Beginnings

John 1:29-51.

The section of the Gospel history above indicated, possesses the interest peculiar to the beginnings of all things that have grown to greatness. Here are exhibited to our view the infant church in its cradle, the petty sources of the River of Life, the earliest blossoms of Christian faith, the humble origin of the mighty empire of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All beginnings are more or less obscure in appearance, but none were ever more obscure than those of Christianity. What an insignificant event in the history of the church, not to say of the world, this first meeting of Jesus of Nazareth with five humble men, Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathanael, and another unnamed! It actually seems almost too trivial to find a place even in the evangelic narrative. For we have here to do not with any formal solemn call to the great office of the apostleship, or even with the commencement of an uninterrupted discipleship, but at the utmost with the beginnings of an acquaintance with and of faith in Jesus on the part of certain individuals who subsequently became constant attendants on His person, and ultimately apostles of His religion. Accordingly we find no mention made in the three first Gospels of the events here recorded.

Far from being surprised at the silence of the synoptical evangelists, one is rather tempted to wonder how it came to pass that John, the author of the fourth Gospel, after the lapse of so many years, thought it worth while to relate incidents so minute, especially in such close proximity to the sublime sentences with which his Gospel begins. But we are kept from such incredulous wonder by the reflection, that facts objectively insignificant may be very important to the feelings of those whom they personally concern. What if John were himself one of the five who on the present occasion became acquainted with Jesus? That would make a wide difference between him and the other evangelists, who could know of the incidents here related, if they knew of them at all, only at second hand. In the case supposed, it would not be surprising that to his latest hour John remembered with emotion the first time he saw the Incarnate Word, and deemed the minutest memorials of that time unspeakably precious. First meetings are sacred as well as last ones, especially such as are followed by a momentous history, and accompanied, as is apt to be the case, with omens prophetic of the future.¹ Such omens were not wanting in connection with the first meeting between Jesus and the five disciples. Did not the Baptist then first give to Jesus the name “Lamb of God,” so exactly descriptive of His earthly mission and destiny? Was not Nathanael’s doubting question, “ Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? “ an ominous indication of a conflict with unbelief awaiting the Messiah? And what a happy omen of an opening era of wonders to be wrought by divine grace and power was contained in the promise of Jesus to the pious, though at first doubting, Israelite : “Henceforth ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”!

That John, the writer of the fourth Gospel, really was the fifth unnamed disciple, may be regarded as certain. It is his way throughout his Gospel, when alluding to himself, to use a periphrasis, or to leave, as here, a blank where his name should be. One of the two disciples who heard the Baptist call Jesus the Lamb of God was the evangelist himself, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, being the other.² impressions produced on our minds by these little anecdotes of the infancy of the Gospel must be feeble, indeed, as compared with the emotions awakened by the memory of them in the breast of the aged apostle by whom they are recorded. It would not, however, be creditable either to our intelligence or to our piety if we could peruse this page of the evangelic history unmoved, as if it were utterly devoid of interest. We should address ourselves to the study of the simple story with somewhat of the feeling with which men make pilgrimages to sacred places; for indeed the ground is holy.

The scene of the occurrences in which we are concerned was in the region of Pera, on the banks of the Jordan, at the lower part of its course. The persons who make their appearance on the scene were all natives of Galilee, and their presence here is due to the fame of the remarkable man whose office it was to be the forerunner of the Christ. John, surnamed the Baptist, who had spent his youth in the desert as a hermit, living on locusts and wild honey, and clad in a garment of camel’s hair, had come forth from his retreat, and appeared among men as a prophet of God. The burden of his prophecy was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In a short time many were attracted from all quarters to see and hear him. Of those who flocked to his preaching, the greater number went as they came; but not a few were deeply impressed, and, confessing their sins, underwent the rite of baptism in the waters of the Jordan. Of those who were baptized, a select number formed themselves into a circle of disciples around the person of the Baptist, among whom were at least two, and most probably the whole, of the five men mentioned by the evangelist. Previous converse with the Baptist had awakened in these disciples a desire to see Jesus, and prepared them for believing in Him. In his communications to the people around him John made frequent allusions to One who should come after himself. He spoke of this coming One in language fitted to awaken great expectations. He called himself, with reference to the coming One, a mere voice in the wilderness, crying, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” At another time he said, “I baptize with water; but there standeth One among you whom ye know not: He it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.” This great One was none other than the Messiah, the Son of God, the King of Israel.

Such discourses were likely to result, and by the man of God who uttered them they were intended to result, in the disciples of the Baptist leaving him and going over to Jesus. And we see here the process of transition actually commencing. We do not affirm that the persons here named finally quitted the Baptist’s company at this time, to become henceforth regular followers of Jesus. But an acquaintance now begins which will end in that. The bride is introduced to the Bridegroom, and the marriage will come in due season; not to the chagrin but to the joy of the Bridegroom’s friend.³ easily and artlessly does the mystic bride, as represented by these five disciples, become acquainted with her heavenly Bridegroom! The account of their meeting is idyllic in its simplicity, and would only be spoiled by a commentary. There is no need of formal introduction: they all introduce each other. Even John and Andrew were not formally introduced to Jesus by the Baptist; they rather introduced themselves. The exclamation of the desert prophet on seeing Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” repeated next day in an abbreviated form, was the involuntary utterance of one absorbed in his own thoughts, rather than the deliberate speech of one who was directing his disciples to leave himself and go over to Him of whom he spake. The two disciples, on the other hand, in going away after the personage whose presence had been so impressively announced, were not obeying an order given by their old master, but were simply following the dictates of feelings which had been awakened in their breasts by all they had heard him say of Jesus, both on the present and on former occasions. They needed no injunction to seek the acquaintance of one in whom they felt so keenly interested: all they needed was to know that this was He. They were as anxious to see the Messianic King as the world is to see the face of a secular prince.

It is natural that we should scan the evangelical narrative for indications of character with reference to those who, in the way so quaintly described, for the first time met Jesus. Little is said of the five disciples, but there is enough to show that they were all pious men. What they found in their new friend indicates what they wanted to find. They evidently belonged to the select band who waited for the consolation of Israel, and anxiously looked for Him who should fulfil God’s promises and realize the hopes of all devout souls. Besides this general indication of character supplied in their common confession of faith, a few facts are stated respecting these first believers in Jesus tending to make us a little better acquainted with them. Two of them certainly, all of them probably, had been disciples of the Baptist. This fact is decisive as to their moral earnestness. From such a quarter none but spiritually earnest men were likely to come. For if the followers of John were at all like himself, they were men who hungered and thirsted after real righteousness, being sick of the righteousness then in vogue; they said Amen in their hearts to the preacher’s withering exposure of the hollowness of current religious profession and of the worthlessness of fashionable good works, and sighed for a sanctity other than that of pharisaic superstition and ostentation; their conscience acknowledged the truth of the prophetic oracle, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away;” and they prayed fervently for the reviving of true religion, for the coming of the divine kingdom, for the advent of the Messianic King with fan in His hand to separate chaff from wheat, and to put right all things which were wrong. Such, without doubt, were the sentiments of those who had the honor to be the first disciples of Christ.

Simon, best known of all the twelve under the name of Peter, is introduced to us here, through the prophetic insight of Jesus, on the good side of his character as the man of rock. When this disciple was brought by his brother Andrew into the presence of his future Master, Jesus, we are told, “beheld him and said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas”—Cephas meaning in Syriac, as the evangelist explains, the same which Petros signifies in Greek. The penetrating glance of Christ discerned in this disciple latent capacities of faith and devotion, the rudiments of ultimate strength and power.

What manner of man Philip was the evangelist does not directly tell us, but merely whence he came. From the present passage, and from other notices in the Gospels, the conclusion has been drawn that he was characteristically deliberate, slow in arriving at decision; and for proof of this view, reference has been made to the “phlegmatic circumstantiality”⁴ with which he described to Nathanael the person of Him with whom he had just become acquainted.⁵ But these words of Philip, and all that we elsewhere read of him, rather suggest to us the idea of the earnest inquirer after truth, who has thoroughly searched the Scriptures and made himself acquainted with the Messiah of promise and prophecy, and to whom the knowledge of God is the summum bonum. In the solicitude manifested by this disciple to win his friend Nathanael over to the same faith we recognize that generous sympathetic spirit, characteristic of earnest inquirers, which afterwards revealed itself in him when he became the bearer of the request of devout Greeks for permission to see Jesus.⁶ notices concerning Nathanael, Philip’s acquaintance, are more detailed and more interesting than in the case of any other of the five; and it is not a little surprising that we should be told so much in this place about one concerning whom we otherwise know almost nothing. It is even not quite certain that he belonged to the circle of the twelve, though the probability is, that he is to be identified with the Bartholomew of the synoptical catalogues—his full name in that case being Nathanael the son of Tolmai. It is strongly in favor of this supposition that the name Bartholomew comes immediately after Philip in the lists of the apostles.⁷ Be this as it may, we know on the best authority that Nathanael was a man of great moral excellence. No sooner had Jesus seen him than He exclaimed, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” The words suggest the idea of one whose heart was pure; in whom was no doublemindedness, impure motive, pride, or unholy passion: a man of gentle, meditative spirit, in whose mind heaven lay reflected like the blue sky in a still lake on a calm summer day. He was a man much addicted to habits of devotion: he had been engaged in spiritual exercises under cover of a fig-tree just before he met with Jesus. So we are justified in concluding, from the deep impression made on his mind by the words of Jesus, “Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee.” Nathanael appears to have understood these words as meaning, “I saw into thy heart, and knew how thou wast occupied, and therefore I pronounced thee an Israelite indeed.” He accepted the statement made to him by Jesus as an evidence of preternatural knowledge, and therefore he forthwith made the confession, “Rabbi! Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel”—the King of that sacred commonwealth whereof you say I am a citizen.

It is remarkable that this man, so highly endowed with the moral dispositions necessary for seeing God, should have been the only one of all the five disciples who manifested any hesitancy about receiving Jesus as the Christ. When Philip told him that he had found the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth, he asked incredulously, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” One hardly expects such prejudice in one so meek and amiable; and yet, on reflection, we perceive it to be quite characteristic. Nathanael’s prejudice against Nazareth sprung not from pride, as in the case of the people of Judea who despised the Galileans in general, but from humility. He was a Galilean himself, and as much an object of Jewish contempt as were the Nazarenes. His inward thought was, “Surely the Messiah can never come from among a poor despised people such as we are—from Nazareth or any other Galilean town or village!”⁸ He timidly allowed his mind to be biased by a current opinion originating in feelings with which he had no sympathy; a fault common to men whose piety, though pure and sincere, defers too much to human authority, and who thus become the slaves of sentiments utterly unworthy of them.

While Nathanael was not free from prejudices, he showed his guilelessness in being willing to have them removed. He came and saw. This openness to conviction is the mark of moral integrity. The guileless man dogmatizes not, but investigates, and therefore always comes right in the end. The man of bad, dishonest heart, on the contrary, does not come and see. Deeming it his interest to remain in his present mind, he studiously avoids looking at aught which does not tend to confirm his foregone conclusions. He may, indeed, profess a desire for inquiry, like certain Israelites of whom we read in this same Gospel, of another stamp than Nathanael, but sharing with him the prejudice against Galilee. “Search and look,” said these Israelites not without guile, in reply to the ingenuous question of the honest but timid Nicodemus: “Doth our law judge any man before it hear him, and know what he doeth?” “Search and look,” said they, appealing to observation and inviting inquiry; but they added: “For out of Galilee ariseth no prophet”⁹ —a dictum which at once prohibited inquiry in effect, and intimated that it was unnecessary. “Search and look; but we tell you beforehand you cannot arrive at any other conclusion than ours; nay, we warn you, you had better not.”

Such were the characters of the men who first believed in Jesus. What, now, was the amount and value of their belief? On first view the faith of the five disciples, leaving out of account the brief hesitation of Nathanael, seems unnaturally sudden and mature. They believe in Jesus on a moment’s notice, and they express their faith in terms which seem appropriate only to advanced Christian intelligence. In the present section of John’s Gospel we find Jesus called not merely the Christ, the Messiah, the King of Israel, but the Son of God and the Lamb of God—names expressive to us of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity, the Incarnation and the Atonement.

The haste and maturity which seem to characterize the faith of the five disciples are only superficial appearances. As to the former: these men believed that Messiah was to come some time; and they wished much it might be then, for they felt He was greatly needed. They were men who waited for the consolation of Israel, and they were prepared at any moment to witness the advent of the Comforter. Then the Baptist had told them that the Christ was come, and that He was to be found in the person of Him whom he had baptized, and whose baptism had been accompanied with such remarkable signs from heaven; and what the Baptist said they implicitly believed. Finally, the impression produced on their minds by the bearing of Jesus when they met, tended to confirm John’s testimony, being altogether worthy of the Christ.

