通過邏輯推理才能看到其對生活的意義。例如,“不要姦淫”,說明了純潔、忠誠和愛的必要性。

尋找這些原則,然後沿著抽象的階梯向上移動,以確定它們最廣泛的意義。接著,把它們應用到我們這個時代的社會生活中去。

2.學習應對應用舊約時會面臨的詮釋學挑戰

想要更多地閱讀這方面的文章,我推薦Tremper Longman III所著的Making Sense out of the Old Testament中的“基督徒如何將舊約應用於生活?” (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 103-136.

3.瞭解你所處的文化

這樣,你就可以把神的話用在真實的人和真實情況上。沒有意義的應用或者已經過時的應用幾乎沒有影響力。

聖經中的真理原則對任何時代的任何人都有意義。我們的任務就是要把它應用於我們的時代我們的人身上—這就是相關。

4.意識到沒有哪兩個傳道人必須以統一的方式應用經文

這並不是說一個對一個錯。這只說明他們的方式不同,或者他們呈現了同一真理的不同側面,或者他們的會眾受益于不同的應用方式。

5.不要在應用時耗盡精力

當應用的時候,保持你對真理的確信和熱情。當你將真理個人化的時候,這是保持強度的關鍵時刻。

6.作為一個這個真理也適用於你並且已經應用於你生活的人來講道

這並不意味著你必須使用“我們”。有時候,或者一般來說你會用 “你”使應用個人化以及具有說服力。但是,你要確保在你勸戒別人去遵行這個真理之前,已經應用於你自己的生活。

一定要把這作為你準備講道的一部分。當你準備好講稿,你要在神的面前回顧它,以禱告地方式回顧,求神向你顯明你需要應用於自己生活的真理。

7.視覺化你的聽眾

看到他們的需要(在不指向個人或者暴露隱私的情況下)。涵蓋聽眾生活的不同狀況(例如在家中、工作中、學校中、社區中)——包含每個人。

在每一種生活狀況中使用“可能”的情況。“可能你在工作中遇到這種…”等。你可能不能準確地描述每個人所面臨的情況,但你會在他們的腦海中觸動其他一些情況,在這些情況下,這個應用是針對他們的。

8. 記住應用的四個原則

#1.個人化的原則

這個原則就是傳道人要將真理應用於自己的生活。如果你對別人傳講你沒有應用到自己生活的東西,你的講道會沒有能力。當你這樣做的時候,不但神知道,聽眾也知道。傳道人必須傳講他所相信的並在自己的生活中活出來的東西。

#2.想像的原則

要想恰當地應用經文,它對你必須是真實的。人物、地點和情感必須活在你的想像中。如果它對傳道人來說是生動的,那麼看到它如何應用於其他人對你來說會更容易。

#3.擴展的原則

當我們對聽眾講道並引導他們,一段時間之後,傳道人會更瞭解他們——他們的怕和需要。我們對這些人的經驗(他們住在哪裡,他們是誰)使得我們能夠擴展經文的應用,以涵蓋盡可能多的方面。這並不是說我們可以不恰當地或者不準確地使用經文。每一段經文只有一種解釋,但是卻有針對人們經歷和問題的許多種應用。

#4.聲明的原則

聲明經文的應用必須明確且有權威。經文的應用必須沒有任何不確定性。人們來教會是為了尋求明確的方向,為了知道神說了什麼,他們必須怎樣生活,怎樣才能得到幫助來解決他們的問題。因此,應用必須公開聲明,這樣人們才不會被懸在半空,或者不知道重點是什麼。

第二部分 講道大綱

如果想聽關於這些的英文講道,請點選連結: Link 1 - 啟 2:1-4; Link 2 - 啟 2:5-7

題目:給七個教會的信:以弗所,正統但冷漠

主題:復興由神子民的悔改開始

要點 #1:首先,好消息:“表面上看,你們教會在屬靈上很健康”

(1)你們持續勤勞地做工(2a)

(2)你們清楚堅決地審判罪惡(2b)

(3)你們信實而不知疲倦地堅持(3)

要點 #2:現在壞消息是:“你們教會內部有嚴重的心靈問題”

(1)基督的診斷:“你把起初的愛心離棄了” (4)

(2)基督的處理:

(a) “回想你從哪裡墜落了”(5a)

(b) “悔改,行起初所行的事”(5b)

(c)警告“你若不悔改,我將把你的燈檯從遠處挪去”(5c)

(d)對聽從警告的人的應許:“得勝的,我必將神樂園中生命樹的果子賜給他吃”(7)


[1] 改編自Dave Veerman, 如何應用聖經 (Wheaton, Ill: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993).

[2] John Henry Jowett, The Preacher His Life and Work (New York: Harper and brothers Publishers, 1912), 172, cited in Handbook of Contemporary Preaching, 211.

Related Topics: Pastors

网上牧师杂志–中文版(简体), SCh Ed, Issue 33 2019 年 秋季

2019 秋季版

A ministry of…

作者: Roger Pascoe 博士, 主席,
圣经讲道学会
剑桥, 安省, 加拿大
邮箱: [email protected]
电话: 1-519-620-2375

第一部分:加强讲解式讲道

“强化应用” (第二部分)

介绍

在本杂志的上一版,我们讨论了怎样强化讲道的应用部分。在这一版,我们将继续这个主题。

作为传道人,我们应该记住神学是完全实用的,因此也必须实际应用在我们的讲道中。真理不仅仅意味着知识,它也意味着实践。真理的实践必须成为我们讲道的重要部分。这就是我们所说的应用。

但是许多传道人往往发现,决定如何应用他们所宣讲的真理使之既与今天的听众相关,同时又符合经文,是一件很难的事情。所以,这里有些想法可以帮助你在讲道中采取相关的应用。

A.发现好应用的有效提示[1]

首先,审视经文中的情况。问如下问题…

#1:当时的问题、事件或环境是什么?

  • 圣经作者是写给谁的?
  • 为什么作者在那个时候写信给这些人?
  • 需要指出的问题、状况、试炼或痛苦是什么?
  • 作者责备、纠正、劝告或解释的本质是什么?

#2:圣经给出的解决方案或要求的行动是什么?

  • 作者是如何指出问题的?他给了他们什么指导?
  • 神直接向他们指出了吗?如果是,那么神指示他们做什么或者成为什么?

#3:人们的反应是什么?

  • 圣经作者期望或者要求什么样的回应?
  • 人们如何接收信息以及他们对解决方案如何反应?
  • 他们对作者的指导有什么样的态度?

第二,审视当下的情况。问如下问题…

#1:今天人们的需求和问题有什么相似之处?

  • 我们和经文中的人有什么相似之处?
  • 他们的生活状况和我们今天有什么相似之处?要具体。

#2:对当下的状况,经文中是如何解决的?

  • 关于这个问题,圣经告诉了我们什么?
  • 哪些圣经原则可以应用到我们自己身上?

#3:今天我们该如何回应?

  • 基督徒该如何回应经文关于这个问题的指导?
  • 当下我们应该做什么来纠正这个问题?在我们的态度、信仰、优先考虑的事情、价值观、意志以及关系中,有我们需要纠正的东西吗?
  • 我们必须做什么来顺服神的话?

第三,你讲道的实际应用要具体

  • 我的会众在他们的生活中如何处理相似的问题?
  • 我们和经文中的人有什么相似之处?
  • 我期望我的会众有什么反应——认罪、悔改、遵行、怀疑、拒绝、生气、发问、反对、接受、顺服?

