9-3 The Power Of Preaching

Paul was encouraged to stay in Corinth and preach because the Lord had much people in the city (Acts 18:9,10). Because of the potential, because God was in a sense relying on him, Paul stuck it out. Not only our salvation but that of others can be limited by our exercise of freewill. If others' salvation is not dependent upon our preaching, then there is no meaning to the very concept of preaching. This is true to the extent that a watchman can occasion the death of those he could warn, if he doesn’t do it. And their blood [for they will die] will be required at his hand (Ez. 33:8,13). The wicked will only turn from their ways if the watchmen warns them- and Ez. 33 shows clearly enough that the watchman can be lazy to fulfil his commission, with the result that some will die eternally who need not have done so. It’s not that another watchman is raised up to do the job- it is his responsibility, which he can discharge or not. God's word has been delegated to us; to not speak it forth is therefore in a sense to diminish His word. Hence Jeremiah is told to "keep not back a word" of all God's words (Jer. 26:2 AV; RV: "Diminish not a word"). 

Paul tells Timothy to pray for the Government to allow him to continue preaching because God “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:1-4). There is here the suggestion that Timothy’s prayers would enable more men to come to the knowledge of the Truth, and thereby fulfil God’s intention. But that intention and will of God had been made dependent on the prayers and preaching of the likes of Timothy. God’s “will” is that all will be saved; yet not all will be. His will is that not one of the little ones perish (Mt. 18:14); but we can offend the little ones, so that they do perish. His intention is that the church reveals His wisdom to this world (Eph. 3:10); but it doesn’t always do so. None can resist His will; and yet His will is not necessarily what He does, in that His will does not force men and women into obedience or compliance. Further, God's intention in giving His Son was that the world might be saved (Jn. 3:17). Why, then, the masses of humanity who never heard the name of Jesus? My comment is that it was potentially possible for the whole world to hear, it was God's wish and intention; but it was the dysfunction of His church, and His refusal to intervene to force us another way, His commitment to honouring our freewill, which left those masses without the saving knowledge of Jesus. And the tragedy continues to this day.

The classic verse is Rom. 10:14: “How shall they hear without a preacher?”  It’s impossible to hear without a preacher. Of course, God could beam the message into men some other way. But normally He chooses to work through human preachers. The preachers in the parable of the great supper are bidden " Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled" (Luke 14:28). The house of God's Kingdom is filled with people as a result of enthusiastic preaching. Paul so spoke that men believed (Acts 14:1). Presentation is important. Yet, his speech was “rude…contemptible…not with wisdom of speech” (2 Cor. 10:10; 11:6; 1 Cor. 1:17AVmg.). Yet it was because Paul so spoke that men believed.  He spoke God’s Truth in his own words, with no pretensions, with no attention to a smooth presentation; and the more real, the more credible. Because he spoke things as they are, right between the eyes, without posing as anyone apart from the real, human guy Paul…therefore men believed. He came over as credible and convinced, and he inspired others to this end. Thus Paul told Titus to affirm the faithful sayings “confidently, to the end that they which have believed…may maintain good works” (Tit. 3:8 RV). The congregations’ spirituality was related to the confidence of their pastor’s presentation. Those “good works”, as ours, have been “afore prepared” in the Father’s plan for us to perform (Eph. 2:10); but we have to be inspired to live up to the potential which He has prepared for us. Num. 14:20 records how the Father forgave Israel according to Moses’ word. And in just as real a sense, He has placed the reconciliation of this world in the hands of our ministry.

Paul preached in Ephesus from 11a.m. to 4 p.m. (Acts 19:9 Western text)- the siesta period. Whilst working with his own hands to support himself, he somehow persuaded men and women to break their usual sleep pattern to come and hear him. F.F. Bruce has commented that more Ephesians were awake at 1a.m. than 1 p.m ⁽⁷⁾. He preached, and so the Corinthians believed (1 Cor. 15:11). “Our preaching” and “your faith” are paralleled in 1 Cor. 15:14. He called the Galatians to the Gospel by his preaching, in response to how God had called him (Gal. 1:6 cp. 15). Philemon owed his salvation to Paul’s preaching, and was therefore eternally obligated to him (Philemon 19). We too can be a tree of life to those with whom we live; we can win their souls for the Kingdom (Prov. 11:30). The Thessalonians would be accepted in the final glory of judgment day simply “because our testimony among you was believed” (2 Thess. 1:10). Eve, taken out of the wounded side of the first man, was a type of the ecclesia; and her name means ‘source of life’, in anticipation of how the church would bring life to the world.

The Pharisees had the “key of knowledge” that enabled men to reach the Kingdom (Lk. 11:52); but they took it away from men, and thus stopped them entering (Mt. 23:13). Likewise if the elders / judges of Israel had been wise, the entire people would have entered the land (Dt. 16:20). The whole of Israel would’ve stayed in the wilderness and not entered the Kingdom / land if Gad and Reuben hadn’t initially gone over Jordan (Num. 32:15). Wrath would come upon all Israel if the Levites weren’t encamped around the tabernacle (Num. 1:53). The curses of Dt. 28:4,18 involved cursing coming upon descendants of sinful people; perhaps in that their fathers influenced them to do wrong. Thus the salvation of men can be affected by a third party not preaching to them or not teaching them correct doctrine. Herein lies the crying need to ‘defend the Faith’. Speaking of how he had suffered to defend purity of understanding of the Gospel, Paul reflected: “Therefore I endure all things for the elect’s sake, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ” (2 Tim. 2:10). Their salvation was dependent upon his enduring. And therefore he endured for their sakes. More positively, those  keys of knowledge were given to Peter, and through his preaching they opened up the closed door of salvation to many who would not otherwise have entered (Mt. 16:19). Losing bonds is the language of bringing salvation and forgiveness (Is. 51:14; 58:6; Mt. 13:30; 18:27; 22:13; Lk. 13:16). And those keys are likewise in our hands too. If we introduce the Gospel of salvation to a man, the door is opened to him; if we don’t, it remains closed for him. In this sense what we bind and loose is automatically confirmed by God, in that He has delegated to us the preaching of entrance into His Kingdom ⁽⁸⁾.  Because the salvation of others is in our hands, both in and outside of the ecclesia, we are held responsible for their eternal loss if we do not minister to them. “Rescue those being led away to death [if we don’t, then they will die]...if you say, “But we knew nothing about this”, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life [as you keep your brother’s life] know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done? [at judgment day]” (Prov. 14:11,12 NIV).

