The Spoken Word?

Some people may wonder why we at First Baptist Church commit almost half of the public worship service to the individual proclamation of the Word of God? Certain Evangelicals have suggested that preaching itself is outdated and should be replaced by more modern alternatives. Dr. R. Albert Mohler was recently asked the following question: “Must the sermon be a monologue? If not, should it be?”

Dr. Mohler’s response to this question is very insightful. “The very shape of this question is interesting. In the first place, I would not consider the public proclamation of God’s Word to be best characterized as monologue. It is one voice speaking, but this voice is not speaking on behalf of himself, but as the one charged with proclaiming and teaching the Word of God. At the same time, there does not seem to be a biblical warrant for a more dialogical form of preaching. If anything, the biblical model appears to assign the preaching responsibility to an individual who dares to speak on behalf of God by presenting and applying God’s Word.

I think of a text like Nehemiah 8:1-8. In that setting, Ezra and his colleagues "read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood their reading." Earlier in this text, we are told that "the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law." Those preaching spoke with authority. At the same time, it would not be appropriate to suggest that these hearers were passive. They were active recipients of the preached Word. They were "attentive."

In the same way, a church congregation is not to sit passively in the pew merely observing the preaching of the Word. To the contrary, the congregation should be actively involved in the disciplines of hearing, receiving, and responding to God’s Word as it’s preached by the one who is invested with those responsibilities and gifts.

A similar approach is evident in the New Testament. When Paul instructs Timothy about his preaching responsibilities, nothing in the text suggests that Timothy will be involved in a dialectical enterprise with the congregation. Instead, Paul charges Timothy with the sacred and solemn responsibility to preach the Word "in season and out of season." If anything, he warns Timothy against taking the response of his hearers into too much consideration. This can hardly be described as a dialogue.

As I see it, the push for a more dialogical form of preaching is a redefinition of preaching as described in the Scriptures. This shift seems to go hand-in-hand with larger cultural movements against the idea of teaching authority and the very idea of an authoritative Word. The last thing modern evangelicalism needs is the substitution of congregational "dialogue" for biblical preaching. This plays into all of our modern temptations and, in the end, threatens to remove the authoritative Word from our midst.”

This March we celebrate 34 years of faithful Bible exposition from Pastor Joe Flatt. As we thank God for his faithfulness we must constantly ask ourselves am I an active or a passive listener when it comes to the Word of God? James 1:22 reminds us, But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.