Pew Views: How Right Expectations Help Us Find Sunday Graces”

Nick Robison

A few months ago, my wife and I went to watch a performance of the Broadway musical Les Misérables at the Orpheum Theater here in Memphis. Just by looking at me, you wouldn’t think I was a lover of musicals, and although looks can be deceiving, this time they are not. Musicals are not exactly “my thing,” but they are certainly my wife’s thing. So, in my quest to keep my wife from finding out that I am actually the lucky one, I bought us a couple of tickets and a babysitter, and away we went.

Though I can’t say I was excited to go, I can’t say I was dreading it either. I had seen the 1998 movie starring Liam Neeson and thought it was quite good. The music didn’t scare me much either. I grew up watching those classic Disney animations where the characters can hardly walk past a bird without singing about it. I figured I was prepared for what awaited me. I figured wrong.

The play opened with a rousing number about a life of imprisonment aboard a ship—at least I think that is what it was about. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but I had a rough idea of the main point. Then, something happened that I did not expect: they did not stop singing. It just kept going and going. They sang about everything. There was even one scene where a guy sang what was on a restaurant menu—at least I think that’s what he was singing about. Like I said, I couldn’t understand them.

Is it my fault that I didn’t know how musicals work? Maybe, though I think Walt Disney carries some of the blame. But now that I know what to expect, the next time I have to remind my wife how lucky she got when she married me, I will be buying a program, the theater version of closed captioning.

I wonder if we know what to expect when sitting under the preaching of the Word of God. A sermon is quite different from a lecture. There are similarities, of course. Hopefully, both lectures and sermons will teach the listener something. It is as my childhood pastor, Buck Mosal, once told me, “Good preaching will always teach, and good teaching will always preach.” But the posture of a sermon listener must be different from the lecture listener. When listening to a lecture, one’s head is down, writing and absorbing as much knowledge as possible. But the one who is listening to a sermon, though his head might be bowed in prayerful contemplation or even jotting down a note or two, his mind and his heart are lifted up at the “audible sight” of seeing Christ in his crucified glory.

This concept of the “audible sight” of the cross seen in preaching comes from Paul’s declaring to the Galatians that, “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” (Gal. 3:1) John Calvin rightly comments that the Greek word translated by the ESV as “portrayed” carries with it the idea of a picture being “painted.” This is of course not an argument for introducing images into our worship, but it is instead a word picture showing us the liveliness that was customary in apostolic preaching.

But how can we as hearers of the Word see what is portrayed or painted in the preaching of the Word? There is of course no hope of giving an exhaustive answer to this question in such a short space, but as I have been meditating on this question for the past few weeks, here are a couple of expectations that I have found to be particularly helpful:

Expect That the Word of God Will Work

The Bible is filled with references to its power to perform some work. The heavens, earth, and all that fill them were created and upheld by the power of the Word (Gen. 1; Heb. 1:3). God’s Word is not spoken or written in vain, but it goes out from Him and accomplishes all that it sets out to do (Isa. 55:11). For Christians, we have seen the special power of the Word, as it has worked salvation in our hearts.

Also, it is not as if the proclamation of God’s Word was only necessary and sufficient for our initial coming to faith. It is required for all of our Christian life, which is to be lived by faith in the Son of God who gave Himself for us (Gal. 2:20). William Ames writes, “Preaching is the ordinance of God, sanctified for the begetting of faith, for the opening of understanding, for the drawing of the will and affections to Christ.”1

However, contrary to popular belief, salvation is more than just a warm fuzzy feeling. Salvation is a mingling of the sweetness of mercy and the sting of conviction. Hebrews 4:12 states, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Just as pain comes when the flesh is pierced by a steel sword, so the soul of man hurts when it is pierced by the sword of the Spirit.

Hearers of the Word should not be surprised when they find it piercing their hearts. That is how it normally operates. It is through the Word, particularly the Word of the law, that we are made intellectually aware of our sin and affectionately aware of sin’s effects. This means when the Word of God is rightly divided and understood, it will not merely give us an awareness of sins generally, but will give us an awareness of sins particularly. When the Spirit powerfully attends the Christian’s hearing of the Word, sin will cease to be an ethical and moral concept written on stone, and instead will become a filthy, seeping wound of the heart, lanced by the audible two- edged sword.