The appearance of maturity in the faith of the five brethren is equally superficial. As to the name Lamb of God, it was given to Jesus by John, not by them. It was, so to speak, the baptismal name which the preacher of repentance had learned by reflection, or by special revelation, to give to the Christ. What the name signified even he but dimly comprehended, the very repetition of it showing him to be but a learner striving to get up his lesson; and we know that what John understood only in part, the men whom he introduced to the acquaintance of Jesus, now and for long after, understood not at all.¹⁰ title Son of God was given to Jesus by one of the five disciples as well as by the Baptist, a title which even the apostles in after years found sufficient to express their mature belief respecting the Person of their Lord. But it does not follow that the name was used by them at the beginning with the same fulness of meaning as at the end. It was a name which could be used in a sense coming far short of that which it is capable of conveying, and which it did convey in apostolic preaching—merely as one of the Old Testament titles of Messiah, a synonyme for Christ. It was doubtless in this rudimentary sense that Nathanael applied the designation to Him, whom he also called the King of Israel.

The faith of these brethren was, therefore, just such as we should expect in beginners. In substance it amounted to this, that they recognized in Jesus the Divine Prophet, King, Son of Old Testament prophecy; and its value lay not in its maturity, or accuracy, but in this, that however imperfect, it brought them into contact and close fellowship with Him, in whose company they were to see greater things than when they first believed, one truth after another assuming its place in the firmament of their minds, like the stars appearing in the evening sky as daylight fades away.

¹Omina principus inesse solent.—Ovid. Fast. i. 178.

²verse 41.

³John iii. 29.

⁴Luthardt, Das Johan. Evang. i. 102.

⁵ver 45.

⁶John xii. 22.

⁷Ewald lays stress on this in proof of the identity of the two, Geschichte Christus, p.327. In Acts i.13 Thomas comes between Philip and Bartholomew.

⁸Stanley thinks Nathanael meant to single out Nazareth from the rest of Galilee as of specially bad notoriety. In that case the argument would be fortiori : Can any good come out of Galilee, and specially from Nazareth, infamous even there?—Sinai and Palestine, p. 366.

⁹John vii. 52 The Revised Version has: “Search and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.”

¹⁰The use of such a title by John at such an early period does certainly give one a surprise. And yet is it not more surprising to find such a passage as the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, on any interpretation of it, in an Old Testament book? And being there, why wonder that this title was in John’s mouth? That John understood the full import of his own words we are not bound, or even entitled, to believe. Why should not the utterance be as much a mystery for him as, according to the Apostle Peter, similar utterances by older prophets were to them?

Fishers of Men

Matt. 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11.

The twelve arrived at their final intimate relation to Jesus only by degrees, three stages in the history of their fellowship with Him being distinguishable. In the first stage they were simply believers in Him as the Christ, and His occasional companions at convenient, particularly festive, seasons. Of this earliest stage in the intercourse of the disciples with their Master we have some memorials in the four first chapters of John’s Gospel, which tell how some of them first became acquainted with Jesus, and represent them as accompanying Him at a marriage in Cana,¹¹ at a passover in Jerusalem,¹² on a visit to the scene of the Baptist’s ministry,¹³ and on the return journey through Samaria from the south to Galilee.¹⁴ the second stage, fellowship with Christ assumed the form of an uninterrupted attendance on His person, involving entire, or at least habitual abandonment of secular occupations.¹⁵ The present narratives bring under our view certain of the disciples entering on this second stage of discipleship. Of the four persons here named, we recognize three, Peter, Andrew, and John, as old acquaintances, who have already passed through the first stage of discipleship. One of them, James the brother of John, we meet with for the first time; a fact which suggests the remark, that in some cases the first and second stages may have been blended together—professions of faith in Jesus as the Christ being immediately followed by the renunciation of secular callings for the purpose of joining His company. Such cases, however, were probably exceptional and few.

The twelve entered on the last and highest stage of discipleship when they were chosen by their Master from the mass of His followers, and formed into a select band, to be trained for the great work of the apostleship. This important event probably did not take place till all the members of the apostolic circle had been for some time about the person of Jesus.

From the evangelic records it appears that Jesus began at a very early period of His ministry to gather round Him a company of disciples, with a view to the preparation of an agency for carrying on the work of the divine kingdom. The two pairs of brothers received their call at the commencement of the first Galilean ministry, in which the first act was the selection of Capernaum by the seaside as the centre of operations and ordinary place of abode.¹⁶ And when we think what they were called unto, we see that the call could not come too soon. The twelve were to be Christ’s witnesses in the world after He Himself had left it; it was to be their peculiar duty to give to the world a faithful account of their Master’s words and deeds, a just image of His character, a true reflection of His spirit.¹⁷ This service obviously could be rendered only by persons who had been, as nearly as possible, eye-witnesses and servants of the Incarnate Word from the beginning. While, therefore, except in the cases of Peter, James, John, Andrew, and Matthew, we have no particulars in the Gospels respecting the calls of those who afterwards became apostles, we must assume that they all occurred in the first year of the Saviour’s public ministry.

That these calls were given with conscious reference to an ulterior end, even the apostleship, appears from the remarkable terms in which the earliest of them was expressed. “Follow Me,” said Jesus to the fishermen of Bethsaida, “and I will make you fishers of men.” These words (whose originality stamps them as a genuine saying of Jesus) show that the great Founder of the faith desired not only to have disciples, but to have about Him men whom He might train to make disciples of others: to cast the net of divine truth into the sea of the world, and to land on the shores of the divine kingdom a great multitude of believing souls. Both from His words and from His actions we can see that He attached supreme importance to that part of His work which consisted in training the twelve. In the intercessory prayer,¹⁸ e.g., He speaks of the training He had given these men as if it had been the principal part of His own earthly ministry. And such, in one sense, it really was. The careful, painstaking education of the disciples secured that the Teacher’s influence on the world should be permanent; that His kingdom should be founded on the rock of deep and indestructible convictions in the minds of the few, not on the shifting sands of superficial evanescent impressions on the minds of the many. Regarding that kingdom, as our Lord Himself has taught us in one of His parables to do,¹⁹ as a thing introduced into the world like a seed cast into the ground and left to grow according to natural laws, we may say that, but for the twelve, the doctrine, the works, and the image of Jesus might have perished from human remembrance, nothing remaining but a vague mythical tradition, of no historical value, and of little practical influence.

Those on whom so much depended, it plainly behoved to possess very extraordinary qualifications. The mirrors must be finely polished that are designed to reflect the image of Christ! The apostles of the Christian religion must be men of rare spiritual endowment. It is a catholic religion, intended for all nations; therefore its apostles must be free from Jewish narrowness, and have sympathies wide as the world. It is a spiritual religion, destined ere long to antiquate Jewish ceremonialism; therefore its apostles must be emancipated in conscience from the yoke of ordinances.²⁰ It is a religion, once more, which is to proclaim the Cross, previously an instrument of cruelty and badge of infamy, as the hope of the world’s redemption, and the symbol of all that is noble and heroic in conduct; therefore its heralds must be superior to all conventional notions of human and divine dignity, capable of glorying in the cross of Christ, and willing to bear a cross themselves. The apostolic character, in short, must combine freedom of conscience, enlargement of heart, enlightenment of mind, and all in the superlative degree.

The humble fishermen of Galilee had much to learn before they could satisfy these high requirements; so much, that the time of their apprenticeship for their apostolic work, even reckoning it from the very commencement of Christ’s ministry, seems all too short. They were indeed godly men, who had already shown the sincerity of their piety by forsaking all for their Master’s sake. But at the time of their call they were exceedingly ignorant, narrow-minded, superstitious, full of Jewish prejudices, misconceptions, and animosities. They had much to unlearn of what was bad, as well as much to learn of what was good, and they were slow both to learn and to unlearn. Old beliefs already in possession of their minds made the communication of new religious ideas a difficult task. Men of good honest heart, the soil of their spiritual nature was fitted to produce an abundant harvest; but it was stiff, and needed much laborious tillage before it would yield its fruit. Then, once more, they were poor men, of humble birth, low station, mean occupations, who had never felt the stimulating influence of a liberal education, or of social intercourse with persons of cultivated minds.²¹ shall meet with abundant evidence of the crude spiritual condition of the twelve, even long after the period when they were called to follow Jesus, as we proceed with the studies on which we have entered. Meantime we may discover significant indications of the religious immaturity of at least one of the disciples—Simon, son of Jonas—in Luke’s account of the incidents connected with his call. Pressed by the multitude who had assembled on the shore of the lake to hear Him preach, Jesus, we read, entered into a ship (one of two lying near at hand), which happened to be Simon’s, and requesting him to thrust out a little from the land, sat down, and taught the people from the vessel. Having finished speaking, Jesus said unto the owner of the boat, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” Their previous efforts to catch fish had been unsuccessful; but Simon and his brother did as Jesus directed, and were rewarded by an extraordinary take, which appeared to them and their fishing companions, James and John, nothing short of miraculous. Simon, the most impressible and the most demonstrative of the four, gave utterance to his feelings of astonishment by characteristic words and gestures. He fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!”

This exclamation opens a window into the inner man of him who uttered it through which we can see his spiritual state. We observe in Peter at this time that mixture of good and evil, of grace and nature, which so frequently reappears in his character in the subsequent history. Among the good elements discernible are reverential awe in presence of Divine Power, a prompt calling to mind of sin betraying tenderness of conscience, and an unfeigned self-humiliation on account of unmerited favor. Valuable features of character these; but they did not exist in Peter without alloy. Along with them were associated superstitious dread of the supernatural and a slavish fear of God. The presence of the former element is implied in the reassuring exhortation addressed to the disciple by Jesus, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” Slavish fear of God is even more manifest in his own words, “Depart from me, O Lord.” Powerfully impressed with the super-human knowledge revealed in connection with the great draught of fishes, he regards Jesus for the moment as a supernatural being, and as such dreads Him as one whom it is not safe to be near, especially for a poor sinful mortal like himself. This state of mind shows how utterly unfit Peter is, as yet, to be an apostle of a Gospel which magnifies the grace of God even to the chief of sinners. His piety, sufficiently strong and decided, is not of a Christian type; it is legal, one might almost say pagan, in spirit.

With all their imperfections, which were both numerous and great, these humble fishermen of Galilee had, at the very outset of their career, one grand distinguishing virtue, which, though it may co-exist with many defects, is the cardinal virtue of Christian ethics, and the certain forerunner of ultimate high attainment. They were animated by a devotion to Jesus and to the divine kingdom which made them capable of any sacrifice. Believing Him who bade them follow Him to the Christ, come to set up God’s kingdom on earth, they “straightway” left their nets and joined his company, to be thenceforth His constant companions in all His wanderings. The act was acknowledged by Jesus Himself to be meritorious; and we cannot, without injustice, seek to disparage it by ascribing it to idleness, discontent, or ambition as its motive. The Gospel narrative shows that the four brethren were not idle, but hard-working, industrious men. Neither were they discontented, if for no other reason than that they had no cause for discontent.

The family of James and John at least seems to have been in circumstances of comfort; for Mark relates that, when called by Jesus, they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after Him. But ambition, had it no place among their motives? Well, we must admit that the twelve, and especially James and John, were by no means free from ambitious passions, as we shall see hereafter. But to whatever extent ambition may have influenced their conduct at a later period, it was not the motive which determined them to leave their nets. Ambition needs a temptation: it does not join a cause which is obscure and struggling, and whose success is doubtful; it strikes in when success is assured, and when the movement it patronizes is on the eve of its glorification. The cause of Jesus had not got to that stage yet.

One charge only can be brought against those men, and it can be brought with truth, and without doing their memory any harm. They were enthusiasts: their hearts were fired, and, as an unbelieving world might say, their heads were turned by a dream about a divine kingdom to be set up in Israel, with Jesus of Nazareth for its king. That dream possessed them, and imperiously ruled over their minds and shaped their destinies, compelling them, like Abraham, to leave their kindred and their country, and to go forth on what might well appear beforehand to be a fool’s errand. Well for the world that they were possessed by the idea of the kingdom! For it was no fool’s errand on which they went forth, leaving their nets behind. The kingdom they sought turned out to be as real as the land of Canaan, though not such altogether as they had imagined. The fishermen of Galilee did become fishers of men on a most extensive scale, and, by the help of God, gathered many souls into the church of such as should be saved. In a sense they are casting their nets into the sea of the world still, and, by their testimony to Jesus in Gospel and Epistle, are bringing multitudes to become disciples of Him among whose first followers they had the happiness to be numbered.