当你问这些问题的时候,试着通过明确地指出当前情况的类型给以回答。对于他们如何将真理应用到自己的生活中,要试着给出具体的指导。

应用要在你会众的生活中具体、真实。想出可信的,实际的例子,哪怕因为保密的原因你不能说出实际情况,在这种情况下,如果合适的话,你可以请求某个人做一个与主题相关的个人见证。

所以,当你考虑经文中真理的实际应用时,要准备好回答自己问题和挑战的答案。神想要整个会众做什么、相信什么以及改变什么?神在会众每个人的生活中要他们做什么、相信什么或者改变什么?神想要他们成为怎样的人?

并且要常存盼望,例如,圣灵在我们里面,帮助我们顺服真理;我们的命定是确定且牢靠的,最终我们会从试炼中得到救赎;我们能因在基督里的信心和未来的盼望而有喜乐。

最后,说明你建议你的会众采取什么样的行动。要具体并举例子。 他们需要采取什么样的行动才能使真理进入他们的生活,使他们活出神子民该有的样子?他们应该采取什么样的具体措施?并在这个过程中向他们提供帮助。这是你作为牧师的责任,不是简单地告诉他们根据圣经真理他们该如何做,而是切实帮助他们实现这个目标。

比如,如果这个主题与基督徒忍受苦难有关,试着给他们一些具体的建议来应对这些考验他们信心的难处(身体上的、精神上的或者情感上的等等)。例如,(1)他们可以来记一些相关的、使人有信心的经文(2)他们可以和基督徒朋友一起祷告,互相帮助;(3)他们可以将他们的难处与咨询师、牧师或者圣经学习小组分享。给出经文,说明为什么担当彼此的难处是合乎圣经的。

结论

.记住,并不是每一段经文都可以直接转变成应用。换句话说,你不能假设当时圣经里发生的事情和现在的完全一样,或者我们必须像他们当时的反应一样。你如何过渡到今天的应用取决于经文。这就是你必须忠实于圣经作者意图的地方。

B.好应用所具备的特点

1. 好的应用会突出信息的迫切

它必须有一种紧迫感,那就是必须现在就采取行动—比如,信从福音,顺服神的意志,停止有罪的习惯和接触等。

2.好应用会反映信息的强度

我所说的强度指讲道中那些强调—鼓励人们对神话语以及传道人的劝戒做出积极回应。这不是一次愉快的炉边谈话,而是呼召。耶稣的比喻总是呼召人们做出某种行动,例如好撒玛利亚人:“去照样行吧”(路10:37)

3.好应用会与信息的目的相呼应

应用必须与讲道的目的直接相关。它必须来源于讲道的目的也指向讲道的目的。无论你为你的讲道定了什么目的,你的应用必须通过使人们的生活有切实的不同来实现这个目的。

4.好应用会激发出信息的动机

任何一场讲道的目的之一就是推动你的听众采取某种行动。你想要激发的动机就是那个能够触摸心灵,引导思路,刺痛良知、引导意志并付出行动的东西—不是通过掌控或者威胁,而是圣灵引导的、被真理唤醒的对神话语的回应。“我们最终的目的是推动意志,使它转到另一个方向,加快它的步伐,使它能够按着神诫命的方式歌唱” [2]

5.信息能够帮助人们意识到自己的问题,并面对和处理。好应用能够强化信息这方面的功能。

在应用中,信息以个人和直接的方式帮助听众意识到自己的问题(不再是间接或者非个人的)。他们可能面对真理“原则”没有回应,因为它是间接或者非个人化的。但是,当面对真理的“实践”时,回应是不可避免的,是必须的。

.讲解式的讲道的本质就是让人们意识到自己的问题,并去面对和解决,不论是直接或者间接。在大多数讲道中,这种应用有两种形式。例如,先知拿单斥责大卫(撒下12),以间接的应用(讲故事)开始,但是以直接的应用结束:“你就是那个人”。耶稣在他的应用中也通常是直接的。

间接的方式,有的时候人们可能听过就忘了,他们错过了重点而不知道如何回应。但通过直接的方式,你不至于会冒这样的风险。提后3:16-17似乎表明,圣经真理的应用应该(1)直接明确,而非间接和暗示;(2)说服并指责,而非建议和容忍(使徒行转中使徒的讲道)。

6.好应用使信息产生说服力

应用的主要目标是说服听众遵守真理,无论它是在整个讲道中,还是在最后,或两者皆有。讲道中的解释是为接下来的应用打基础。因此一篇讲道既是信息性,又有改变性。

说服的能力来自于圣灵将神的话作用于人的心灵、思想、意志和良心。说服的工具是传道人将真理与生活结合,以至于听众看到改变的必要性,并被说服去做些什么。

当圣灵开启人对神话语的理解,并通过传道人的应用展示神话语的实际,这就是改变的强大催化剂。

为了使应用具有说服力,真理的讲解和它的应用都必须被恰当地、礼貌地、谦卑地呈现出来,以便听众能够接受。

7.好应用会从信息的解释中浮现出来

应用必须被经文驱动,正如解释被经文驱动一样。 不要使用经文任意弹出你想要的应用。这是对你的读者和经文缺乏诚信。你的应用一定要出自经文,与经文作者的意图相符,并且你应用的要点与经文的主要观点一致。

不要使用经文达到你自己的目的。这是对经文的乱用。当应用用于生活的时候,它不能以任何方式歪曲经文。这才是诚信地使用经文。这需要很多的训练。搞明白基于经文的应用跟搞明白经文的意思同等重要。

注意,应用必须来源于经文,与此同时应用的范围需要被“扩展”,如此,经文中隐含的意义才可能应用于生活的诸多方面。因此,一段经文,只有一个意思,却可以有很多应用。

8.好应用会显露信息中牧师的要点。

好应用引导人们去该去的地方。它会在人们受伤时关心他们,在人们违背的时候责备他们,在人们饥饿的时候喂养他们,在人们危险的时候保护他们。

9.好应用会使信息中抽象的真理具体化

不要担心举具体的例子会导致有的听众认为与他们无关—也就是说,他们可能认为既然你并没有提到与他们相关的例子,因此他们就不需要有回应。在这里,圣灵弥补这个空缺。圣灵会使用你给出的例子,使听者的思想和良心中浮现出他们需要纠正或改变的东西等。

应用要具体,把真理与生活联系起来。为了有效地做到这一点,你必须关注生活中的一些情况,在这些情况下,特定的真理以特定的方式应用。作为传道人,你的任务就是使听众明白这点并敦促听众遵行。不要停留在概念层面。很多传道人都如此,他们很难从神学的抽象层面,来到具体的、有形的、生活的层面。

结论

不要忽视应用。在讲道之前要回顾你的讲稿,看看里面有多少应用。足够吗?每一个主要原则都有应用吗?我的导师,Stephen Olford 博士曾经敦促我们说,应用应该占讲道的50%!

C.应用的参考准则

1.找寻真理、应许、命令和例子

应许、命令和例子的给出不仅仅是教义上或者理性上的认同。它们要被反复灌输到生活中。圣经中的真理需要来相信并遵行。

对圣经真理的唯一正确的回应是信心,这不仅表现在被动地接受原则,而且表现在理解它们对生活的意义并活出它们(也就是应用)。注意,真理和例子可能是明确的,也可能是隐含的。

例如,一个明确的原则是:“你应该爱人如己”(利19:18). 虽然一个明确的原则是什么或者说了什么毫无疑问的,但它在生活中的表现可能因文化而异。我们的任务就是去发现这个具体的真理在今天我们所处文化背景下的应用。

一个隐含的原则可能是那些需要通过逻辑推理才能看到其对生活的意义。例如,“不要奸淫”,说明了纯洁、忠诚和爱的必要性。

寻找这些原则,然后沿着抽象的阶梯向上移动,以确定它们最广泛的意义。接着,把它们应用到我们这个时代的社会生活中去。

2.学习应对应用旧约时会面临的诠释学挑战

想要更多地阅读这方面的文章,我推荐Tremper Longman III所著的Making Sense out of the Old Testament中的“基督徒如何将旧约应用于生活?” (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 103-136.