"(God’s) intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known" (Eph. 3:10). The church is the body of Christ; He is manifest only through us. We are Him, in that sense. Our bodies are members of His body (1 Cor. 6:15). All that we do, in word and deed, is in the Name of the Lord Jesus- i.e. as representing Him whose Name we called upon ourselves in baptism (Col. 3:17). We are the words of His epistle to both the world and the brotherhood; He has no other face or legs or arms than us (2 Cor. 3:3). We can thereby limit Him. According to John 17, our unity will convert the world. The Gospel is a message of reconciliation with God which overflows into reconciliation between each other, according to Ephesians. The church is a foretaste, an advertisement, of what the future Kingdom will be like (James 1:18). The way Simon the Zealot and Matthew the pro-Roman tax collector were all welded together within the 12 would have been an arresting display of unity in the Gospel, which cannot fail to have impressed first century Palestine. And it would have been so in the Antioch ecclesia too- the elders included Paul, the fiery ex-Orthodox rabbi; Manaen, one of the intimates of the Herod family; Barnabus, a Cypriot Levite who had owned land there to get round the Law’s demands; Simeon the black man; Lucius from  Cyrene, also in Africa. No wonder it was from this ecclesia that the Gospel really spread outwards. When the early church showed that uncanny unity between Jew and Gentile, slave and master, they converted the world. And so would and could and do we. And yet when and where we are divided, the power of conversion is lost. This is why the Philippians were told to live lives appropriate to the Gospel they preached, and to ‘contend as one man’ for the Gospel (Phil. 1:27,30). Their united witness, according to John 17, would convert the world. But if they were disunited, that great salvation would not be shared as it could potentially be.

Converts are described as being added to the church, and yet also added to Christ; the play on ideas seems deliberate (Acts 2:41,47 cp. 5:13,14; 11:24). He assures us that if we come to Him, we will find “rest” (Mt. 10:28); but the same word is only used elsewhere about the  rest / comfort which our brethren give us (1 Cor. 16:18; 2 Cor. 7:13; Philemon 7,20). Our trials are specially designed so that we may give comfort to others who suffer in essence the same experiences- and this is how “our comfort aboundeth through Christ” (2 Cor. 1:4,5 RV). He is the comforter insofar as His brethren minister that comfort which He potentially enables them to minister. As we partake in the Lord’s sufferings, so we partake of the comfort which is in Him- but which is ministered through the loving care of those in Him (2 Cor. 1:7). This is why any attitude of insularity is totally impossible for the true brother or sister in Christ. Behind every human face, there is a tragedy behind the brave façade which is put up. Almost everybody has been bruised by life, and is feeling the pressure of temptation or defeat, depression, loneliness or despair. It’s true that some need to be disturbed from their complacency, but the vast majority need above all else to be given by us the comfort of God’s love. People, all people (not just our brethren) are desperate for real comfort and compassion. And it is up to us to mediate it to them.

John the Baptist's ministry was so that the 'crooked' nation of Israel should be 'made straight' and ready to accept Jesus as Messiah (Lk. 3:5). God's enabling power was present so that this might have happened; but the same word is used in Acts 2:40 and Phil. 2:15 to describe Israel as still being a 'crooked' nation. John's preaching, like ours, was potentially able to bring about the conversion of an entire nation. So instead of being discouraged by the lack of response to our witness, let's remember the enormous potential power which there is behind it. Every word, witness of any kind, tract left lying on a seat... has such huge potential conversion power lodged within it, a power from God Himself.

Notes

(7) F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 132.

(8) This idea of binding and loosing recurs in Mt. 18:18, in the context of warning us not to be too hasty to cast a brother out of the ecclesia. It doesn’t mean that any ecclesial decision has God’s automatic sanction. But because salvation is related to remaining in the Christ body, the Lord may be saying: ‘By unnecessarily expelling someone from association with My people, you are endangering their salvation. I won’t necessarily come to their rescue; I have delegated the keeping of that brother to you. You are your brother’s keeper. If you throw them out, they will probably lose their salvation. What you do on earth in these decisions is not necessarily overridden by Heaven. The eternal saving of a man is delegated to His brethren, and therefore you also have the possibility of causing him to stumble from salvation’. The implication of this is surely that we should only cast out of the ecclesia those who openly and beyond doubt have placed themselves outside of God’s salvation. And the Lord surely meant us to compare this against His command not to judge. He is surely saying in this passage: ‘You can argue it out with your brother, and eventually get the ecclesia to disfellowship him. But by this you’ll be saying that he is out of the way of salvation, and what you do may well drive him to condemnation; for it’s a hard and unlikely way to the Kingdom without your brethren. And you know that you mustn’t condemn him. So better just forgive him, 490 times / day, unconditionally’. Paul takes this idea seriously when he says that if he forgives anybody, he does it “in the person of Christ”, and so, by extension, the church at Corinth did too, seeing they were partakers in that same one body of His (2 Cor. 2:10).