The four, the twelve, forsook all and followed their Master. Did the “all” in any case include wife and children? It did in at least one instance—that of Peter; for the Gospels tell how Peter’s mother-in-law was healed of a fever by the miraculous power of Christ.²² From a passage in Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian church, it appears that Peter was not the only one among the apostles who was married.²³ From the same passage we further learn, that forsaking of wives for Christ’s sake did not mean literal desertion. Peter the apostle led his wife about with him, and Peter the disciple may sometimes have done the same. The likelihood is that the married disciples, like married soldiers, took their wives with them or left them at home, as circumstances might require or admit. Women, even married women, did sometimes follow Jesus; and the wife of Simon, or of any other married disciple, may occasionally have been among the number. At an advanced period in the history we find the mother of James and John in Christ’s company far from home; and where mothers were, wives, if they wished, might also be. The infant church, in its original nomadic or itinerant state, seems to have been a motley band of pilgrims, in which all sorts of people as to sex, social position, and moral character were united, the bond of union being ardent attachment to the person of Jesus.

This church itinerant was not a regularly organized society, of which it was necessary to be a constant member in order to true discipleship. Except in the case of the twelve, following Jesus from place to place was optional, not compulsory; and in most cases it was probably also only occasional.²⁴ It was the natural consequence of faith, when the object of faith, the centre of the circle, was Himself in motion. Believers would naturally desire to see as many of Christ’s works and hear as many of His words as possible. When the object of faith left the earth, and His presence became spiritual, all occasion for such nomadic discipleship was done away. To be present with Him thereafter, men needed only to forsake their sins.

¹¹John ii. 1.

¹²John ii. 13, 17, 22.

¹³John iii. 22.

¹⁴John iv. 1-27, 31, 43-45.

¹⁵Entire in Matthew’s case, of course; in the case of the fishers, not necessarily so.

¹⁶Matt. iv. 13.

¹⁷It is not assumed here that the Gospels, as we have them, were written by apostles. The statement in the text implies only that the teaching of the apostles, whether oral or written, was the ultimate source of the evangelic traditions recorded in the Gospels.

¹⁸John xvii. 6.

¹⁹Mark iv. 26.

²⁰Universality and Spirituality are admitted by the Tübingen school to have been attributes of the religion of Jesus as set forth by Himself. This is an important fact in connection with their conflict-hypothesis.

²¹Throughout this work great prominence is given to the moral and spiritual defects of the twelve. But we must protest at the outset against the inference that such men must remain permanently disqualified for the task of being the apostles of the universal religion, the religion of humanity. Everything may be hoped of men who could leave all for Christ’s society. Where there is a noble soul, there is an indefinite capacity of growth.

²²Matt. viii. 14; Mark i. 29-31; Luke iv. 38, 39.

²³I Cor. ix. 5.

²⁴The words recorded in Luke. xxii. 28, as spoken by Jesus to the disciples on the night before His death, “Ye are they who have continued with me in my temptations,” might be referred to as tending to prove both the continuousness of the companionship of the twelve with Jesus and the early date of its commencement. The saying is directly intended to bear testimony to the fidelity of the disciples, but it bears indirect testimony on the other points also. They had been with their Master, if not as a constituted body of twelve, at least as individuals, from the time He began to have “temptations,” which was very early, and they had been with Him throughout them all.

Related Topics: Evangelism, Discipleship

Introduction to an Exegetical and Patristic Examination of Matthew 16:18

Of the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew appears to be the most concerned with Jesus’ relationship to Judaism and his role as the Savior of Israel. Israel’s prophets had long promised that a final king and/or dynasty would descend from David (Isa 9:7; Jer 23:5), and this messianic theme would continue throughout early Judaism (Pss. Sol. 17:21).¹ Because the king was called an “anointed one,” Jews often called this final, great king “the anointed one” or “Messiah,” which the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible calls “Christ.”² In Matthew, the reader sees that the long-awaited Messiah has arrived.³ The gospel painstakingly shows that Jesus is the fulfillment of those Old Testament Messianic prophecies (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4 27:9).⁴ Although Jesus is Messiah, he is not the king of popular Jewish expectation.⁵ His ultimate mission is spiritual rather than political. Jesus is not a revolutionary set on freeing Israel from Roman oppression. His reign is not that of a king-Messiah over a Jewish world empire; instead, he comes to save his people through suffering and death.⁶ As the promised one, Jesus has been sent to bring the Jewish people back to God, just as the earlier prophets tried to do.⁷ He heals the sick, teaches the true meaning of the Torah, calls for righteous living, and inaugurates the kingdom of God.⁸

However, the Gospel of Matthew does not only portray Jesus as the Christ; it also affirms that he is the Son of God (2:15; 4:3, 6; 8:29; 14:33; 16:16; 26:63; 27: 40, 43). Matthew makes it clear that Jesus’ special union with the Father gives him a unique type of authority (7:29; 9:1-6; 21:23-27; 28:18). Matthew emphasizes the sonship of Jesus by having him refer to God as his Father twenty-three times.⁹ The confession of Jesus’ sonship is made only by believers (except when it is blasphemy) and only by divine revelation (11:27; 16:17)¹⁰. Therefore, it can be said that Matthew essentially presents a messianic understanding of Jesus, who as Son of God, reveals God’s will and bears divine authority.¹¹ No chapter in the Gospel reveals Jesus’ identity as divine Son-Christ more than chapter 16.

Setting the Stage: A Brief Overview of Matt 16:1-17

The chapter begins with a test by the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and the Sadducees (16:1-4). Aware of Jesus’ status as a miracle worker (6:13; 15:1-20), the leaders ask Jesus to give them a sign from heaven. Rather than giving them a sign, though, Jesus criticizes them for their lack of spiritual insight. Jesus’ questioners could predict many celestial phenomena without any supernatural aid at all¹²: they knew that a red sky signals fair weather in the evening but foretells rain in the morning. However, Jesus is not interested in predicting events in the sky, and the Pharisees and the Sadducees were overlooking an explicit sign that was nearer at hand.¹³ As adept as they are at understanding the physical world, they are not wise enough to discern the spiritual realities that Jesus brings, what he calls “the signs of the times.”¹⁴ According to Jesus, the sinfulness of the present generation is in itself a sign, for many Jewish people believed that a sinful generation would precede the coming kingdom of the Lord (2 Bar 16:12; m. Sota 9:15; b. San. 97a).¹⁵ The only sign that would be given to this “evil and adulterous generation” is the sign of Jonah, which recalls Matt 12:38-39. Jesus’ rebuke shows that rather than seeking a supernatural sign from heaven, the Pharisees and Sadducees should have recognized that the kingdom of heaven was already upon them.

The inability to discern spiritual truth is also the theme of the next pericope (16:5-12). Given his latest encounter with the religious leaders of the day, Jesus warns his disciples to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (16:6). By that, he meant the leaders’ teaching and influence. In a complete misunderstanding, the apostles believe that Jesus is talking about literal bread; because they forgot to bring any, they think that Jesus must be warning them against buying bread from these groups of leaders.¹⁶ Even they do not recognize the spiritual principle behind their teacher’s words. The extraordinary dullness of the Twelve almost seems to have surprised Jesus Himself (“Do you not yet understand … How is it that you do not yet understand?”).¹⁷ Despite all that they had seen and heard, the disciples lacked the basic faith required to understand a simple spiritual warning; however, the disciples are on the verge of a new level of revelation, and it is one that is pivotal in the development of Matthew’s narrative.¹⁸

Later, Jesus takes his disciples to Caesarea Philippi (16:13), a place known for its pagan activity, including the famous grotto where people worshipped the Greek god Pan.¹⁹ Here, Jesus takes the initiative and directly asks the question that has been in the minds of the disciples from the beginning of his ministry: What are people saying about him?²⁰ More importantly, who do the disciples think that Jesus is? (16:13). The disciples have seen Jesus heal and heard him teach, so how do they classify him?²¹ Despite his previous failure to understand spiritual truth, the apostle Simon now makes one of the great confessions of faith: he unequivocally states that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (16:16). In response, Jesus reveals that it is not man (“flesh and blood”) that has revealed this truth to the apostle, but God in heaven (16:17). Then, Jesus makes a statement that will be debated for the next two millennia of the church: “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”

The Problem of Matt 16:18

Few verses in Scripture have generated more controversy or divisiveness than Matt 16:18, and the interpretation of this verse will be explored in this thesis. The problem of Matt 16:18 must be considered on two levels: the exegetical and the theological.²² First, the exegetical dilemma is founded upon this question: Who/What is this so-called “rock”? For Roman Catholics, the word-play between Simon’s surname, Peter (Pevtro", Lat. Petrus), and the “rock” (pevtra, Lat. petram) is not coincidental. This pun clearly points to the “rock” being none other than the apostle himself. Protestant scholars, however, have largely fallen into three camps regarding the interpretation of the verse: 1) the rock is Jesus; 2) the rock is the confession of faith; 3) the rock is Peter. Chapter Two of this work is devoted entirely to an exegesis of the verse. At the heart of the exegesis will be the interpretation of pevtra.

The theological implications of such an exegesis cannot be overstated. At the heart of the theological problem is this: If Peter is considered to be the “rock” of Matt 16:18, is his authority limited only to him or is it passed on to those who succeed him? In other words, does Jesus give Peter’s authority to a succeeding line of bishops? For Catholics, this verse, along with the testimony of Luke 22:32 and John 21:15-17, not only affirms the preeminence of Peter as the Prince of the apostles, but it also lays the groundwork for the establishment of a permanent Roman see with full Petrine authority. In fact, this text is so important that “Tu est Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam mean” is pained in gilt letters inside the cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, a church that may have literally been built upon the remains of Peter, as Pope Paul VI asserted.²³ From the third century on, many of the Roman pontiffs, including Damasus I, Innocent I, and Leo the Great, began claiming that the bishop of Rome was not only the rightful heir of Peter, but also the living voice of Peter. In other words, the same authority and power that Christ gave to Peter as “rock” of the Church was spiritually transmitted to them as the apostle’s successors. Therefore, when Leo I spoke, the church should understand the Apostle Peter to be speaking. This type of authority found its roots in the idea of apostolic succession.

Throughout the second and third centuries, the church fathers often found themselves debating against various heresies, including Gnosticism and Marcionism. Certainly the use of Scripture was an important means of battling false teaching; however, heretics were also using the Bible to substantiate their own claims. Of course, the difficulty was that heretics were liable to interpret the Scripture differently than the Church.²⁴ The debate finally came to the authority of the Church itself; this was important because the very nature of orthodox teaching was at stake.²⁵ For instance, the Gnostics claimed that they possessed secret access to the original message of Jesus through a succession of secret, spiritual teachers; similarly, Marcion declared that he had access to the true message of the Gospel through the abbreviated writings of Paul and Luke.²⁶ At the same time, the church maintained that she had the true gospel. Who was correct? Early church fathers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian maintained that had Jesus had some secret knowledge to communicate to his disciples (which he did not), he would have entrusted that teaching to the same apostles to whom he had entrusted the Church.²⁷ Ireneaus maintained that unlike the secret teaching of the Gnostics, the true tradition of the Church was public and open, and was handed down by Jesus to the apostles, who in turn taught their successors, who in turn taught their disciples.²⁸ This idea of apostolic succession guaranteed that oral tradition could be traced back from an unbroken succession of bishops in the sees to the apostles themselves; moreover, the Holy Spirit protected this succession, for the message was committed to the Church, and the Church is the home of the Spirit.²⁹ This is not to say that the church fathers affirmed the idea that tradition trumped Scripture. The fathers would readily admit that the Scripture had absolute authority, and whatever it teaches is necessarily true³⁰, but since heretics were also using the Scripture, the fathers maintained that the right interpretation of the Scripture could be found only where true Christian faith and discipline have been maintained, namely the Church.³¹

In order to make the argument for apostolic succession, it was necessary to show that bishops of the time were indeed successors to the apostles; in fact, many of the ancient churches (such as Rome, Antioch, and Ephesus) had lists linking their bishops to an apostle.³² While the importance of all the apostles was unquestioned, in the minds of many of the church fathers, Peter was given the place of preeminence because he confessed that Jesus was the Messiah at Caesarea Philippi. The authority of Rome became increasingly important in the early church not only because the city lay at the heart of the Roman Empire, but also because it was said to be the traditional place of the martyrdom of both Peter and Paul.³³ By the middle of the fifth century, the primacy of the bishop of Rome over other bishops was clear, and many church fathers did view the bishop of Rome as the legitimate successor of Peter.³⁴

However, even if it is granted that the early popes were the successors of Peter, a few questions still remain: 1) What does it mean to be a successor? Do the popes serve as shepherds of the truth (since they were from the line of Peter), or did they actually inherit Peter’s apostleship? 2) Did the fathers of the church understand Matt 16:18 to be the basis for a perpetual Roman see with full Petrine authority? The question of the permanence of the Roman See lies at the heart of the discussion. That the bishop of Rome had a place of primacy throughout the patristic age is really undisputed.³⁵ While the patristic writers held the Roman See in high regard, there is little evidence to suggest that they viewed the bishop of Rome as having the same authority as Peter himself. The framers and promoters of this theory were really the popes themselves.³⁶ This is made even more evident by the fact that there was not uniform agreement among the patristic writers that the “rock” in question was even Peter. In fact, the patristic writers have a wide divergence of opinion concerning the “rock” of Matt 16:18. Some, such as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Basil the Great maintain that the “rock” is Peter; others, such as Augustine, affirm that the “rock” is Jesus; still others, most notably the Eastern fathers (such as Chrysostom and Cyril of Jerusalem), assert that the “rock” is the profession of faith. For some of the fathers, then, it is impossible to conceive of the pope as a “living apostle” according to Matt 16:18 because the rock in question is not the apostle but either Jesus or the profession of faith.