3.了解你所处的文化

这样,你就可以把神的话用在真实的人和真实情况上。没有意义的应用或者已经过时的应用几乎没有影响力。

圣经中的真理原则对任何时代的任何人都有意义。我们的任务就是要把它应用于我们的时代我们的人身上—这就是相关。

4.意识到没有哪两个传道人必须以统一的方式应用经文

这并不是说一个对一个错。这只说明他们的方式不同,或者他们呈现了同一真理的不同侧面,或者他们的会众受益于不同的应用方式。

5.不要在应用时耗尽精力

当应用的时候,保持你对真理的确信和热情。当你将真理个人化的时候,这是保持强度的关键时刻。

6.作为一个这个真理也适用于你并且已经应用于你生活的人来讲道

这并不意味着你必须使用“我们”。有时候,或者一般来说你会用 “你”使应用个人化以及具有说服力。但是,你要确保在你劝戒别人去遵行这个真理之前,已经应用于你自己的生活。

一定要把这作为你准备讲道的一部分。当你准备好讲稿,你要在神的面前回顾它,以祷告地方式回顾,求神向你显明你需要应用于自己生活的真理。

7.视觉化你的听众

看到他们的需要(在不指向个人或者暴露隐私的情况下)。涵盖听众生活的不同状况(例如在家中、工作中、学校中、社区中)——包含每个人。

在每一种生活状况中使用“可能”的情况。“可能你在工作中遇到这种…”等。你可能不能准确地描述每个人所面临的情况,但你会在他们的脑海中触动其他一些情况,在这些情况下,这个应用是针对他们的。

8. 记住应用的四个原则

#1.个人化的原则

这个原则就是传道人要将真理应用于自己的生活。如果你对别人传讲你没有应用到自己生活的东西,你的讲道会没有能力。当你这样做的时候,不但神知道,听众也知道。传道人必须传讲他所相信的并在自己的生活中活出来的东西。

#2.想象的原则

要想恰当地应用经文,它对你必须是真实的。人物、地点和情感必须活在你的想象中。如果它对传道人来说是生动的,那么看到它如何应用于其他人对你来说会更容易。

#3.扩展的原则

当我们对听众讲道并引导他们,一段时间之后,传道人会更了解他们——他们的怕和需要。我们对这些人的经验(他们住在哪里,他们是谁)使得我们能够扩展经文的应用,以涵盖尽可能多的方面。这并不是说我们可以不恰当地或者不准确地使用经文。每一段经文只有一种解释,但是却有针对人们经历和问题的许多种应用。

#4.声明的原则

声明经文的应用必须明确且有权威。经文的应用必须没有任何不确定性。人们来教会是为了寻求明确的方向,为了知道神说了什么,他们必须怎样生活,怎样才能得到帮助来解决他们的问题。因此,应用必须公开声明,这样人们才不会被悬在半空,或者不知道重点是什么。

第二部分 讲道大纲

如果想听关于这些的英文讲道,请点击链接: Link 1 - 启 2:1-4; Link 2 - 启 2:5-7

题目:给七个教会的信:以弗所,正统但冷漠

主题:复兴由神子民的悔改开始

要点 #1:首先,好消息:“表面上看,你们教会在属灵上很健康”

(1)你们持续勤劳地做工(2a)

(2)你们清楚坚决地审判罪恶(2b)

(3)你们信实而不知疲倦地坚持(3)

要点 #2:现在坏消息是:“你们教会内部有严重的心灵问题”

(1)基督的诊断:“你把起初的爱心离弃了” (4)

(2)基督的处理:

(a) “回想你从哪里坠落了”(5a)

(b) “悔改,行起初所行的事”(5b)

(c)警告“你若不悔改,我将把你的灯台从远处挪去”(5c)

(d)对听从警告的人的应许:“得胜的,我必将神乐园中生命树的果子赐给他吃”(7)


[1] 改编自Dave Veerman, 如何应用圣经 (Wheaton, Ill: Tyndale House Publishers, 1993).

[2] John Henry Jowett, The Preacher His Life and Work (New York: Harper and brothers Publishers, 1912), 172, cited in Handbook of Contemporary Preaching, 211.

Related Topics: Pastors

網上牧師雜誌 – 中文版(繁體), TCh Ed, Issue 32 2019 年 夏季

2019 夏

A ministry of…

作者: Roger Pascoe博士, 主席

第一部分:加強講解式講道

“強化應用”(第一部分)

介紹

你在講道中所講解的聖經真理的應用,常常是大多數講道最薄弱的部分。除非講道使真理更具體、形象、個人和實際化,否則講道只是抽象真理的講解,仍然停留在理論層面(想法、定義、老生常談)

應用往往是最薄弱的地方可能因為…

1)我們花費太多的時間在講解上面以至於很難從理論轉向應用

2)我們從對經文解釋的研究中累積了太多的東西要講,以至於沒有時間來溝通其他的東西

3)我們感到理論和實踐之間的緊張

4)我們視真理為真理,非常珍視它,非常享受它,以至於應用它似乎就降低了它的價值

5)我們擔心聽眾的反應。當我們在應用中談到具體方面的時候,我們的資訊就變得個人化,有的時候可能會引起負面的回應,因為我們觸摸到人們的緊張神經,暴露了痛點,激發了良知。

6).我們自己必須首先理解經文並且應用到自己身上,才能夠將經文應用到其他人身上。這有可能是痛苦的。

講道往往容易要麼強調講解要麼強調應用。有的傳道人專注於講解,而有的著重應用。一方面,對那些準備講稿並花費很多時間來弄明白經文說了些什麼的傳道人,往往容易著重於講解而忽視了應用。另一方面,對於那麼花很少時間來研究經文的傳道人,往往容易著重于應用而忽視了講解。

. 講道既需要講解也需要應用。如果你不應用所講解的真理,那麼你就無法顯示真理怎樣與生活相關。我們必須講解某段經文的含義以及它與日常生活的聯繫。人們想要也需要應用於他們生活中的真理——他們的人際關係,他們的想法,他們的習慣,他們的信念,他們的問題等等。

只講解卻沒有應用就如同講道的任務沒有完成一樣。只理解卻不考慮如何應用就如同只完成了一半的工作。當你研究這段經文來理解它的含義,你也必須考慮它實際應用的意義。你不能只研究一段經文而不將它們與現實生活聯繫。這才是真理被活出來的地方。這也是經文的目的——被遵行。

除非我們從聖經的世界來到當代世界,否則我們只是把真理和我們的聽眾留在了經文古老的背景中,除了知識之外,沒有任何有用的目的。

聖經講道必須從“是什麼”到 “那麼怎樣”再到“現在做什麼”。當我們講解真理的時候,我們解決的是真理的“是什麼”(也就是真理意味著什麼?)。當我們應用真理的時候,我們解決的是真理的“那麼怎樣”(也就是真理引起怎樣的不同?)。當我們實行真理的時候,我們做出真理所要求的“現在做什麼”(也就是我們現在必須做什麼以及它會怎樣改變我們)。

有的人會說聖靈負責應用的工作,而不是我們。當然,如果沒有聖靈將神的話作用于人們的心靈、良心和意志,我們的講道將毫無功效。最終,神話語的應用只有在聖靈的作用下才會改變生命。但是對講道來說也是同樣的——只有聖靈才能使其產生功效。所以,有人會問,為什麼要講道?