If we are not prepared to be cut, then we will do what anyone does when they are surprised by pain; we will recoil from its source. We will flee the Word, and what a tragic shame this would be, because it is also the Word of God that heals our wounds. To paraphrase John Bunyan, the God who would show the sinner his shame and the damnation he deserves is the same God who shows the sinner His own Son and the mercy and pardon that is found in the grace of His wounds. It is the revelation of this God who both cuts and mends that will cause a man’s heart to break and to become seriously engaged in all matters that pertain to salvation.2

If the physician’s needle catches us by surprise, we might recoil from it before we receive its healing medicine. So it is with the gash and the grace of the Word of God. But if we are prepared to be cut by its convictions, we will persevere to be healed by its mercies.

Expect That the Word of God Will Work Through a Weak Vessel

There is a difference between not knowing what to expect and expecting the wrong thing. All hearers of the Word bring their own expectations into the pew. Some, like myself, came to love the preaching of the Word through the sermons of the giants of the modern pulpit—men such as John Piper, Ligon Duncan, Derek Thomas, and Sinclair Ferguson. Others among us came to love the Word through the preaching of our local pastor. Men whose names have never graced the Kentucky Convention Center marquee, but who nonetheless worked faithfully and tirelessly toward our conversion, assurance, and sanctification.

But now the man standing in the pulpit before you on the Lord’s Day is a different man altogether. He is not as eloquent or as passionate as those conference speakers. Your former pastor had a particular style of preaching which you became accustomed to over the decades of his ministry, but this new guy is different, and you are having a hard time adjusting.

To make matters even more frustrating for the congregation, ministers have a hard time living up to the standards that they have set for their hearers themselves. He hits two or three home runs in a row, and then he lays down a bunch of bunts.

How can we be edified and encouraged by preachers who do not always live up to our expectations? A few suggestions:

First, do not trust in your minister’s ability, but trust in the God who called him. If God wanted John Piper to be your minister today, or if He wanted your former minister to have remained, they would certainly be there. But they are not. The minister who God wanted to lead you through the green pastures of His Word is the leaky vessel standing there before you on the Lord’s Day. His being there is not a mistake. It is the providence of your loving heavenly Father, who works all things according to the kind and benevolent intentions of His will. Trust in God. He is faithful.

Second, remember that your minister is a weak vessel laboring under a heavy load. Richard Baxter, a man who is not known for making light of the minister’s work, writes this command to pastors concerning the eternal significance of their call, “In the name of God, brethren, labor to awaken your hearts before you come, and when you are in the work, that you may be fit to awaken the hearts of sinners. Remember, they must be awakened or damned. And a sleepy preacher will hardly awaken them... Speak to your people as to men that must be awakened either here or in hell.”3 That is a heavy load to bear, and because of it, any minister I have ever met who was worth his salt was desperate to cling to Christ for His grace. One of those precious graces that pastors cling to are the prayers of their congregation. So, before complaining or casting blame upon your minister, even if it is well-deserved, pray for him. Pray for him fervently. He is a guide on a narrow road, beset by thieves and devils that cannot be wounded with the weapons of the flesh. He needs your prayers as much as he needs your patience.

Lastly, I want to leave you with the words of my mentor Joe Steele. I came to his office one day feeling dejected after having preached a sermon that I did not feel was up to snuff. I cannot remember if he was quoting someone or if he came up with this himself (he was immensely quotable), but he said to me, “Nick, a mature Christian is one who is easily edified.” What a blessing it was to hear that sitting under my blithering sermon was not a room full of homiletic nitpickers, but rather Christians full of grace and able to pick good fruit even from a sick tree. Through your minister, Christ is feeding you the sweet fruit of His gospel. And even though it might seem as if your minister is hiding it in the weeds, it is certainly there. Please, for your own soul’s sake, do not forsake it, and pray that you may find it.

1 William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, trans. and ed. John D. Eusden (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1968), 194.

2 See John Bunyan, The Acceptable Sacrifice, in The Works of John Bunyan, ed. George Offer (1854; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1991) 1:719

3 Quoted in Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 685.