Thesis Trajectory

Within chapters three, four, and five of this thesis, an overview of the history of interpretation from the third to the fifth century will be given. The examination will include statements by the major church fathers from the aforementioned period. The overview will start with the first papal claim to Petrine authority, most likely done by Callistus I, and the survey will end with the last major pope of the early church, Leo the Great, who more than any pope before him, used Matt 16:18 to establish the Petrine authority of the Apostolic See. Chapter Three will examine the writings of the fathers who are members of the Petrine school of interpretation, including the popes. Chapter Four will examine the writings of the fathers who adhere to a Christological interpretation of the verse. Chapter Five will concentrate on the fathers who maintained a pevtra = fide interpretation. The final chapter will discuss the nature of the apostolic office and its usefulness in the church today.

¹Craig Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 61.

²Ibid.

³The scholarly consensus is that the original recipients of Matthew’s Gospel were probably Jewish Christians (see Blomberg, Hagner, Keener, Bruner, Beare, Davies-Allison, and Luz). According to Donald Hagner, several factors lend weight to this assumption: the numerous amount of OT quotations (more than sixty) and the stress throughout the gospel on OT fulfillment; the apologetic motifs of the birth narrative (which contradict the early claims of Jesus’ illegitimate birth); the importance of Jesus’ fidelity to the law (e.g., 5:17-19); the lack of explanation of many Jewish customs (which assumes that readers already have a knowledge of Jewish practices); and Matthew’s formulation of several discussions in typical rabbinic patterns (e.g., 19:3-9 on divorce). See Donald Hagner, Matthew 14-28, Word Biblical Commentary, ed. Bruce Metzger, David Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker, vol. 33B (Dallas: Word Publishers, 1995), lxiv.

⁴Robert Stein, Studying the Synoptic Gospels: Origin and Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Books, 2001), 88.

⁵J. L. McKenzie, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” in Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, and Roland E. Murphy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 64.

⁶Ibid.

⁷Darrell Bock, Jesus According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Publishers, 2002), 28.

⁸Ibid.

⁹Hagner, Matthew, lxi.

¹⁰Ibid.

¹¹Darrell Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Publishers, 2002), 23.

¹²Keener, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 421.

¹³Ibid.

¹⁴Bock, Jesus according to Scripture, 225.

¹⁵Keener, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 421.

¹⁶Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew, New American Commentary, eds. David Dockery, L. Russ Bush, and Paige Patterson, vol. 22 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), 249.

¹⁷Alfred Plummer, An Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: James Family Christian Publishers, 1978), 222.

¹⁸Keener, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 423.

¹⁹Ibid., 424.

²⁰Hagner, Matthew, 467.

²¹Ibid.

²²Oscar Cullman, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr: A Historical and Theological Study (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1958), 161.

²³Raymond E. Brown et al., Peter in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars (London: G. Chapman, 1974), 83-84.

²⁴J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 4th ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco Publishers, 1978), 37.

²⁵Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, vol. 1, The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso Publishers, 1984), 64-65.

²⁶Ibid., 65.

²⁷Ibid. (See also Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.3.1; Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics, 32.)

²⁸Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 37. (See also Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.2.2, 3.3.3, 3.4.1, 3.24.1, and 1 Clement 44.)

²⁹Ibid.

³⁰Ibid.

³¹Ibid., 40.

³²Gonzalez, The Early Church, 66. For early lists, see Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.3.2-3.3.4; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3.21-22, 4.22.2.

³³See 1 Clement 5; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 2.25; Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics, 36.

³⁴Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 417.

³⁵Ibid., 406.

³⁶Ibid., 420.

Related Topics: History, Catholicism, Grammar

Bibliography for an Exegetical and Patristic Examination of Matthew 16:18

Commentaries

Albright, W. F., and C. S. Mann. Matthew. Anchor Bible, ed. William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman, vol. 26. Garden City: Doubleday, 1971.

Bauckham, Richard. Jude, 2 Peter. Word Biblical Commentary, ed. Bruce A. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn Barker, vol. 50. Waco: Word Books, 1983.

Betz, Hand Dieter. Galatians: A Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Churches in Galatia. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.

Blomberg, Craig L. Matthew. New American Commentary, ed. David Dockery, L. Russ Bush, and Paige Patterson, vol. 22. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992.

Brown, Raymond E. et al. Peter in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars. London: G. Chapman, 1974.

Bruner, Frederick Dale. Matthew: A Commentary. Dallas: Word Publishers, 1990.

Calvin, Jean. Calvin's Commentaries. Vol. 16, Commentary on the Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Translated By John Owen. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999.

Carson, D. A. “Matthew.” In Expositor's Bible Commentary. Edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, J. D. Douglas, and Walter Kaiser, vol. 8:3-599. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

Davies, W. D. and Dale C. Allison. Commentary on Matthew VIII-XVIII. International Critical Commentary, ed. F. F. Bruce, vol. 2. New Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991.

France, R. T. Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

Gundry, Robert. Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.

Hagner, Donald. Matthew 14-28. Word Biblical Commentary, ed. Bruce Metzger, David Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker, vol. 33B. Dallas: Word Books, 1995.

Keener, Craig. A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999.

Keener, Craig. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Vol. 2. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2003.

Longenecker, Richard N. Galatians. Word Biblical Commentary, ed. Bruce Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker, vol. 41. Dallas: Word Publishers, 1990.

Luz, Ulrich. Matthew: 8-20. Translated by James E. Crouch. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishers, 1989.

McKenzie, J. L. “The Gospel According to Matthew.” In Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, and Roland E. Murphy, 62-114. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968.

Morris, Leon. The Gospel according to Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishers, 1992.

Plummer, Alfred. An Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: James Family Christian Publishers, 1978.

Ridderbos, H. N. Matthew. Translated by Ray Togtman. Grand Rapids: Regency Reference Library, 1987.

Ryle, J. C. Matthew. Wheaton: Crossway, 1993.

Zwingli, Ulrich. Commentary on True and False Religion. 2nd ed., ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson and Clarence Nevin Heller. Durham: Labyrinth Press, 1981.

Exegetical Studies

Aland, Kurt. ed. Synopsis of the Four Gospels: Greek-English Edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evageliorum, 11th ed. Stuttgary: German Bible Society, 2000.

Aune, David Edward. Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.

Bauer, Walter. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3^rd Ed. Revised and Edited by Frederick William Danker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

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Bultmann, Rudolph. History of the Synoptic Tradition. Translated by John Marsh. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963.

Bock, Darrell. Jesus According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Publishers, 2002.

Bock, Darrell. Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Publishers, 2002.

Caragounis, Chrys C. Peter and the Rock. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990.

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Cullman, Oscar. "Pevtra." In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Translated by Geoffrey Bromiley. Vol. 6, 95-99. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968.

Cullman, Oscar. “Pevtro" Khfa'".” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Translated by Geoffrey Bromiley. Vol. 6: 100-112. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968.

Donfried, Karl. “Peter in the Book of Acts.” In Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman, Vol. 5: 253-254. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Fitzmeyer, Joseph A. “Aramaic Kepha and Peter's Name in the New Testament.” In To Advance the Gospel, 112-124. New York: Crossroad, 1981.

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Hengel, Martin. Studies in the Gospel of Mark. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.

Hughes, Philip Edgcumbe. “The Languages Spoken by Jesus.” In New Dimensions in New Testament Study. Edited by Richard N. Longenecker and Merrill C. Tenney. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1974.

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Luz, Ulrich. Matthew in History: Interpretation, Influence, and Effects. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.

Meeks, Wayne, ed. The Writings of St. Paul. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972.

Moule, C. F. D. An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek, 2^nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959.

Moulton, James. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament. Vol. 4, Style. Edited by Nigel Turner. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1906.

Porter, Stanley. Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood. Bern and New York: Peter Lang, 1989.

Robinson, John A. T. Redating the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976.

Robertson, A. T. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in Light of Historical Research. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934.

Schmidt, K. L. "Ejkklhsiva." In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Vol. 3: 501-535. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965.

Stein, Robert. Studying the Synoptic Gospels: Origin and Interpretation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Books, 2001.

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Wallace, Daniel B. Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.

Extrabiblical Literature

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Ehrman, Bart. “Cephas and Peter.” Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): 463-474.

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Ambrosiaster. Commentarius in Epistulas Paulinas. Edited by Henricus Iosephus Vogels. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 81. Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1966-69.

Ambrosiaster. “Commentary on Ephesians 2.20.” In The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, ed. and trans. by William Webster. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1995.

Ambrosiaster. “Commentary on Galatians 2.9-10.” In Documents Illustrating Papal Authority A.D. 96-454, ed. Edward Giles. London: S. P. C. K. Publishers, 1952.

Athanasius of Alexandria. Apologia Contra Arianos. Patrologiae cursus Completus: Series Graeca, ed. J. P. Minge, vol. 25. Paris: Garnier Freres, 1884.

Athanasius of Alexandria. Apologia ad Constatium. Patrologiae cursus Completus: Series Graeca, ed. J. P. Minge, vol. 25. Paris: Garnier Freres, 1884.

Athanasius of Alexandria. “Commentary on Psalm 118.” In A Commentary by Writers of the First Five Centuries on the Place of St. Peter in the New Testament and that of St. Peter's Successors in the Church, ed. and trans. by James A. Waterworth. London: Thomas Richardson, 1871.

Athanasius of Alexandria. Defense Against the Arians. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, vol. 4. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.

Athanasius of Alexandria. Defense before Constantius. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, vol. 4. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.

Athanasius of Alexandria. Epistula XXIX. Patrologiae cursus Completus: Series Graeca, ed. J. P. Minge, vol. 26. Paris: Garnier Freres, 1887.

Athanasius of Alexandria. Letter 29. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, vol. 4. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.

Athanasius of Alexandria. Psalmo CXVIII. Patrologiae cursus Completus: Series Graeca, ed. J. P. Minge, vol. 27. Paris: Garnier Freres, 1889.

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Origen of Alexandria. Commentary on Matthew 12.10-11. Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Early Fathers Down to A.D. 325, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 10. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

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Writings on the Church Fathers

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Berkhof, Louis. The History of the Christian Doctrines, 6^th ed. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1997.

Bettenson, Henry. Documents of the Christian Church, 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.

Chapman, Dom John. Studies in the Early Papacy. London: Sheed & Ward, 1928.

Cross, F. L. and E. A. Livingston, eds. Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2nd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Eno, Robert. The Rise of the Papacy. Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1990.

Frhlich, Karlfried. “Saint Peter, Papal Primacy and the Exegetical Tradition, 1150-1300.” In The Religious Roles of the Papacy, ed. Christopher Ryan. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1989.

Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity. Vol.1, The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 1984.

Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. 4^th Ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco Publishers, 1978.

Ray, Stephen. Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999.

Scott, Herbert. The Eastern Churches and the Papacy. London: Sheed & Ward, 1928.

Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church. 3rd ed. 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950.

Norman P. Tanner, ed. “Session 4, July 18, 1870 of the First Vatican Council: 1869-1870.” In Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 2, Trent to Vatican II. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990.

Wace, Henry and William Piercy, eds., A Dictionary of Early Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies. 2^nd ed. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1999.

Related Topics: Library and Resources, History, Grammar

Evangelize or Fossilize

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Edited by David MacLeod
Editor’s Note: This article is an edited transcription of a message delivered by Alex Strauch at the 2004 “Iron Sharpens Iron” Conference held on the campus of Emmaus Bible College.

Every Christian is to Be Involved

Too many people think that the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19–20) is just for evangelists, elders or missionaries. In Colossians 4:2–6 the great Apostle clearly demonstrates that everyone is to be proactive in evangelism.

“Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”

In this text the Apostle addressed the entire congregation, not just a select group. He charged them to devote themselves to prayer. Prayer is to be a priority among the people of God. A new freedom of access was opened to God through the Cross of Jesus Christ. Believers may come into God’s presence anytime day or night with great confidence through the blood of Christ and in the name of Christ (Heb. 10:19–22; John 14:13–14).

Paul was a practitioner of his own words, so he immediately made two requests. First, he asked the Colossians to pray that God would open a door for him to preach the gospel (v. 3). It is a scriptural prayer to ask the Lord on behalf of any missionary or person in the Lord’s work that they would have opportunities for evangelism. Paul’s second request is that they would pray “that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak” (v. 4). Remarkably, this veteran missionary and preacher of the gospel asked for prayer for clarity in preaching the gospel.