我們講道是因為講道是神指定的和我們溝通他話語的方式(羅10:14-15),包括它的意義和應用。聖靈使用我們作為管道來講解和應用經文。傳道人有義務和責任來告訴人們怎樣將神的話語具體應用於他們的生活。

應用是聖經講道不可缺少的部分,因為…

1)它將聖經的真理和聽眾的生活緊密聯繫起來。我們的工作是理解原文作者所講的內容和目的,並決定如何將這些資訊應用於我們今天的會眾。通過應用的方式,你將剛剛解釋的經文與它如何影響你會眾的生活聯繫起來。

2)應用在神在過去對他百姓的教導與今天對我們的教導之間架起了橋樑

3)它將經文的智慧忠告與每個人的現實生活聯繫起來——他們對喜樂、與神的親密關係、被修復的人際關係、遵行神的話語以及基督裡的盼望等等的需要。

4) 它克服聽眾的“那麼怎樣”的異議——比如“這和我有什麼相關?”或者“我必須做什麼或者改變什麼來回應經文?”

5)它從真理的 “是什麼”過渡到基督徒的“如何”應用真理。

6)它清楚說明已經被解釋過的聖經真理實際上影響一個基督徒如何在市場、家中、學校、鄰舍中生活等等。我們的會眾中有很多只是周日來到教會,但是其他的時間就像一個非基督徒一樣生活。

7) 它將教導的原則轉變成可以實踐的東西——可以相信的一個教義;可以採取的一種態度;可以改變的一個關係等

在應用中,我們敦促人們…

a)我們敦促人們將他們所聽到的真理“視覺化/具體化”。接受不僅僅是思想上認同也是經歷的改變,生命的改變。如果他們只是理解了真理卻不採取行動,又有什麼益處呢?我們的任務是通過將真理從抽象的理論過渡到具體的、可行的、生動的實際,説明他們看到(視覺化的)真理(也就是它在現實生活中看起來如何)。

幫助他們“具體化”真理,避免人們主觀的判斷“神要對我說”什麼,也就是,沒有試著來理解原文作者想要表達的意思。怎樣將聖經真理以具體的、實踐的方式呈現出來;怎樣將真理與人們的日常生活結合——這對很多傳道人來說是很難的。

我們必須讓人們看到真理的樣子,這樣他們才能在自己的生活中看到它並聯繫起來。我們想看到他們說“是的,生活中確實是這樣,我需要這個。我有這個經歷”。我們想要真理道成肉身——也就是把真理活出來。畢竟,基督徒的整個生活就在於道成肉身,不是嗎?要像基督,也就是讓基督的真理在我們的生活中彰顯出來。

問題是“我們怎樣才能做到?”我們可以通過給出“具體的”情況和例子。這樣的情況和例子要適用於不同的聽眾(他們的年齡、身份、工作、關係、經濟狀況等),而且能夠幫助他們在實際生活中看到你所講的。

b)我們力勸人們“個人化”他們所聽到的真理。我希望人們說“是的,我需要這個。我想要這樣或我想要這樣做或想要順服這個或相信這個“等。

c)我們力勸人們“實際化”他們所聽到的真理。我們想要他們採用它,練習它,實踐它。我們呼籲人們去順服和遵守神的話因為真理是要被遵行的。我們呼籲人們順服和實踐,以至於他們的生活有真理的樣子。我們通過邀請和挑戰他們按著講道中所教導的,以實際的方式改變他們的生活,來幫助他們“實際化”真理。

A.應用必須切合聖經經文

講解式講道不是寫評論,只要傳遞資訊就可以。它的著重點在於將經文中所闡釋的真理應用于信徒的生活。要想應用原則,你必須先要解釋這個原則所出自經文的內容。如果沒有“是什麼”,你就無法解釋“怎麼做”。你不可能在不瞭解職責所依據的原則的情況下堅持執勤。因此,應用必須基於你所講的經文。這可能是現今講道中的最大缺陷。傳道人在沒有令人滿意地、準確或清楚地解釋經文含義的情況下,就離題進入應用。如果聽眾不理解經文的意思(也就是我們所傳內容的權威),又怎能指望他們遵守呢?

此外,你的應用不但必須基於聖經經文,也必須受到聖經經文的限制。換句話說,你的應用應該僅限於所講經文的主題和範圍。應用必須基於經文中的真理然後適當應用。你不能夠從經文中任意提出你想要的應用。就像你的講解要受限於一段經文的內容和主題,你的應用也是如此。換句話說,應用必須出自你對經文的解釋。

雖然如此,但我確實相信我們可以在符合原文作者的總體意圖和經文主題的前提下,自由廣泛地“擴展”應用。這樣可以保證我們在遵循經文的基礎上,將經文應用到很多不同的情況以及我們聽眾面臨的挑戰。

我們可以合理“擴展”應用的方法之一是通過使用演繹邏輯或推理。因此,應用包括“暗示”。根據定義,暗示為應用擴大了範圍。我們生來具備推理的能力。因此…

1)應用要有邏輯。讓人們知道這段經文如何引導你的邏輯,得出你現在的應用。

2).應用要具體。舉例子。

每一場聽道,聽眾都想知道三件事:

1)你在講的是什麼?(經文的主要內容——也就是主題)

2)你的觀點是什麼?(對經文的理解——也就是主要和次要論點)

3)你想讓我做什麼?(經文的推動力——它在我生活中的應用和目的)

記住,你沒有權利邀請人們對你沒有講解以及他們沒有聽明白(也就是沒有視覺化)的真理做出回應。

B.應用必須有計劃

作為講解式的傳道人,不論是講解還是應用,我們都應該有計劃。

1.我們的應用必須“個人化”

這要求我們指出問題的時候,不要造成不和或衝撞。應用要求個人對真理的接受和順服。因此,聽眾必須:

a)接收資訊。

b)在心中思想資訊——換句話說,反思資訊如何影響他們的生活。

c) 通過詢問他們需要做些什麼來確定需要改變的是什麼

d)決定改變並計畫實行。或者是需要對某人負責,或者改變常規或習慣等。

為了使你的應用個人化,你必須嘗試以具體的和個人的(他們在哪裡生活以及如何生活的)方式面向廣大的受眾,。想想你該如何將你的講道應用到他們的個人、家庭、工作、教會和社區生活中。也要試著將你的講道應用到他們的思想和內心——比如他們的態度、信仰、關係(與神以及其他人)、行為、願望、動機、價值觀、優先順序和性格。

2.我們的應用必須具有“實踐”意義

這裡我們談談人們應該如何回應。僅僅知道資訊“是什麼”是不夠的。我們也必須告訴他們“怎麼做”。我們往往止步於“是什麼”。“是什麼”確實很重要,但是這並不能構成完整的講道。

a)必須要有基於聖經對信徒和非信徒悔改的呼召

b)必須要有基於聖經對更新的呼召。 每一次講道,對信徒來說,必須是一次更新和復興;對非信徒來說,是獲得重生的機會。

c)必須要呼召回到聖經的實際。因為我們生活在文化化的基督教時代,而不是基於聖經的基督信仰,所以在我們社會中有一種趨向這種膚淺基督文化的趨勢。傳道人需要呼召他們的會眾回到聖經的實際。

3.我們的應用要有“目的”

我們的講道必須有目的,有目標。所有的經文都指向基督(西1:27-19)。這是講道最終也是最主要的目的,以至於人們離開的時候,能夠更像基督。這是我們講道的主要原因。

C.應用必須激勵人們付諸行動。

每一次講道都需要一個四重的運動來激勵聽眾在個人的操練中學習順服:

1. “思想”必須被我們的講道所教導(理解力)

每一次講道必須教導——拓展大腦,去思考和理解以前沒有考慮過或理解過的事情。乾糧(也就是“肉”)屬於長成的人(來5:14)。你必須成長跨越基督信仰最基礎的東西。膚淺的教導產生膚淺的基督徒。

2. “心靈”需要被我們的講道所觸摸(願望)

