Session 5 — Al Mohler

Preaching is central to the church and the gospel.  Preaching is the means by which God calls people into His kingdom and into the character of His Son.  By the preaching of God’s Word we are preparing people for eternity.

Churches are measured by preaching.  Where there is no preaching, there is no church.

He is not silent.  And He has called men not to be silent but to preach.  The essence of preaching is reading and explaining the Word of God and trusting God to accomplish His purpose in that preaching.  There is no one qualified to stand in the pulpit and do this job.

Even as our salvation is to the grace of God alone, so also is the preacher.

We read the text.
We explain the text.
And then we repeat.

As we look at pulpits around the world, something is missing — authority.  There is a tentativeness about so much proclamation.  A hesitancy and a trigger that is not pulled.  A point that is not made.

Matthew 7:28-29 — the one thing missing is the one thing most necessary.  Some people think that the thing missing is a good thing.

He found a book recently — Preaching in the Round — the essence of preaching is to raise questions instead of answering them.  In many pulpits, we dare not preach with authority because so many simply will not accept it.

The crowds were astonished at the words of Christ because He spoke with authority and not as their Scribes.  The one thing the crowds heard in the Sermon on the Mount that they had never heard before was authority.

When Jesus said, You have heard it said…but I say to you He does not dilute the force of Scripture, He intensifies it.  Jesus turns the world upside down of those who hear and read this sermon.  The crowd was astonished.

We will understand something of Jesus’ authority when we understand the scribes lack of authority.  They worked by a process of citation — explaining the text by showing a way around the text so as to diminish its meaning by quoting the many various scholars and interpretations of other rabbis…

The could take the Bible and its plain meaning would be lost in all their thousands of words.  When the crowds heard Jesus, they immediately understood what they did not receive from the scribes.  We too have our spinners of elacticity.  People who are not dogmatic about the text.

Those who are dying and know they are dying are looking for the true Word of life.

The congregation better have an idea that you know what you’re doing.  Don’t come out of the study until you know what the text means — you have nothing to say until you know what that text means!

What’s at stake here?  The word authority is rooted in the word author — the anti-authoritarian preacher is one who has denied the author of that Word.

Look up the other gospel references to Jesus’ preaching in authority — e.g., Mk. 6:2.  When you are teaching and preaching the Word of God, the natural question is going to be, “Where does He get this?”  The only God-glorifying answer is, “From the Word of God.”  They didn’t say of Jesus, “His sermons are so religious.”  His sermons were life and death.

When Jesus taught, He taught as one having inherent authority, as One who had received the authority of the Father — when He spoke, He spoke as God.  Only He can define the written Word.  He spoke the very words of God. No wonder the crowd heard Him as One having authority.

How did this work in the ministry of Jesus?  Cf. Mt. 7:24, 26 — these words of Mine…

Here Jesus draws particular attention to His authority — these words of Mine.  Jesus and Jesus alone could say this.  Jesus can say that, but not one of us can.

The preacher’s authority is a different kind of authority, but it is a very real authority.  We are given the Word to preach — it has been entrusted to us.  We do say “listen and live…” but these are God’s words and not our words.

The one thing missing in most pulpits is the one thing most important — the Word of God.  This is life and death.  It is bread to those who are hungry.

Our authority is a delegated authority.  God equips those who are incompetent, so that He gets the glory and we do not.  We have no inherent authority — it is assigned to us who are earthen vessels who are chosen for our earthiness.  It is a call, but it is a call of grace.  And we shall succeed by God’s grace and be effective for God’s glory, or we will crash and burn and take many with us.  It’s that important.