Do you think it was easy for the apostle Paul in a Roman prison with polytheistic, pagan Roman guards to make the gospel clear? The gospel was almost unintelligible to these heathen Romans. The Christian message that a Jew had died on the cross as the Savior of the world and that one’s sins would be forgiven as a result of his substitutionary death on the cross would be meaningless to them. It was not easy for Paul, and it is not easy for us today to explain the gospel to post-modern people. People today just don’t comprehend the “one way only” gospel through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul asked the Colossians to pray that he will be clear in presenting the gospel to the Romans.

Paul’s two prayer requests are followed by two charges to the Christians in Colossae. Each of the two charges parallels one of the prayer requests. The first charge or exhortation is, “Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity” (v. 5). This parallels the first prayer request. They are to pray for open doors for Paul, and they themselves are to seize opportunities to communicate the gospel to outsiders, that is, unbelievers.

The second charge or exhortation is, “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person” (v. 6). This parallels the second prayer request. They are to pray that Paul will have clarity in presenting the gospel, and they themselves are to speak graciously and clearly to unbelievers in order to win them.

The question often arises—we may express it verbally, or we may only think it in our minds—“Am I to evangelize? After all, I don’t have the gift of evangelism. I’m sort of timid. I don’t have that kind of personality.” Our text gives a very clear answer to the question. Every single Christian is to devote himself to prayer, to walk in wisdom before the outsider, and to seize opportunities to share the gospel, that is, to evangelize with grace and clarity. That doesn’t mean that every Christian has the gift of evangelism. It does mean that we all have a responsibility to our unbelieving neighbors, relatives, and fellow workers.

Be Alert for Evangelistic Opportunities

The Apostle wrote, “Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders [that is, unbelievers]” (v. 5). We are to think of our unbelieving contacts with wisdom. We are “to make the most” of our opportunities. We are to use our intelligence, or God-given wisdom, to keep us alert to evangelistic opportunities. The word “opportunity” has the idea of buying something up—jumping on a sale.

For example, if you were a car salesman man and someone walked on the lot, you would know exactly what this word means. You would think, “Here’s an opportunity to sell a car, and I need to make money to support my family.” You would seize that opportunity. If someone walked on the lot, and you said, “Oh my, there’s a good baseball game on now,” and you left the lot to watch it, you would have lost an opportunity. If you thought, “I just don’t feel like talking about cars today. I’m awfully tired, and I talk about cars all the time. This customer can figure it out. If he wants to buy a car, he can come find me. I’m going to go lie down in my office in the showroom.” No, you would never do that or you’d starve. Instead, you would seize the opportunity. You’d buy it up. You’d jump on it. That’s what he’s saying here. When an opportunity to share the gospel with an unbeliever arises, we are to seize it.

Campus Crusade for Christ tells us that every single person has as a minimum 75 people that he or she is in regular contact with. Some of us, because of our church contacts, may have hundreds of people that we are in contact with on a weekly basis. We all have contact with people at church, people at business, people in the neighborhood, people that serve you in different ways at the grocery store, the UPS man, the mailman, the gas station attendant, the doctor, etc. Most of us have at least 75 people in our little networks. Some of us have hundreds. In other words, my dear friends, you and I have opportunities! They’re all around us. Sometimes we are tripping over them, but we’re not looking; we are not being alert.

My younger brother was a sleepwalker when we were in our teens. On a number of occasions, when my dad and I were in the living room talking, my brother would walk through, and he was sound asleep. We would talk to him, but he would not respond—he was sleepwalking. The amazing thing is that he did not walk into one piece of furniture. Many of us are sleepwalkers. We walk right past people and we don’t even see them. They even come to our church meetings, sit next to us, say “Hello,” and tell us their names. We may mumble a response, but we actually ignore them. We are sleepwalking. We are not awake or alert, and the opportunities go right past us.

Every time we go into a restaurant, someone is being paid money to be nice to us—I cannot get over that! That’s an opportunity. All I have to do is be nice to them—be a little friendly and smile. It takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown. Just open a conversation. Give them your name and get their name. Joke with them a bit. It’s an opportunity. Over the past few years my wife Marilyn has spoken in a friendly, courteous way to the trash man who stops in front of our house every week. In the summer she would often bring a Coke out to him. As they spoke he confided that he had marital problems, and she got him into contact with one of our elders. Last year he was saved. Marilyn seized an opportunity. We walk right by such people. We don’t see them. We are sleepwalking spiritually. Paul says, when you’re with outsiders (unbelievers) open your eyes. Be wise toward them. Be intelligent towards them. They are people without the message of life.

Opportunities arise in our neighborhoods, and we don’t seize them. For example, every time we have a snowstorm, it’s an opportunity. Normally we see our neighbors briefly as they enter or leave their houses. But when it snows everyone comes out and spends time shoveling snow. We can shovel snow with them, or use our snow blowers to clear their walks. The Bible commands us to seize opportunities, and we either obey or disobey the command.

Evangelistic Committees

There are specific ways that you as a local congregation can seize opportunities. Nothing has helped my home assembly more in the past few years than forming an evangelistic committee. This committee meets at lunchtime once every six weeks, and its purpose is to think of creative ways to evangelize, inform the assembly about them, and to plan for them. The committee’s goals are to spread an atmosphere of evangelism in the church, identify all evangelistic efforts going on in the assembly, and identify people in the church who are interested in evangelism. The committee functions as a hub, center, or clearinghouse for everything evangelistic in the assembly—whether it be Sunday School classes, Vacation Bible School, Bible camp programs, etc. Let me encourage you, even if your initial efforts are small, to form such a committee. Without such a committee your efforts will be inconsistent and hit-or-miss.

Leaders and Evangelism

If the leaders in the church have no passion for evangelism, very little will happen. By “leaders” I, of course, mean the elders. But I also mean leaders on every level in the assembly—Sunday School leaders, small group leaders, youth ministry leaders, high school and college age leaders, etc. All the leaders must wake up to this subject and ask, “How does our particular ministry fit into the over-all evangelistic thrust of this church? Which of our activities, with just a little adjusting, could be evangelistic opportunities?” Since most of us do not ask this question, we let opportunities go by. So leaders have to become a part of this. In our assembly we have several elders on the evangelistic committee. We’re not on this committee to add any more work to our busy schedules, but to show the church that this is important. You can’t tell the church it’s important and then have no part in it. Key Sunday school leaders and our youth leader are also on that committee. As a result concern for evangelism is being spread by leaders throughout the church.

Elder Communication with the Church

Years ago we saw that leaders need to have time to communicate to the church. It’s so easy for the elders to be very busy eldering and yet not be communicating anything to the assembly. People start viewing the elders as “that back-room group” that opens the doors every week, prepares the elements for the Lord’s Supper, and picks the Sunday preachers. Some in the congregation think that this is all that elders do.

At Littleton Bible Chapel we determined to regularly communicate to the congregation as a body of elders. Every week after the Lord’s Supper we have our little time with the congregation. At that time the people hear from the elders, and the elders share their heartbeat and set before them their vision for the future. Some weeks we give a report; other weeks we have a time of prayer or interview a visiting missionary. It is our time to communicate. Another large elder-run church I know puts a report of the weekly elder meeting in the church bulletin. They tell the people what was discussed, and they include prayer requests for the elders. However it’s done, the elders must do a good job of communicating with the congregation. And if evangelism is something you’ve been neglecting, you’ve got to verbally communicate that to them.

So think of a time when your elders can communicate something of their work, as well as their direction, values, vision, and guidance for the assembly. As elders, do not think you’re communicating with the people because you’re talking among yourselves. The elders can be speaking to themselves and the people in the congregation really don’t have a clue what’s on their minds. In some churches they might not even know who the elders are. So communication is extremely important—the elders have to be verbalizing.

Fishponds

“Fishponds” is an expression that some have used for evangelistic opportunities. It is an important concept and one that has helped our assembly. A fisherman knows that he has to go where the fish are. He has to go to a fishpond if he wants the possibility of catching fish. There are no fish in his bathtub, so he doesn’t fish there. There are evangelistic “fishponds”—opportunities to win people to Christ that are right in front of us, but that we are not seizing.

Let me give some examples of “fishponds.” Easter is the biggest fishpond of the Christian calendar. People who have no thought of Christian things will come to church on Easter—it is the most highly attended Sunday of the year. This past year many were open to religious things because of the film, The Passion of the Christ. In any case, Easter is a fishpond, a wonderful opportunity to evangelize. Your church can either seize the opportunity or sleepwalk right by it. Sadly there are churches that use Easter morning for a service totally unrelated to the Cross and the resurrection.

To make the most of this opportunity you must not wait until the week before Easter. You must start planning for it right after Christmas and the New Year. Twenty years ago our assembly started an annual Easter breakfast to which the congregation was encouraged to invite guests. We have sought to make this a beautiful, positive event with a full breakfast (eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes). Our people have grown to love this event, and they bring friends, relatives, and neighbors. We speak to the congregation about how to reach out to new people. This year we prepared invitations for the Christians to give to friends they felt would come. The whole church gets mobilized for this event, and weeks ahead of time prayer groups are organized to pray about the Easter morning service. Every year we have many visitors. They have decided to go to church on Sunday, and they then decided to go where they would get a meal as well as a service. At such a service you will want to use you most gifted preacher to give an Easter message that is specially designed to communicate to unsaved people. You will also want to give special attention to your music program for this important day. Easter morning is our biggest annual evangelistic outreach as far as a church service is concerned. And the people want to be involved with something they can put their hand to—setting up, cooking, cleaning, greeting, etc.

A second “fishpond” is Christmas, another time of the year when people think about Christian things. All kinds of Christian music is being played on the radio. All of the groups in the assembly need to be alerted to make good use of Christmas. We all have a little niche in the church (a ladies group, a high school or college group, a small group fellowship). We need to ask, “How can we use Christmas to evangelize?”

Perhaps you could have a special party. As a family we’ve held neighborhood Christmas parties. Over the years every single one of our neighbors has attended, and they love it. We tell them ahead of time when the party is to be over, but many of them stay around and talk to one another. Most of these people are so busy that they never talk to one another during the year. At the Christmas party they can meet with their neighbors in a home. We have literature on one of the tables, and we invite them to our Christmas service.

Many people think it is nice to attend a religious service on Christmas Eve. Seize the opportunity with such people. Some time ago we rented a barn and had “Christmas Eve on the Farm.” We provided lots of food and brought in a special speaker to give an evangelistic Christmas message. People were all dressed in heavy coats and draped in blankets. Large bonfires were burning outside, and it was a wonderful “Christmas” atmosphere. This is only one of many things that can be done when people think creatively about “fishponds.” It doesn’t have to be a big thing—perhaps just a rented room in a restaurant with a guest speaker.

A month or more before Christmas we make Christmas tracts, Christmas cards, and Christmas books available to the congregation. We encourage them to send them to their friends and relatives. They’ve got to be in the mail a good month in advance, so in early November we begin telling people to send tracts and books to their relatives. Most people send some kind of Christmas cards. It’s a time of year to connect with your unsaved relatives or people you’ve known from the past. The church should be prepared, all geared up, by the end of November for these things.

Thanksgiving has proven to be a big “fishpond.” We have usually just some small refreshment and an evening of music. Earlier in the month we remind the congregation it is the start of the holiday season, and it’s a nice time to invite people to a Thanksgiving evening. I would suggest that you make such an event an evening of testimony. But if you don’t plan ahead, nothing is going to happen. You’re going to have holiday after holiday pass you right by and you’ll say, “Oh, we’ve missed another opportunity.” Well, the Bible says walk with wisdom. Seize opportunities.

The Fourth of July can be a “fishpond.” Our chapel has sponsored 4^th of July parties and picnics with all kinds of food and activities for the kids. Valentines Day can be a “fishpond”—invite friends and neighbors to a dinner with a special speaker who will speak on romance and recharging your marriage. There are many such fishponds that you can use to connect with the community. They’re opportunities looking you right in the face.

The key to this is planning ahead. It’s too late to be planning for the 4^th of July on July 1, but you can start planning on July 1 for some things coming up in the fall. Talk to each group at the church. Ask them, “How are you going to use your group for some evangelistic opportunity this fall—at Thanksgiving or Christmas?” Every single group in the assembly should be seizing these opportunities. But if you’re not preparing people early enough, they won’t get anything done. That’s why you need some kind of committee that has a calendar and that will start warning people that the next big fishpond is coming.

Be Prepared to Evangelize

Be Ready

The Apostle writes, “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt” (v. 6). He is speaking of our conversation with “outsiders,” that is, unbelievers. We are to seize opportunities, but once we have seized them, we must speak with clarity and we must season what we say. The ancient world didn’t have the delicious, tender meats that we have today—that we can preserve with tenderizers and refrigeration. The ancients would take meat and beat it to tenderize it, and they would salt it to preserve and flavor it. Paul is saying that our conversation with unbelievers is to be salted, that is, it is to be attractively packaged.