要想 “促使”一個人行動,你必須瞄準他的“心靈”。心是我們身體的主要器官。“心”這個詞指的是一個人生命的隱秘源泉,也是神做工的地方。

為了使聽者產生“運動”(行動),就必須觸及心靈。

.觸及心靈的講道,使聽眾能夠和裡面的人物或者事件產生共鳴,並接受其中的原則。顯然,這需要一個從一般過渡到具體的過程。

聖經中“心靈”指做出決定和選擇的地方。是一個人思想和意志匯合的地方。僅僅充實思想是不夠的,你也需要觸及心靈。

這裡的重點是願望而不是理解力。講道要激發心靈來回應,是心靈被喚醒。要做到這樣,講道必須有熱情。

3. “意志”必須被我們的講道所引導(決定)

僅僅教導思想和觸及心靈是不夠的。你也需要引導、強調和塑造意志使其順服神的話,向自己死,向基督活,脫去舊人,穿上新人(加2:20;弗4:22-24)

如果只有思想和心靈被影響,是不夠的。一個人的意志也必須被引導使其自願順服神的話並且將它活出來。

4. “良知”需要被我們的講道所紮(察覺)

在應用中,良知是一個有力的工具。它能有力地推動人去順服。它能提醒人們哪裡沒有順服真理。它也能暴露出一個人的生活中哪裡犯了罪需要被審判。

.因此,基於聖經的教導會激發良知,使人們產生順服。

s結論

整個應用都必須是個人化的、有實踐意義和目的,它要影響一個人的整體——思想、心靈、意志和良知。心靈固然是產生行動的巨大推動力,但是如果你能夠將思想的轉變和心中的願望結合起來,這會是一個更強大的力量來激發良知,從而促進一個人在意志上順服神並遵行真理。

D.應用最好貫穿整個講道

真理的應用穿插整個講道,聽眾就不會忘記應用所基於的真理。它使真理和實踐緊密結合。將應用和你剛剛講過的經文緊密聯繫起來,這會使你的應用更有權威,因為不是你在說,而是經文本身在說。

有的傳道人在結尾的時候才提到應用。這也是可以的,但是有幾點不利之處:

1)如果你總是這樣做,你的聽眾很快就會知道,那麼你就會失去了影響力,因為他們已經準備好不理睬了(“哎,又來了”)。我建議只有為了強調和肯定你在講道過程中已經講過的應用時,才將應用放在結尾。

2)它將真理的解釋和應用分開來,以至於你的聽眾不能自然地將它們彼此聯繫起來。

我認為你應該從引言開始直到講道的結尾,不斷地應用真理

1)在“引言”中,你應用當你…

a)建立傾聽的需要以及這堂資訊的必要性時

b)聯繫到經文的時候

c)用“一句話概括你的講道”時(也就是,你的主題、主旨)

2)講道“主體”中,你應用每一個真理原則…

a). 在你的主要觀點和次要觀點的措辭中。它們的用語應該是應用型的——也就是,使你的聽眾被包含其中,看到他們自己在真理-原則中。

b)在你解釋每一個要點的當中或者最後

c)在舉例中

3.在“結尾”,你應用真理…

a)當你總結講道的時候

b)當你最後一次實際化、個人化講道的時候

E.為什麼應用這樣困難?

1.因為它本身就難!這是辛苦的工作因為:

a)它要求經文的準確。

b)它必須和人們以及他們的文化相關。

c)它要求個人的反省和誠懇。

2.因為傳道人認為應用顯而易見。

你很容易這樣認為,即你所講解的經文與它在你聽眾生活中實際應用之間的聯繫顯而易見的,所以你並不需要說明,聽眾自己就會明白。我們很容易認為我們的聽眾能夠自己“得知”真理如何影響他們的生活。

當然,這往往不真實。應用並不會自動跳出來,正如真理不會自動跳出來一樣。需要有人指出來。

3..因為傳道人曲解了講道的目的

講道的目的是為了改變人們的生命使其更像基督。我們通過講解真理然後說明它如何改變我們來達到這個目的。這就是應用

應用是我們將聖經真理與聽眾每天的生活聯繫起來的方法。這意味著舉例說明真理在你會眾的生活中是什麼樣的,勸戒你的會眾改變,指出錯誤,責備錯誤的態度和關係等等。

記住,所有的理論都是非常實用的。它的目的是為了影響一個人的行為、心願、優先順序、價值觀、目標、關係等等。

一個好的講道不但教導真理而且讓人知道這和“我”有什麼關係。一個經過仔細雕琢而完成的講道才指導應用。真理是為了被遵行(羅6:17)。這才是能夠改變你聽眾生活的東西——不是幾個要點的精明措辭,而是真理在生活當中的應用,引起人們的改變。

4.因為傳道人需要在講道之前就徹底地思考清楚應用

太多的傳道人認為他們可以對應用進行臨場發揮。這是不能夠的。應用需要提前的深思熟慮,因為你的會眾不同,他們的生活情況也不同,但卻都需要被觸及。你有…

a)年輕人、中年人、老年人

b)專業人士、藍領、辦公室人員、工廠職工等

c)已婚的、單身的、離婚或者分居的

d)年輕的專業人士、退修老人

e)有子女的、無子女的、單身的

f)公立學校、高中以及大專的學生

g)富人、窮人和中產階級

要將神的話有效地應用于如此廣大的群體,需要講道之前仔細的思考。

F.尋找應用

我們面對的問題是,當你揭開經文中的每一個真理時,該如何過渡到應用?你在不偏離經文的主題以及原文作者的意圖的前提下,如何找到真理在實際生活中的應用?

一般而言,我建議,聖經原則的實際應用不應該超出其在經文中的應用範圍。這恰恰強調了準確瞭解經文主題的重要性。你必須將你所講解的真理和你的應用直接聯繫起來。

首先,問自己如下的問題:

a)這個作者寫的是什麼?

b)為什麼作者給這些人寫這個?

c)在人們的生活中,有哪些情況需要糾正、鼓勵、安慰、確據、責備、引領等?

d)作者如何將這個真理應用于他讀者的生活?

e)作者期望從他的讀者得到怎樣的回應?

這些問題的答案為你的應用設立了參考。

其次,問自己如下問題以發現適於當代的應用:

a)經文中哪些普遍的、不變的真理可以直接應用於今天的生活?

b) 當代哪些情況、挑戰、問題等等在本質上與經文的原始聽眾所面對的相似?我們當代的聽眾在哪些方面經歷與原始聽眾相同的情況?

第三,從一般性的應用進入具體的、個人的應用。一般性的應用告訴人們,經文中的真理如何應用於家庭、工作、教會中等等。這不錯,但是我鼓勵你更進一步,在你們的文化和環境下具體應用到生活中去。這個很難。那麼,你該如何做呢?

同樣的,你通過提問來探究真理的個人應用:

a)這個真理對我會眾的日常生活意味著什麼?

b)教會中有哪些挑戰、需求、生活方式、信仰以及境況需要被處理——個人的、經濟的、教會的、社區的、關係的、屬靈的、倫理的等等。

c)這個真理可以應用到我們生活的哪些方面?

第四,考慮你期望會眾有怎樣的回應。你期望他們如何改變他們的價值觀、優先順序、關係、信仰、態度、操練、動機、願望、性格等等?

最後,向你的會眾提出挑戰,問他們:

a)神想讓我如何對待這個真理?

b)我怎樣才能做到這樣的改變?我需要做什麼?

c)我該如何開始?