Paul tells his readers that they need to know how to respond to each individual unbeliever the way the Lord Jesus responded. Elsewhere Peter wrote, “But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Pet. 3:15). We are always to be ready to evangelize!

Be Prepared

One message on evangelism every three or four years will not do the job. We need to be constantly and consistently training and helping people to seize opportunities and to be comfortable with opportunities. This means that as an assembly you must have sermons on evangelism. But more than that is needed. You will need to have classes on evangelism. Even if only one or two people show up for the class, you need to have it. You need to get started at some place.

At our assembly we’ve done a number of things. A couple of times a year we have classes on personal evangelism during the 11 o’clock Sunday service. We take some people out of the preaching service for a two-week course. One of the elders will give them training on the content and methods of evangelism. If one of our missionaries is home and is an excellent evangelist, we will ask him to run a Sunday evening class on evangelism. These classes, incidentally, are not long prolonged courses—people today will not commit to that. Rather, they are short courses instructing Christians in the many methods and approaches to evangelism. We want to help people evangelize.

Be Simple

One of the most important things in training people is to help them to learn to be simple. I think many of our messages and presentations are far too complex. We have to remember to whom we’re speaking today. Modern people do not know anything about the Bible. Whenever I go to a restaurant and I meet a waitress or waiter who has a Bible name, I have an automatic opening to start talking to them. For example, the name Sarah is very popular today, and about once a month we’re waited on by a Sarah in a restaurant. Just this week we were waited on by a Sarah, and I said, “Sarah we want to have fun this evening at this restaurant. Are we going to have some fun?” She said, “Yes, you’re going to have fun.” I then said, “Do you know your name is in the Bible?” She said, “Yeah, I know that.” I then asked her, “What was the name of Sarah’s husband in the Bible?” As in ninety-nine percent of the cases, Sarah didn’t have a clue. However, she really took the question as a challenge. “It’s on the tip of my tongue,” she said. “Ichabod?” “Ichabod,” I said, “where did you ever get that?” She said, “Am I right?” I said, “No, his name was Abraham.” Then I asked her, “What was the name of Abraham and Sarah’s son?”

I told Sarah that she could ask for help from friends back in the kitchen. “Tell them I am giving you a test, and if you get the questions right I will double your tip.” She went back with our order and returned with an answer, “Isaac.” I asked her who knew the answer, and she replied that one of the girls knew quite a bit about the Bible. “All right,” I said, “What was the name of Isaac’s wife?” “Oh, that’s a hard one,” she said. She brought our order, and said, “Rebecca.” I said, “That’s good. You girls are doing well. Let’s keep this going. What are the name of Isaac and Rebecca’s children?” We went on the whole evening that way, and we had a lot of fun together and got other people back in the kitchen talking about this. Most people don’t have a clue about the Bible.

So, one of the most important things you can teach Christians—and this will help them in their witness—is that they have to be very simple. In witnessing, we cannot be like a dump truck and dump fifty Bible verses on non-Christian people. They won’t know what we’re talking about. Give the unbeliever one verse—a simple verse like John 3:16 or 1 Corinthians 15:3. “Christ died for our sins” is five words. Or use simple illustrations. For example, explain that the Cross is like a bridge spanning the chasm between sinful man and a holy God. The person who died on that Cross was both God and man and is a perfect bridge between God and man. Leave a simple seed in people’s mind.

So, “keep it simple, stupid,” remembering that you cannot keep it simple enough in today’s world. If we keep it simple we are less likely to be afraid. Just cover the essentials—we are sinners, Christ died for sinner, God forgives sinners on the basis of the Cross. We’re afraid because we actually think that we’ve got to answer everyone’s questions. No one is smart enough to do that. Encourage people to be simple, friendly, and non-argumentative, and that will help them immensely.

Be Creative

In being prepared, I believe the Lord wants us to be creative. Paul rented the school of Tyrannus, where he reasoned with unbelievers, both Jews and Greeks (Acts 19:9). That was like renting a university room and giving lectures where people would come and hear him. It was a very creative idea in the city of Ephesus. It might not have worked in another place, but it worked in the cosmopolitan city of Ephesus. Let me suggest a number of ideas that might work for you.

Neighborhood Hospitality

Many people will not go to a church today—they find it too too scary. They will, however, come to your home for a cookout. They’ll come over on a holiday. Your home is one of the most powerful evangelistic tools in your neighborhood. It’s a lighthouse in a dark place. Have some kind of plan to have your neighbors over for a meal at your dinner table or out in the back yard so you can, at least, meet them. And then you can start praying for them and be the neighborhood prayer warrior for all your neighbors.

Home Bible Studies

The Lord has greatly used home Bible studies—especially home Bible studies for women. It’s very significant, I believe, that one of the apostles’ primary methods of evangelism was using homes to spread the Word. Peter and the apostles taught and preached “from house to house” (Acts 5:42). Paul taught “from house to house” (Acts 20:20). A private home has a very natural atmosphere. It is informal, relaxed, and non-threatening. Home Bible studies have been one of the most powerful tools of evangelism in our assemblies.

Music Concerts

I recently watched an advertisement for contemporary Christian music CDs, and I thought, “What a terrific idea for evangelism.” We’re going to have a music concert this summer and try and use it for evangelism. Music is a wonderful tool for evangelism—especially with young people

Free Counseling

Counseling is a marvelous tool for evangelism—especially pre-marital or marital counseling. Unsaved people will frequently call our church and ask to rent our building for a wedding. We permit this if such couples will consent to a program of pre-marital counseling. Just a few weeks ago we married an unsaved couple at the chapel. For five months they were mentored by one of our assembly couples. For five months they opened up their hearts and talked about their lives. The newlyweds are not saved yet, but their mentoring couple gave them a special wedding gift—they are going to have a home Bible study with them on the Gospel of John. They young couple responded, “That’s neat, we’ve loved our time with you.” Marriage is a great way to enter peoples’ lives.

Incidentally, divorce counseling—helping people through a terrible marital tragedy—is another way to enter peoples’ lives evangelistically.

Funerals

Funerals are a tremendous opportunity to share the gospel. I do a lot of them—at least ten or twelve a year. We’ve had some funerals with literally hundreds of unsaved people sitting there for an hour and hearing the gospel. I did the funeral for one of our neighbors, a well-known businessman, and there were five hundred people in the audience. Ninety percent of the group were unsaved people. It’s good to think ahead about what you are going to do at funerals. Read up on this and develop some techniques. There’s a way to do it, and a way not to do it. People are serious at that moment and, strange to say, most of them love a good funeral.

Many preachers will yell and scream at the audience; that is inappropriate. We use the story of the deceased person’s life and we build about 20 minutes of the funeral service around that story. Beforehand we ask all the family members to write out characteristics of the person’s life and humorous events from his or her life. Focusing on the person’s life captures the audience’s attention, and you can easily transition into a presentation of the Gospel. It’s not necessary to mention whether the person was unsaved if that is the case. Go right from the person’s biography to the wonderful story of salvation. You may tell the audience that they have a wonderful opportunity to listen for 20 minutes to the truth about eternal life—something that they do not normally do in their busy lives. I have never had a person complain. Funerals are a terrific opportunity for evangelism—take as many of them as you can.

Raising Children

People today are concerned about their young children and their teens. They are willing to leave their homes and go somewhere if someone can give them help. There is a wonderful film series entitled, Shepherding a Child’s Heart, that can be shown in your church. Advertise it in your local newspaper, and invite people to come. Another way to get families to come is to offer a class on raising young children or raising teens. This will provide another opportunity to share the Gospel.

Youth Evangelism

Youth evangelism is one of our most important tools. Be willing to put money and manpower into any evangelistic outreach to youth—Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, and Bible camp. God has used Bible camps more than anything else we do to reach youth. I meet people all the time who were saved at camp. People are most open to the gospel when they are young. Statistics show that the older people get the more closed they become to the truth.

Sunday Morning Service

Whether we like it or not, Americans think that Sunday morning is churchy time. So why fight it? Take advantage of it. If you have a church that unsaved people come to, use the opportunity. You have time during the service to teach God’s people, and you also have time to proclaim the Gospel. It is important that the elders think long and hard about how to make your Sunday service one that is conducive to inviting unsaved friends, neighbors, and fellow workers. It should be a time that has your best preachers and quality music.

Special Evangelistic Series

Last summer we advertised a three night series of meetings on Pilgrim’s Progress. Many people have heard about Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, but they don’t know much about it. We showed film strips, and we had a speaker who narrated it and explained it. The program was aimed at young people, but parents were invited to come if they wished. At the end of the three days a lady from the neighborhood, whom we had never seen before, came up front and sat down. I thought she might want to talk about her children, but she said, “I want to get saved.” Someone did get saved as a result of this opportunity. This summer we’re having an evangelistic series using a video presentation of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In addition to the video, we shall use power point slides and a sermon. If one is creative, there are a wide variety of evangelistic series that the local assembly can sponsor.

Literature

Your assembly should have plenty of evangelistic resources. The local church should be a gospel church, and a gospel church must have gospel literature. Someone should be put in charge of selecting and replenishing a display of good, contemporary tracts. The assembly should also have available a wide variety of tapes and books. Recently a man asked for a book for his non-Christian mother in law, who is dying of cancer. You need to make the assembly aware of good books for unsaved people, and you need to have such books available.

Personal Relationships

The best evangelism is personal evangelism—person to person. Everyday life brings all of us into a network of natural contacts with people. And the apostle Paul tells us, “Conduct yourselves with wisdom” toward these people (Col. 4:5). We are to keep our eyes wide open, and we are to be alert for opportunities. Be alert especially for those seasons in a person’s life when he or she has tragedy or need. His time of suffering or grief, his financial problems, and his marital woes are all opportunities. At such a moment, you can say, “My church can help you in such and such a way.”

Keep your many personal contacts fresh and open. I grew up with a number of young men, who all went the camp together and to the local assembly together. Around the age of eighteen we all went our separate ways, and three of these very close friends walked away from the Lord. It is probable that, although they had made professions of faith as children, they were never truly converted. They married non-Christians and lived non-Christian lives. Yet we kept our friendship going because we had such a wonderful relationship growing up. We would do vacations together—they would visit us in Colorado, and we would visit them in New Jersey. For thirty years we maintained this connection, and in the last five years all three of those men have been saved. Isn’t it interesting how God uses tragedy (terminal cancer, lives ruined by sinful habits, shattered marriages) to awaken people to their rebellion and rejection of the Lord. And when they have been awakened, God can use a Christian friend to lead them to the Savior and a new life. Do not neglect your contacts with unsaved friends. Keep those relationships, for the Lord may use you to win them back to Himself.

English as a Second Language

With the tremendous influx of immigrants to America, teaching English has become a very popular. It can be an evangelistic opportunity. For the first time this year we are offering a course in “English as a Second Language” (ESL). We had no idea how it would work, but we advertised with a large sign in front of our church. Almost fifty non-Christians signed up for the course. Our building is near the public library, and a large number of Spanish speaking people from the area saw it and enrolled. A committee set up the program, purchased books and materials, and priced the course so that all could afford it. We now have another opportunity to evangelize in our own building.

Be Salt, But be Bold

Be Salt

Evangelist Bob Smith says, “Ninety percent of evangelism is love.” Evangelism involves loving people, wanting to reach out to them, being friendly and open to them, and serving them. We must not be argumentative in witnessing—conveying the impression that we have all the answers. We must not be obnoxious and proud, dominating every conversation. We must learn to relax—to simply give people the gospel and let the Holy Spirit unleash its power. If the Holy Spirit does not work in a person’s heart, all of our arguing is not going to help. Answer questions the best you can, and if you do not have an answer tell the person to whom you are speaking that you will try to find it.

Paul says, “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt” (Col. 4:6). When you know that you’re to be gracious and seasoned with salt, then you don’t get so frightened and think, “I’ve got to argue them into Heaven. I’ve got to show them I’m right. I’ve got to show them I’m orthodox and not in one of the cults.” It is an amazing thing when you seek to be gracious and winsome. You don’t get concerned when the unbeliever argues and calls you names. You can quietly respond, “I understand your perspective, but I want you to know my sins have been forgiven. I have a new hope because I know that God’s new life is in me.

Be Bold

The Apostle wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). It is a very serious matter to be ashamed of the gospel. The great apostle himself said, “And pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to men in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak” (Eph. 6:19–20). Frankly, we are not seeing people saved today because we are afraid, and we are not speaking up. Do you know why certain groups are seeing so many people saved—even if their gospel is somewhat defective? They are speaking up! No one gets saved if we don’t speak up.

Be Prayerful

Luke introduced one of Jesus parables with the explanation that the Lord was seeking to show his listeners, “that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart” (Luke 18:1). When it comes to evangelism many of us have lost heart. Many of us have never seen a person saved through our personal witness. People today ridicule the gospel, which is more and more out of sync with our modern culture. Biblical Christians are more and more offensive to the contemporary worldview. The end result is that we clam up and hide our Christianity. Many feel, “No one is going to believe me. They’re going to misunderstand what I say.” It’s normal to feel that way, but we must not neglect to pray about it. Our prayer should be, “Lord, make me bold. Help me to seize opportunities.” We should make a list of unsaved people to pray for. We should ask the Lord to give us an opportunity to speak to our neighbor across the street, our unsaved relatives, and the people with whom we work every day

May I challenge you to keep praying about this. Never give up praying about this matter. May we all be challenged by Paul’s words in Colossians 4:2–6. Remember that the Word of God is a transforming word. Its purpose is to transform and change us. If we don’t have change, it’s because we are not letting it do its work in our lives. May we end this study rechallenged—recharged with fresh vision, new boldness, new graciousness, and new excitement and love for the Lord and his work.

Conclusion

Pray for yourself personally and your local church that these words of the inspired apostle will have transforming power in your local church and in your personal life. Pray that the Lord will give our local assemblies unity in these matters. We can do almost nothing if we’re fighting. We’re paralyzed and the devil loves it. And the first casualty of fighting is the gospel. Who’d want a gospel where the saints can’t get along? Who’d want to bring people to a church like that? So ask the Lord to forgive us for fighting, pushing our petty agendas, and wanting our own way. Ask the Lord for greater skill in changing and moving people for His glory with patience and wisdom. With skill and humility and the power of the Holy Spirit we can see change. Let’s be change agents.

Choque de Culturas: Evangelismo en un Mundo Post-moderno (Primera Parte)

traducido por Reydezel Covarrubias

Enero 2005

El postmodernismo empezó oficialmente en 1960, pero como todos los jóvenes le ha tomado algún tiempo encontrar su lugar en el mundo. Las universidades son generalmente uno de los primeros lugares donde las nuevas ideas toman un lugar, mientras la cultura en general viene detrás. Y lo que viene detrás de la cultura general es la cultura Cristiana. Howard Hendricks, profesor en el seminario de Dallas, le dice a sus estudiantes, ??Deberían cobrar la entrada a este lugar de manera que los visitantes puedan ver como solía vivir la gente hace 50 años!?? Ciertamente parte de la razón por la que los cristianos son lentos para el cambio es nuestros valores conservadores. Pero yo difiero.

Cuando se trata de cultura, los cristianos toman una de las siguientes tres actitudes:

1. oposición: ??Todo dentro de la Iluminación esta equivocado,?? o ??todo en la cultura moderna está equivocado.?? Irónicamente, cuando nosotros estábamos anclados en el modernismo, pocos evangélicos allegados a el lo hacían enteramente. Pero ahora que somos post modernistas, muchos evangélicos están añorando los viejos tiempos, casi como si son perfectos, imitadores en masa de la imagen de Dios. Para muchos evangélicos, lo que hay en la sociedad hoy día está enteramente mal. Como ilustración, algunos años atrás escuche debatir entre si a unos teólogos-filosóficos en la Sociedad Teológica Evangélica. El asunto era el Postmodernismo. Algunos de los panelistas estaban argumentando que necesitamos ??convertir?? a una persona primero a la lógica de Aristóteles antes de que lo podamos convertir a Cristo! Parecía haber un terror genuino en que la cultura estaba cambiando, como si estos profesores estarían por perder su trabajo! Un observador astuto dentro de la multitud dijo, ??Tal vez ustedes solo necesitan aprender a amar un poquito más! No los va a matar el que cambien su paradigma un poquito.??

2. asimilación: Nosotros venimos a conformarnos a los valores culturales que nos circundan. Por ejemplo, la cultura pop es mas frecuentemente guiada por la emoción que por la razón. Por lo tanto, ??iglesias orientadas a la búsqueda?? continuamente enfrentan la tentación de poner mas atención a la relevancia que a la verdad, mientras que ésos en seminarios evangélicos generalmente todavía se empapan en modernismo. Pastor y púlpito están peleando estos días como nunca antes, y alguien tiene que ceder. Usualmente, este es el Pastor. Pero hay algunas iglesias donde el pastor ha entrenado a la gente para pensar como modernistas, para usar sus cerebros, para estudiar, para aprender. Desde luego, muchas de estas iglesias tienen poco cuidado para la sociedad, piensan poco en misiones, evangelismo, o asuntos sociales que deben ser atendidos por creyentes. En tales casos, el pastor ha asimilado a la iglesia a sus valores demasiado bien.

3. Compromiso: ¿Qué está bien en la sociedad, y qué está mal? Hay una gran dicotomía entre las iglesias y seminarios: Hay un constante enmudecimiento de las iglesias, mientras los seminarios están entrenando la vida de la mente. Pero, mientras aquellos en el seminario frecuentemente tiene una gran dificultad para ver el valor de la experiencia personal, aquellos en el púlpito frecuentemente tiene una gran dificultad para ver el valor del estudio bíblico. Ambos son necesarios. El graduado del seminario exitoso se dará cuenta que su entrenamiento cubre solamente una parte del ministerio cristiano. El o Ella deseará aprender de la experiencia de otros, de los ancianos en la iglesia, de personas sabias que tienen una gran habilidad en la vida. De hecho, El o Ella reconocerá que después de la graduación del seminario, el aprendizaje del ministerio apenas empieza. El graduado del seminario no exitoso asumirá una relación del tipo gnóstica con su congregación, igualando conocimiento con autoridad y espiritualidad. Muchos seminaristas tendrán la mentalidad de un ??papa local protestante??. Comprometidos es el mejor modelo que podemos seguir nosotros: Está lo bueno y lo malo en la sociedad. Necesitamos más discernimiento, que juicio o consentimiento pasivo.

Al final, yo creo, todas estas necesidades deben de relacionarse a la imagen de Dios. Nosotros reconocemos que la imagen de Dios no se destruyó con la Caída, solo fue distorsionada. Santiago 3:8-9 dice ??pero ningún hombre puede domar la lengua, que es un mal que no puede ser refrenado, y está llena de veneno mortal. Con ella bendecimos al Dios, y Padre, y con ella maldecimos a los hombres, los cuales son hechos a la semejanza de Dios?? (SEV-1999). Al menos, este texto nos dice que los humanos siguen siendo creados a la imagen de Dios. Aquella semejanza no acabo con Adán y Eva. Pero cualquiera creado a la imagen de Dios es un pecador, y esto significa que la imagen está distorsionada, torcida. En cada uno de nosotros hay una belleza y una bestia. En otras palabras está el bien y el mal en cada toda persona.

Como se relaciona esto con el post-modernismo? Si la imagen de Dios está distorsionada en cada individuo, es razonable que lo mismo sea verdad para un grupo de individuos. Hay entonces una belleza y una bestia en toda cultura, toda sociedad Para estar seguro, entre mas sostenemos valores bíblicos, mas revelamos la belleza en lugar de la bestia. Pero todas las culturas tiene elementos desagradables en si mismas, y todas tienen elementos hermosos.

Entonces ¿Cómo se conforma el post-modernismo? Se enfoque en emoción, en relativismo, y como un subsidiario, en relaciones, no está del todo mal. Hoy en día, Colegios, y hasta preparatorias, son mucho más orientadas al servicio y la comunidad que lo que fueron cuando yo estaba en la escuela. ¡Esto ciertamente es bueno! Pero hay una desesperanza, una incertidumbre, y un aislamiento que marca al postmodernismo. Sin una buena dosis de razón, lógica y verdad, este casi siempre deber ser el caso, por que una existencia resuelta ahora tiene, a los más, un horizonte cercano. La ironía es que el temor del aislamiento es lo que parece conducir la mayor parte del postmodernismo, aun esto es una batalla sin esperanza.

Pero el modernismo, con su indulgencia excesiva en la razón, tiende a perder de vista nuestra completa humanidad. Nosotros también tenemos emociones, y vivimos en comunidades. El modernismo produjo genios aislados y enanos emocionales. Entre los evangélicos, produjo ??Cristianos de cuello arriba????aquellos que eran creyentes solo del cuello hacia arriba. La erudición evangélica entonces tomó a sus homólogos liberales y ahora, finalmente, cuando los evangélicos pueden reclamar mucha respetabilidad en cuanto a su valor intelectual, el liberalismo ha avanzado. Relativismo y tolerancia son el objetivo de puntos de vista compitiendo. Como prueba, la Escuela de Divinidad de Harvard recientemente a abierto un lugar para una cátedra evangélica para ser llenada en un futuro cercano! Esto habría sido impensable hace treinta años.

Esto, me impacta, que vivimos en una encrucijada de culturas, nosotros debemos aprender a ser todas las cosas para todas las personas de manera que podamos ganar alguno para el Señor. Hay todavía grandes sectores de modernismo en nuestra cultura cambiante. Y estas personas no serán alcanzadas si en nuestro arsenal solo tenemos técnicas post-modernistas.

Cuando vemos la Escritura, Nosotros vemos que este tipo de adaptación es exactamente lo que Jesús uso, en Juan 3, El habló a Nicodemo, ??el maestro de Israel.?? El usó lógica, Escritura, y argumentos sutiles. El se dirigió a su orgullo intelectual (??tu debes nacer de nuevo??). En Juan 4, El se dirigió a una mujer en el pozo de agua. Aquí, El le habló de aislamiento (??Ve, llama a tu esposo y ven aquí??? ??yo no tengo esposo???) y su búsqueda de relaciones inapropiadas (??tu has tenido cinco maridos y el que tienes ahora no es tu marido??). Había un terrible aislamiento para esta mujer, aunque ella estuviera desesperada por tener relaciones sólidas permanentes.

Como en los días de Jesús, No encontraremos un traje a la medida de la cultura que nos rodea. Nosotros debemos adaptarnos y discernir. Pensamiento creativo nos ayudara a pelear con como conectarnos con la gente y alcanzar sus necesidades caídas sin comprometer el significado del Evangelio. ¡Mi Dios nos do la sabiduría y la pasión para alcanzar lo perdido!

En el segundo ensayo en este tópico, Pretendo dar un ejemplo que aprendí recientemente. Me conmovió mas aya de las palabras.

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My Preaching Process

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Bob is one of bible.org’s major contributors. We thought it would be instructive to gain some insight into how he prepares for and preaches messages every Sunday. Click on his name above for more details about him. The below information is a sort of “chronological outline” in that it is an overview of his process, in the general order that it happens.

Warning: I don’t fit the classic mold. Many of the most disciplined preachers I know have a very disciplined regimen. They give themselves a certain amount of time to study the text (in English, and possibly in the original text), and to read two or three commentaries. They give themselves a rather firm deadline, at which time they decide upon the interpretation of the text. The remaining time is spend on homiletics – putting the message together. At a fixed point in time, the message is done, a day or more ahead of Sunday. It may even be in manuscript form.

If this is you, God bless you brother. Often this method has tempted me, but I just can’t do it that way. So, I move on to the way I prepare to preach.

Selection of Text

Generally I am teaching a book of the Bible so selection of a text to preach is not a problem.

Preparation of a weekly Study Guide

(1 week in advance). This study guide is distributed to the congregation (and to interactive teachers) a week in advance, so that they can prepare for the coming message and interactive discussion sessions that follow the sermon.

Exploring the text.

This is the “input” side of preaching. Gathering as much information as possible.

Repeated readings of the text

(I often look at the original text, and read several translations). With certain difficult or technical texts I try to be able to paraphrase the passage in my own words.

Visualizing the text.

I realize that the word “visualize” is a kind of red herring, but especially when preaching a narrative text I try to put myself into the event, reading the text as though I were there. Sometimes I put myself in the sandals of various members of the audience, to think about how I would feel, what I might say, or ask.

Reading some selected commentaries.

Too many commentaries can be a waste of time, and a source of great frustration. They don’t reduce your interpretive options, they increase them. Worst of all, most commentaries are like wrecking yards – they disassemble the text into many tiny little pieces, but never put it back together. Much analysis, but little synthesis. When commentators are not preachers, their interests may lie in different places than shepherding. This is not a universal truth. The issue is not the presence of scholarship, but the absence of shepherding. I’ve never felt that I spent too much time in the Scriptures. I have regretted spending a disproportionate amount of time in the commentaries. I’ve come to value a few commentators highly, and thus I usually restrict myself to those who scholarship and shepherding sense I respect.

Reading parallel or related passages of Scripture.

As the years go by, I find that regular reading through the Bible brings texts to mind that are not in the cross references. Often it is Old or New Testament stories that make my best illustrations.

Making observations in the text.

In seminary, we began by making as many observations as possible – far more than we thought possible. As the years have passed, I realize that a few critical observations are worth far more than a large volume of incidental observations. I watch for repetitions (it may not always be the same word, but the same concept), for changes in tense, in number, in subject. When I’ve failed, it is often because I failed to make a critical observation.

Noting questions and problems.