G.傳講你所發現的應用

1.你必須瞭解你的會眾和教會

當你問以上的問題時,你不但是針對你自己的生活,也尤其要針對你會眾的生活。

所以當你問問題(尋找相關的應用)的時候,你必須通過想像你的會眾坐在長椅上,或者流覽你的教會名錄,將你的會眾放在腦海中,考慮他們的生活情況、需要、問題、挑戰等等。

2.你從以上的操練出發列出適合的應用

現在你將經文應用於與其所述需求相對應的實際需求上。這些應用不要讓人覺得在針對某一個會眾,也不要洩露隱私。這些應用本質上來說仍然是普遍性的,但是通過列舉這些原則怎樣應用到你會眾所處的特殊情況中,你將網收得更緊,也更清楚地說明應該如何應用這些原則。

所以,你可以說:“如果你過一個聖潔的生活,在你的工作場所你應該…(例如,不要和異性過近)等等”。接著你可以給出多種方式來實踐這個應用。

你所講的應用實例會激發你的會眾在他們自己的具體生活中來操練。

3.試著給出足夠的例子來涵蓋你整個會眾

你可以通過涵蓋不同的年齡、婚姻狀況、經濟狀況等等來這樣做。以下四種情況可以包含每一個人:

a)學校

b)工作場所

c)家庭

d)社區

4.如果可能,不要忘記,要點使用應用性的措辭

這樣做有幾點好處:

a)應用會貫穿你的講道,而不只是在某一部分

b)你在要點中所建立的原則將是個人化的,而不只是抽象的真理

c)你的要點會有更大的影響力

關於應用的總結

理論,傳講地恰當,完全是實踐性的。聖經不僅僅是為了用知識填滿我們的頭腦,也是為了改變我們生活、思考和行動的方式。特別是,每一場講道都應該幫助我們通過實踐經文中普遍恒久的真理,使我們更像基督。為了這個目的,我們必須清楚準確地講解經文,並應用到相關的個人化的實際情況中。

Part II: Sermon Outlines講道大綱

如果想聽關於這些的英文講道,請點選連結: Link 1 - 約 21:15-17; Link 2 - 約 21:18-19; Link 3 - 約 21:19-25

題目:“呼召去服侍”

主題:基督徒服侍的教導

要點 #1:愛主是服侍主的保證(15-17)

a)雖然我們的忠誠軟弱,耶穌仍然珍視我們的愛

b)雖然我們的忠誠軟弱,耶穌仍然想要我們的服侍

要點 #2:服侍主的目的是榮耀他(18-19a

a)我們年輕的時候要榮耀他(18a)

b)我們年老的時候要榮耀他(18b-19a)

要點 #3:服侍主的模式是跟隨他(19b-23)

a)我們回應他的呼召而跟隨他(19b)

b)我們的眼睛仰望他而跟隨他(20)

c)我們管好自己的事情而跟隨他(21-23)

Related Topics: Pastors

网上牧师杂志–中文版(简体), SCh Ed, Issue 32 2019 年 夏季

2019 夏

A ministry of…

作者: Roger Pascoe博士, 主席

第一部分:加强讲解式讲道

“强化应用”(第一部分)

介绍

你在讲道中所讲解的圣经真理的应用,常常是大多数讲道最薄弱的部分。除非讲道使真理更具体、形象、个人和实际化,否则讲道只是抽象真理的讲解,仍然停留在理论层面(想法、定义、老生常谈)

应用往往是最薄弱的地方可能因为…

1)我们花费太多的时间在讲解上面以至于很难从理论转向应用

2)我们从对经文解释的研究中累积了太多的东西要讲,以至于没有时间来沟通其他的东西

3)我们感到理论和实践之间的紧张

4)我们视真理为真理,非常珍视它,非常享受它,以至于应用它似乎就降低了它的价值

5)我们担心听众的反应。当我们在应用中谈到具体方面的时候,我们的信息就变得个人化,有的时候可能会引起负面的回应,因为我们触摸到人们的紧张神经,暴露了痛点,激发了良知。

6).我们自己必须首先理解经文并且应用到自己身上,才能够将经文应用到其他人身上。这有可能是痛苦的。

讲道往往容易要么强调讲解要么强调应用。有的传道人专注于讲解,而有的着重应用。一方面,对那些准备讲稿并花费很多时间来弄明白经文说了些什么的传道人,往往容易着重于讲解而忽视了应用。另一方面,对于那么花很少时间来研究经文的传道人,往往容易着重于应用而忽视了讲解。

. 讲道既需要讲解也需要应用。如果你不应用所讲解的真理,那么你就无法显示真理怎样与生活相关。我们必须讲解某段经文的含义以及它与日常生活的联系。人们想要也需要应用于他们生活中的真理——他们的人际关系,他们的想法,他们的习惯,他们的信念,他们的问题等等。

只讲解却没有应用就如同讲道的任务没有完成一样。只理解却不考虑如何应用就如同只完成了一半的工作。当你研究这段经文来理解它的含义,你也必须考虑它实际应用的意义。你不能只研究一段经文而不将它们与现实生活联系。这才是真理被活出来的地方。这也是经文的目的——被遵行。

除非我们从圣经的世界来到当代世界,否则我们只是把真理和我们的听众留在了经文古老的背景中,除了知识之外,没有任何有用的目的。

圣经讲道必须从“是什么”到 “那么怎样”再到“现在做什么”。当我们讲解真理的时候,我们解决的是真理的“是什么”(也就是真理意味着什么?)。当我们应用真理的时候,我们解决的是真理的“那么怎样”(也就是真理引起怎样的不同?)。当我们实行真理的时候,我们做出真理所要求的“现在做什么”(也就是我们现在必须做什么以及它会怎样改变我们)。

有的人会说圣灵负责应用的工作,而不是我们。当然,如果没有圣灵将神的话作用于人们的心灵、良心和意志,我们的讲道将毫无功效。最终,神话语的应用只有在圣灵的作用下才会改变生命。但是对讲道来说也是同样的——只有圣灵才能使其产生功效。所以,有人会问,为什么要讲道?

我们讲道是因为讲道是神指定的和我们沟通他话语的方式(罗10:14-15),包括它的意义和应用。圣灵使用我们作为管道来讲解和应用经文。传道人有义务和责任来告诉人们怎样将神的话语具体应用于他们的生活。

应用是圣经讲道不可缺少的部分,因为…

1)它将圣经的真理和听众的生活紧密联系起来。我们的工作是理解原文作者所讲的内容和目的,并决定如何将这些信息应用于我们今天的会众。通过应用的方式,你将刚刚解释的经文与它如何影响你会众的生活联系起来。

2)应用在神在过去对他百姓的教导与今天对我们的教导之间架起了桥梁

3)它将经文的智慧忠告与每个人的现实生活联系起来——他们对喜乐、与神的亲密关系、被修复的人际关系、遵行神的话语以及基督里的盼望等等的需要。

4) 它克服听众的“那么怎样”的异议——比如“这和我有什么相关?”或者“我必须做什么或者改变什么来回应经文?”

5)它从真理的 “是什么”过渡到基督徒的“如何”应用真理。

6)它清楚说明已经被解释过的圣经真理实际上影响一个基督徒如何在市场、家中、学校、邻舍中生活等等。我们的会众中有很多只是周日来到教会,但是其他的时间就像一个非基督徒一样生活。

7) 它将教导的原则转变成可以实践的东西——可以相信的一个教义;可以采取的一种态度;可以改变的一个关系等

在应用中,我们敦促人们…

a)我们敦促人们将他们所听到的真理“视觉化/具体化”。接受不仅仅是思想上认同也是经历的改变,生命的改变。如果他们只是理解了真理却不采取行动,又有什么益处呢?我们的任务是通过将真理从抽象的理论过渡到具体的、可行的、生动的实际,帮助他们看到(视觉化的)真理(也就是它在现实生活中看起来如何)。

帮助他们“具体化”真理,避免人们主观的判断“神要对我说”什么,也就是,没有试着来理解原文作者想要表达的意思。怎样将圣经真理以具体的、实践的方式呈现出来;怎样将真理与人们的日常生活结合——这对很多传道人来说是很难的。