This is a major element in my preparation. Often I am troubled by something that is said, not said, etc. I find these to be the source of deepened insight, when I can identify the answer to my question. For example, in preparing to teach on fasting I was studying Isaiah 58. The first 12 verses are clearly about fasting. Then, almost abruptly, the last two verses (13 and 14) the subject is the Sabbath. Why the Sabbath? Why here? And then it comes to me: “The Sabbath is a form of fasting.” Just as fasting is not just doing without food, but providing food for the hungry, so the Sabbath is not just a day of inactivity, but rather a day in which we set aside our pleasures, to pursue God as our highest pleasure. No wonder Jesus felt it was lawful to do good deeds on the Sabbath.

This is also where one’s view of Scripture is crucial. In preaching through the Gospel of Matthew I was troubled by the fact that Matthew’s chronology following the triumphal entry of our Lord contradicted Mark and Luke. Matthew seems to place the cleansing of the temple on the day of the triumphal entry; Mark and Luke have it the next day. As I look more closely, I learn that Matthew isn’t concerned about chronological sequence, but with logical proximity. He wants us to see the connection between the triumphal entry, the cleansing of the temple, and Jesus subsequent acts of authority in the temple. He doesn’t claim to present his material chronologically, but Mark does. The point I am trying to make is that my confidence in the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures causes me to dig deeper into apparent contradictions. Often it is here that I will see something very important to the argument of the passage.

Observing bad workmanship.

This will sound strange, but sometimes it is a bad job of preaching a particular text that really fires me up. The things that are said that don’t fit the text give me a better sense of what should fit the text. Sometimes it is a poor job of explaining the text in a commentary; at other times it is hearing a bad sermon on the radio or elsewhere. (Don’t think I haven’t motivated others to careful study by some bad sermons of my own.)

Interaction with others.

I am privileged to be involved in a church that has several doctoral students, lower level seminary students, a number of DTS graduates, and some very bright and thoughtful students who have no seminary training. These folks stimulate and challenge my thinking. Ideally this occurs before I preach the passage, but sometimes it is afterward. There have been times when I’ve had to correct myself the following week, based upon a valid criticism.

Formal Preaching Seminar -- Friday morning breakfast.

One formal time of interaction for me is in our weekly Friday Preaching Seminar breakfasts. I’ve done this now for nearly 30 years. I meet with 5-8 fellows on Friday mornings for breakfast. They may have some comments about my last sermon, or responses to the current message. Usually these men have read the text and have considered the prepared study guide. I share with them where I think I’m going on Sunday. They interact with criticism, points of emphasis, application – the works. They are not shy, and hopefully I am not thin skinned. Honestly, this is a very stimulating time for me. My sermon changes a great deal after breakfast on Friday (sometimes to the surprise of those who attended the breakfast). I cannot emphasize how vital a faithful critic can be to preaching. I would strongly advise every preacher to do something like this. One side benefit is that a number of excellent preachers have emerged from this group (and not all of them seminarians).

Informal conversations.

In addition to the formal interaction on Friday there are e-mail and phone conversations, along with responses from various folks after the message. Sometimes one of the men who was at the Friday breakfast will have some subsequent thoughts or observations.

Agonizing over the text.

As the week presses on (and as Sunday draws ever so near) I move from the casual and relaxed state of exploration and observation to the much more intense state of agony, of wrestling with the text. I can’t just stand up and make observations about the text – I must preach it, with a strong sense of conviction. This is the “labor pain” part of preaching that comes every week. This is the time when I wonder why I ever became a preacher. And no matter how many years I have preached, it hasn’t gotten any easier. In fact, I think it has become more difficult.

Meditation and prayer.

The things that trouble me (or just the dread fear that I’ll be preaching soon, and still don’t have a handle on the text) provide the fuel for prayer and meditation. Who better to ask about the interpretation and application of a text than the author?

Insight or Illumination.

By this point in time I have many pages of notes in my hands, and some things on the computer. The exploration stage accumulates many pieces of data. The agony stage is the desperate search to find a patter in the pieces. The insight stage is the moment that everything starts to come together. I don’t want to tell you how late in the process this can come. I have gone to bed early Sunday morning, knowing that “insight” had not yet come. Sometimes I may be shaving or in the shower, and suddenly the lights come on and the dots connect. I imagine that the elation is like the joy of delivering a baby, after hours of agonizing labor. In “labor” you wondered why you ever took this job. In the “insight” stage you wonder why they pay you to have such pleasure.

Here is my problem. Until I come to the “insight” phase, I can’t put a message together. And if I did, it would all change after insight comes. It is for this reason that my homiletics are not a model for all to follow, especially the faint of heart. I have literally torn up a message and scratched a few notes on a note pad, an hour or less before preaching.

Letting the text carry you to its interpretation and application.

Once the insight stage has come (if it has come) the ideas usually come thick and fast. I try to take notes and get as much of this down on paper as possible. This becomes the heart and soul of my sermon.

Illustrations.

I virtually never use canned illustrations. If they are any good, they’ve already been used too much. I try to use illustrations from my own experience and observations. One Sunday I needed an illustration of making excuses. I couldn’t think of one, so I asked for one in the middle of the message. One father popped up with this story: His son had a physical malady which required a restricted diet. The son always raided the refrigerator, and so the father forbade him to ever get into the refrigerator by himself. One night, the father saw a dim light go on in the kitchen – the light from inside the refrigerator. He got up and went into the kitchen just in time to see him standing before an open refrigerator, with his hand inside it. The father said, “Son, what are you doing in that refrigerator?” With hardly any hesitation the son replied, “I was just cooling my hand.” These are priceless, and they aren’t in any canned illustration file.

Application.

First of all I need to feel the heat of the text as it relates to my life. Then I need to seek to apply it to our world, our culture, our church, etc. One thing that I do is to ask myself how someone in my audience might abuse or misuse the text (just as the doctrine of God’s grace can be abused to excuse license – end of Romans 5 and chapter 6). I was teaching on the “sluggard” in Proverbs and I asked myself, “How will this message be misused?” It occurred to me that in my audience there were many “workaholics,” who would be sitting back in their chairs, patting themselves on the back. As I thought about it, I realized that the workaholic is a sluggard. The sluggard is not just a man who does nothing. A sluggard works hard to avoid what he really doesn’t want to do. Many workaholics use their work as a pretext for not going home, not dealing with disobedient children, etc.

Preaching.

Preaching the message is always a venture of faith. I never really know for sure whether or not this message will “clear the ground.” Sometimes you feel “the wind (the Spirit) under your wings”; sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it comes to life somewhere in the midst of the message. And often, my sense of the success of the message is not an accurate measure of its worth.

References to the Greek text in preaching.

I feel rather strongly on this point. Most of the references I hear to the “Original Text” are not that profitable. All too often there is a tendency to fall into the “root fallacy” (the mistaken assumption that the meaning in common use is the same as the root meaning of the word anyway.) What troubles me is that this elevates the preacher as the only expert who can study, interpret, and apply the Scriptures. The inference is left that the lowly pew-sitter is simply not qualified to study the Bible seriously. This discourages Bible study, rather than to encourage it. If I must deal with the original text, I try to do so in a way that encourages the audience to do likewise. I would say something like, “When you look this word up in your Strong’s Concordance, you will find that it is used. . . .” This way, the audience concludes, “This is something I could do, something I could see, if I went to the effort.”

Show folks how I reached the meaning of the text.

I think that the typical system of preaching veils the exegetical process of discerning the meaning of the text. This, too (like persistent references to the “original text”), tends to discourage folks from studying the Scriptures themselves. It is not my goal for folks to leave saying, “I never would have seen that. . . .” My goal is to show folks how I reached my conclusions, and for them to say, “Why didn’t I see that? It’s right there in the text. If I studied that way, I would have seen it too.” You either catch fish for others, or you can teach them how to fish. I prefer to show my audience how I got where I did. (And when my logic is flawed, they will see that, too.)

Attend an interactive teaching class, which discusses the sermon and the text I have just preached.

Post partums.

I almost never come away from preaching feeling that I’ve done a respectable job. My own preaching is humbling to me. I hate to hear myself on tape.

Second/additional thoughts.

There are many of these. I often get thoughts just before preaching, or even during the sermon. After I’ve preached, further thoughts come to mind. I try to write these down so that I can consider them further, and integrate them into the manuscript.

Manuscripting the message.

This is the final step. I virtually never have a completed manuscript before I preach, and if I do, it will change significantly before, during, and after preaching. It takes a good 8 to 10 hours to complete a message in print. Frankly, I’m not doing as well these days as I used to. I’ve got many other items on my plate, I guess.

The one beauty of a manuscript is that it forces you to think yourself clear. Flaws in logic are more apparent to me on paper than in a spoken sermon. And the printed message allows you to correct all the things you felt badly about after preaching the sermon.

Most Života (Bosnian tract)

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Jer je plata grijeha smrt, a milosni dar Božiji je život vječni u Kristu Isusu, Gospodinu našemu
Rimljanima 6.23 (u Bibliji)

Isus reče: … ko sluša moju riječ i vjeruje onome koji me posla, ima vječni život. On ne dolazi na sud, već je prešao iz smrti u život.
Ivan 5.24

… MOST ŽIVOTA

U početku bijaše Bog koji je sve stvorio pa i čovjeka (Post 1.27). Cilj mu je bilo zajedništvo sa čovjekom. Čovjek je uništio to zajedništvo okrenuvši se od Boga, svoga Stvoritelja. Na taj je način grijeh ušao u svijet kroz jednog čovjeka, a kroz grijeh smrt, koja je prešla na sve ljude. Svi su sagriješili, zbog toga postoji veliki ponor između nas i Boga.

PLATA je tvoja svakodnevna zarada. U ovom slučaju, zarada tvog grijeha je tvoja lična odvojenost od Boga.

GRIJEH je živjeti kao nezavisno biće, jer te Bog stvorio tako da budeš ovisan o njemu. “Ako tvrdimo da grijeha nemamo, sami sebe varamo, i u nama nema istine.” (I Ivan 1.8) Nisi grešan jer griješiš, već griješiš jer si grešan “…jer su svi sagriješili i lišeni su Božije slave” (Rim 3.23)

SMRT – Biblija govori o smrti na tri načina: tjelesna, duhovna i vječna smrt. Ti nisi mrtav tjelesno, ali duhovno jesi, jer si odvojen od Boga. Posljedica duhovne smrti je vječna smrt.

ALI … postoji “neko” koji ti omogućuje promjenu smjera u ŽIVOT VJEČNI!

DAR je suprotno od plate, “nešto” što je “neko” platio za tebe.

BOG, naš Nebeski Otac, stvorio nas je da bismo u ljubavi imali zajedništvo s njime. Bog, koji je svet, ne podnosi tvoj izbor grijeha umjesto svetosti. Grijeh mora biti plaćen. Uprkos svemu, On te besplatno daruje!

KROZ VJERU U ...

ISUS KRISTA. On je Sin Božiji, koji je umro za tvoje grijehe, bio pokopan i jer je On Bog, uskrsnuo treći dan kako bi ti mogao imati ŽIVOT VJEČNI.

Ti, koji si (bio) daleko, sada putem križa Isusa Krista imaš most iznad dubokog ponora. Želiš li duhovno živjeti? Dođi u zajedništvo s Bogom, priznaj svoj grijeh i upravo sada pozovi Isusa Krista za svog Spasitelja i Gospoda. Ako si to prihvatio vjerom prešao si iz smrti u ŽIVOT (Ivan 5.24).

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Beginnings

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Introduction to an Exegetical and Patristic Examination of Matthew 16:18

Setting the Stage: A Brief Overview of Matt 16:1-17

The Problem of Matt 16:18

Thesis Trajectory

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Evangelize or Fossilize

Every Christian is to Be Involved

Be Alert for Evangelistic Opportunities

Evangelistic Committees

Leaders and Evangelism

Elder Communication with the Church

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Be Prepared to Evangelize

Be Ready

Be Prepared

Be Simple

Be Creative

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Raising Children

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Be Salt, But be Bold

Be Salt

Be Bold

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Choque de Culturas: Evangelismo en un Mundo Post-moderno (Primera Parte)

Sermon Illustrations

Dictionaries

My Preaching Process

Selection of Text

Preparation of a weekly Study Guide

Exploring the text.

Repeated readings of the text

Visualizing the text.

Reading some selected commentaries.

Reading parallel or related passages of Scripture.

Making observations in the text.

Noting questions and problems.

Observing bad workmanship.

Interaction with others.

Formal Preaching Seminar -- Friday morning breakfast.

Informal conversations.

Agonizing over the text.

Meditation and prayer.

Insight or Illumination.

Letting the text carry you to its interpretation and application.

Illustrations.

Application.

Preaching.

References to the Greek text in preaching.

Show folks how I reached the meaning of the text.

Post partums.

Second/additional thoughts.

Manuscripting the message.