我们必须让人们看到真理的样子,这样他们才能在自己的生活中看到它并联系起来。我们想看到他们说“是的,生活中确实是这样,我需要这个。我有这个经历”。我们想要真理道成肉身——也就是把真理活出来。毕竟,基督徒的整个生活就在于道成肉身,不是吗?要像基督,也就是让基督的真理在我们的生活中彰显出来。

问题是“我们怎样才能做到?”我们可以通过给出“具体的”情况和例子。这样的情况和例子要适用于不同的听众(他们的年龄、身份、工作、关系、经济状况等),而且能够帮助他们在实际生活中看到你所讲的。

b)我们力劝人们“个人化”他们所听到的真理。我希望人们说“是的,我需要这个。我想要这样或我想要这样做或想要顺服这个或相信这个“等。

c)我们力劝人们“实际化”他们所听到的真理。我们想要他们采用它,练习它,实践它。我们呼吁人们去顺服和遵守神的话因为真理是要被遵行的。我们呼吁人们顺服和实践,以至于他们的生活有真理的样子。我们通过邀请和挑战他们按着讲道中所教导的,以实际的方式改变他们的生活,来帮助他们“实际化”真理。

A.应用必须切合圣经经文

讲解式讲道不是写评论,只要传递信息就可以。它的着重点在于将经文中所阐释的真理应用于信徒的生活。要想应用原则,你必须先要解释这个原则所出自经文的内容。如果没有“是什么”,你就无法解释“怎么做”。你不可能在不了解职责所依据的原则的情况下坚持执勤。因此,应用必须基于你所讲的经文。这可能是现今讲道中的最大缺陷。传道人在没有令人满意地、准确或清楚地解释经文含义的情况下,就离题进入应用。如果听众不理解经文的意思(也就是我们所传内容的权威),又怎能指望他们遵守呢?

此外,你的应用不但必须基于圣经经文,必须受到圣经经文的限制。换句话说,你的应用应该仅限于所讲经文的主题和范围。应用必须基于经文中的真理然后适当应用。你不能够从经文中任意提出你想要的应用。就像你的讲解要受限于一段经文的内容和主题,你的应用也是如此。换句话说,应用必须出自你对经文的解释。

虽然如此,但我确实相信我们可以在符合原文作者的总体意图和经文主题的前提下,自由广泛地“扩展”应用。这样可以保证我们在遵循经文的基础上,将经文应用到很多不同的情况以及我们听众面临的挑战。

我们可以合理“扩展”应用的方法之一是通过使用演绎逻辑或推理。因此,应用包括“暗示”。根据定义,暗示为应用扩大了范围。我们生来具备推理的能力。因此…

1)应用要有逻辑。让人们知道这段经文如何引导你的逻辑,得出你现在的应用。

2).应用要具体。举例子。

每一场听道,听众都想知道三件事:

1)你在讲的是什么?(经文的主要内容——也就是主题)

2)你的观点是什么?(对经文的理解——也就是主要和次要论点)

3)你想让我做什么?(经文的推动力——它在我生活中的应用和目的)

记住,你没有权利邀请人们对你没有讲解以及他们没有听明白(也就是没有视觉化)的真理做出回应。

B.应用必须有计划

作为讲解式的传道人,不论是讲解还是应用,我们都应该有计划。

1.我们的应用必须“个人化”

这要求我们指出问题的时候,不要造成不和或冲撞。应用要求个人对真理的接受和顺服。因此,听众必须:

a)接收信息。

b)在心中思想信息——换句话说,反思信息如何影响他们的生活。

c) 通过询问他们需要做些什么来确定需要改变的是什么

d)决定改变并计划实行。或者是需要对某人负责,或者改变常规或习惯等。

为了使你的应用个人化,你必须尝试以具体的和个人的(他们在哪里生活以及如何生活的)方式面向广大的受众,。想想你该如何将你的讲道应用到他们的个人、家庭、工作、教会和社区生活中。也要试着将你的讲道应用到他们的思想和内心——比如他们的态度、信仰、关系(与神以及其他人)、行为、愿望、动机、价值观、优先顺序和性格。

2.我们的应用必须具有“实践”意义

这里我们谈谈人们应该如何回应。仅仅知道信息“是什么”是不够的。我们也必须告诉他们“怎么做”。我们往往止步于“是什么”。“是什么”确实很重要,但是这并不能构成完整的讲道。

a)必须要有基于圣经对信徒和非信徒悔改的呼召

b)必须要有基于圣经对更新的呼召。 每一次讲道,对信徒来说,必须是一次更新和复兴;对非信徒来说,是获得重生的机会。

c)必须要呼召回到圣经的实际。因为我们生活在文化化的基督教时代,而不是基于圣经的基督信仰,所以在我们社会中有一种趋向这种肤浅基督文化的趋势。传道人需要呼召他们的会众回到圣经的实际。

3.我们的应用要有“目的”

我们的讲道必须有目的,有目标。所有的经文都指向基督(西1:27-19)。这是讲道最终也是最主要的目的,以至于人们离开的时候,能够更像基督。这是我们讲道的主要原因。

C.应用必须激励人们付诸行动。

每一次讲道都需要一个四重的运动来激励听众在个人的操练中学习顺服:

1. “思想”必须被我们的讲道所教导(理解力)

每一次讲道必须教导——拓展大脑,去思考和理解以前没有考虑过或理解过的事情。干粮(也就是“肉”)属于长成的人(来5:14)。你必须成长跨越基督信仰最基础的东西。肤浅的教导产生肤浅的基督徒。

2. “心灵”需要被我们的讲道所触摸(愿望)

要想 “促使”一个人行动,你必须瞄准他的“心灵”。心是我们身体的主要器官。“心”这个词指的是一个人生命的隐秘源泉,也是神做工的地方。

为了使听者产生“运动”(行动),就必须触及心灵。

.触及心灵的讲道,使听众能够和里面的人物或者事件产生共鸣,并接受其中的原则。显然,这需要一个从一般过渡到具体的过程。

圣经中“心灵”指做出决定和选择的地方。是一个人思想和意志汇合的地方。仅仅充实思想是不够的,你也需要触及心灵。

这里的重点是愿望而不是理解力。讲道要激发心灵来回应,是心灵被唤醒。要做到这样,讲道必须有热情。

3. “意志”必须被我们的讲道所引导(决定)

仅仅教导思想和触及心灵是不够的。你也需要引导、强调和塑造意志使其顺服神的话,向自己死,向基督活,脱去旧人,穿上新人(加2:20;弗4:22-24)

如果只有思想和心灵被影响,是不够的。一个人的意志也必须被引导使其自愿顺服神的话并且将它活出来。

4. “良知”需要被我们的讲道所扎(察觉)

在应用中,良知是一个有力的工具。它能有力地推动人去顺服。它能提醒人们哪里没有顺服真理。它也能暴露出一个人的生活中哪里犯了罪需要被审判。

.因此,基于圣经的教导会激发良知,使人们产生顺服。

s结论

整个应用都必须是个人化的、有实践意义和目的,它要影响一个人的整体——思想、心灵、意志和良知。心灵固然是产生行动的巨大推动力,但是如果你能够将思想的转变和心中的愿望结合起来,这会是一个更强大的力量来激发良知,从而促进一个人在意志上顺服神并遵行真理。

D.应用最好贯穿整个讲道

真理的应用穿插整个讲道,听众就不会忘记应用所基于的真理。它使真理和实践紧密结合。将应用和你刚刚讲过的经文紧密联系起来,这会使你的应用更有权威,因为不是你在说,而是经文本身在说。

有的传道人在结尾的时候才提到应用。这也是可以的,但是有几点不利之处:

1)如果你总是这样做,你的听众很快就会知道,那么你就会失去了影响力,因为他们已经准备好不理睬了(“哎,又来了”)。我建议只有为了强调和肯定你在讲道过程中已经讲过的应用时,才将应用放在结尾。

2)它将真理的解释和应用分开来,以至于你的听众不能自然地将它们彼此联系起来。

我认为你应该从引言开始直到讲道的结尾,不断地应用真理

1)在“引言”中,你应用当你…

a)建立倾听的需要以及这堂信息的必要性时

b)联系到经文的时候

c)用“一句话概括你的讲道”时(也就是,你的主题、主旨)

2)讲道“主体”中,你应用每一个真理原则…

a). 在你的主要观点和次要观点的措辞中。它们的用语应该是应用型的——也就是,使你的听众被包含其中,看到他们自己在真理-原则中。

b)在你解释每一个要点的当中或者最后

c)在举例中

3.在“结尾”,你应用真理…

a)当你总结讲道的时候

b)当你最后一次实际化、个人化讲道的时候

E.为什么应用这样困难?

1.因为它本身就难!这是辛苦的工作因为:

a)它要求经文的准确。

b)它必须和人们以及他们的文化相关。

c)它要求个人的反省和诚恳。

2.因为传道人认为应用显而易见。

你很容易这样认为,即你所讲解的经文与它在你听众生活中实际应用之间的联系显而易见的,所以你并不需要说明,听众自己就会明白。我们很容易认为我们的听众能够自己“得知”真理如何影响他们的生活。

当然,这往往不真实。应用并不会自动跳出来,正如真理不会自动跳出来一样。需要有人指出来。

3..因为传道人曲解了讲道的目的

讲道的目的是为了改变人们的生命使其更像基督。我们通过讲解真理然后说明它如何改变我们来达到这个目的。这就是应用

应用是我们将圣经真理与听众每天的生活联系起来的方法。这意味着举例说明真理在你会众的生活中是什么样的,劝戒你的会众改变,指出错误,责备错误的态度和关系等等。

记住,所有的理论都是非常实用的。它的目的是为了影响一个人的行为、心愿、优先顺序、价值观、目标、关系等等。

一个好的讲道不但教导真理而且让人知道这和“我”有什么关系。一个经过仔细雕琢而完成的讲道才指导应用。真理是为了被遵行(罗6:17)。这才是能够改变你听众生活的东西——不是几个要点的精明措辞,而是真理在生活当中的应用,引起人们的改变。

4.因为传道人需要在讲道之前就彻底地思考清楚应用

太多的传道人认为他们可以对应用进行临场发挥。这是不能够的。应用需要提前的深思熟虑,因为你的会众不同,他们的生活情况也不同,但却都需要被触及。你有…

a)年轻人、中年人、老年人

b)专业人士、蓝领、办公室人员、工厂职工等

c)已婚的、单身的、离婚或者分居的

d)年轻的专业人士、退修老人

e)有子女的、无子女的、单身的

f)公立学校、高中以及大专的学生

g)富人、穷人和中产阶级

要将神的话有效地应用于如此广大的群体,需要讲道之前仔细的思考。

F.寻找应用

我们面对的问题是,当你揭开经文中的每一个真理时,该如何过渡到应用?你在不偏离经文的主题以及原文作者的意图的前提下,如何找到真理在实际生活中的应用?

一般而言,我建议,圣经原则的实际应用不应该超出其在经文中的应用范围。这恰恰强调了准确了解经文主题的重要性。你必须将你所讲解的真理和你的应用直接联系起来。

首先,问自己如下的问题:

a)这个作者写的是什么?

b)为什么作者给这些人写这个?

c)在人们的生活中,有哪些情况需要纠正、鼓励、安慰、确据、责备、引领等?

d)作者如何将这个真理应用于他读者的生活?

e)作者期望从他的读者得到怎样的回应?

这些问题的答案为你的应用设立了参考。

其次,问自己如下问题以发现适于当代的应用:

a)经文中哪些普遍的、不变的真理可以直接应用于今天的生活?

b) 当代哪些情况、挑战、问题等等在本质上与经文的原始听众所面对的相似?我们当代的听众在哪些方面经历与原始听众相同的情况?

第三,从一般性的应用进入具体的、个人的应用。一般性的应用告诉人们,经文中的真理如何应用于家庭、工作、教会中等等。这不错,但是我鼓励你更进一步,在你们的文化和环境下具体应用到生活中去。这个很难。那么,你该如何做呢?

同样的,你通过提问来探究真理的个人应用:

a)这个真理对我会众的日常生活意味着什么?

b)教会中有哪些挑战、需求、生活方式、信仰以及境况需要被处理——个人的、经济的、教会的、社区的、关系的、属灵的、伦理的等等。

c)这个真理可以应用到我们生活的哪些方面?

第四,考虑你期望会众有怎样的回应。你期望他们如何改变他们的价值观、优先顺序、关系、信仰、态度、操练、动机、愿望、性格等等?

最后,向你的会众提出挑战,问他们:

a)神想让我如何对待这个真理?

b)我怎样才能做到这样的改变?我需要做什么?

c)我该如何开始?

G.传讲你所发现的应用

1.你必须了解你的会众和教会

当你问以上的问题时,你不但是针对你自己的生活,也尤其要针对你会众的生活。

所以当你问问题(寻找相关的应用)的时候,你必须通过想象你的会众坐在长椅上,或者浏览你的教会名录,将你的会众放在脑海中,考虑他们的生活情况、需要、问题、挑战等等。

2.你从以上的操练出发列出适合的应用

现在你将经文应用于与其所述需求相对应的实际需求上。这些应用不要让人觉得在针对某一个会众,也不要泄露隐私。这些应用本质上来说仍然是普遍性的,但是通过列举这些原则怎样应用到你会众所处的特殊情况中,你将网收得更紧,也更清楚地说明应该如何应用这些原则。

所以,你可以说:“如果你过一个圣洁的生活,在你的工作场所你应该…(例如,不要和异性过近)等等”。接着你可以给出多种方式来实践这个应用。

你所讲的应用实例会激发你的会众在他们自己的具体生活中来操练。

3.试着给出足够的例子来涵盖你整个会众

你可以通过涵盖不同的年龄、婚姻状况、经济状况等等来这样做。以下四种情况可以包含每一个人:

a)学校

b)工作场所

c)家庭

d)社区

4.如果可能,不要忘记,要点使用应用性的措辞

这样做有几点好处:

a)应用会贯穿你的讲道,而不只是在某一部分

b)你在要点中所建立的原则将是个人化的,而不只是抽象的真理

c)你的要点会有更大的影响力

关于应用的总结

理论,传讲地恰当,完全是实践性的。圣经不仅仅是为了用知识填满我们的头脑,也是为了改变我们生活、思考和行动的方式。特别是,每一场讲道都应该帮助我们通过实践经文中普遍恒久的真理,使我们更像基督。为了这个目的,我们必须清楚准确地讲解经文,并应用到相关的个人化的实际情况中。

Part II: Sermon Outlines讲道大纲

如果想听关于这些的英文讲道,请点击链接: Link 1 - 约 21:15-17; Link 2 - 约 21:18-19; Link 3 - 约 21:19-25

题目:“呼召去服侍”

主题:基督徒服侍的教导

要点 #1:愛主是服侍主的保证(15-17)

a)虽然我们的忠诚软弱,耶稣仍然珍视我们的爱

b)虽然我们的忠诚软弱,耶稣仍然想要我们的服侍

要点 #2:服侍主的目的是荣耀他(18-19a

a)我们年轻的时候要荣耀他(18a)

b)我们年老的时候要荣耀他(18b-19a)

要点 #3:服侍主的模式是跟随他(19b-23)

a)我们回应他的呼召而跟随他(19b)

b)我们的眼睛仰望他而跟随他(20)

c)我们管好自己的事情而跟随他(21-23)

Related Topics: Pastors

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