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4 Convictions You Should Never Preach Without
Four Convictions Without Which You Ought Not to Preach
When I was teaching at a seminary, which I did for fifteen years, I regularly told my students that they shouldn’t be allowed to graduate if they didn’t have four convictions about Scripture. I would say something very similar to those who are preaching or aspiring to preach. If these convictions about Scripture are not in place and operating in your hearts, I do not think you should be allowed to preach. But if these convictions are in place and operating, they are more than convictions. They are profoundly motivating reasons to preach expositionally and to persevere in doing so.
1. The God-Breathedness of Scripture
In 2 Timothy 3:16, Paul tells Timothy that “all Scripture is breathed out by God.” That is, Scripture originates from the mind of God. He really spoke these things. The term “God’s word” is not just another name for the Bible. It’s a description of what our Bible is. God has spoken objective and specific things. He has put his thoughts into words and spoken them to us through the Bible, God’s word written down.
It will be helpful to break this down a bit. Our God has spoken to man. This is the starting point for all theology and certainly the starting point for our doctrine of Scripture. One of the primary metaphors used of God in Scripture is light. For example, John tells us, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light” (1 John 1:5). While that is a highly nuanced metaphor, one of the clear and dominant implications of it is that God loves to make himself known. It is in the nature of God to communicate himself, to reveal himself. He did so in creation. He did so in the great acts of redemption recounted in the Old Testament. He did so quintessentially in Christ. And throughout the history of redemption, he revealed himself in words. Our God is a speaking God. In fact, this is one of the major points in the polemic against false gods in the Old Testament: They can’t speak but our God does.
But not only does God speak, he also writes. Paul speaks of “Scripture” in 2 Timothy 3:16. He specifically says that the Scripture he is speaking of is that which was breathed out by God. Scripture is God’s word written down.
The Heart of Preaching
Mike Bullmore
Mike Bullmore’s The Heart of Preaching explores the functional centrality of the gospel in the life of a preacher, helping pastors shape their character, content, and mindset toward a gospel-centered life.
We can take this one step further. Not only does God speak and write but also still speaks through what he has spoken and written. Something interesting happens in Hebrews 3:7. The author of Hebrews introduces a quote from Psalm 95 by saying, “As the Holy Spirit says.” It is worth noting that the author of Hebrews references the divine Author of Scripture, but for now I’m more interested in the tense of the verb. The author of Hebrews quotes something written centuries earlier and insists that by it the Holy Spirit still speaks. That is just an example of the principle he asserts in his very next chapter: “The word of God is living and active” (Heb. 4:12). By what God spoke, he still speaks.
This is the foundation on which our first conviction rests. God has spoken something specific and objective, and it is contained in the Scriptures. And through these Scriptures he continues to speak. That’s why we do exposition when we preach. Our job is to say what God has said. So the task of a sermon is to create space for God to speak, and the only valid effect of our preaching is a right hearing of the word of God. In fact, the greatest compliment we can receive after preaching is this: “God spoke to me today.” When I am reading the prophets of the Old Testament, I often lose track of who is speaking. “Is this God speaking?” I wonder. “Or is it the prophet?” May the people listening to you preach experience a similar confusion. May they think, “That sure looks like my pastor up there, but it sure seems like God is speaking to me.” This is our first conviction: that God has spoken something objective and specific, and what he has spoken is written in our Bibles. If you don’t believe that, then you shouldn’t be preaching.
2. The Understandability of Scripture
We learn from 2 Timothy 2:15 that there is a “[right] handling” of the word of God. In other words, we can understand it. Given what we know about God, especially that he is good, we should expect this as an implication from the first conviction. Scripture is from God. It is his revelation of himself. And given that we know that God is good, we can conclude that his communication to us is not intended to be cryptic. God is not toying with us. He has not given us a frustrating, unbreakable code. No, God has said something specific and objective, and he means for us to understand it. Remember, he initiated this written record of self-revelation for a purpose that he is eager to see accomplished. In order for that to happen, those who receive his words must be able to understand them.
There is a wonderful example of this in the twin books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In Ezra, we learn that “Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel” (Ezra 7:10). That theme is picked up in Nehemiah, where we read that “Ezra opened the book. . . . They [the Levites] read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Neh. 8:5, 8). Ezra and the Levites were able to understand and explain God’s words so that the people could understand.
We need to remember Paul’s words to Timothy: “do your best” and be a “worker” (2 Tim. 2:15). Preaching requires work. Nobody drifts into a deep and right understanding of God’s word. In fact, as Peter says about some of the writings of Paul, Scripture can be “hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16). And yet, we know for certain that God means for us to understand his word. The Scriptures yield to believing study. So we must engage in confident, expectant, faithful study, knowing God’s word is understandable.
This is our second conviction, that Scripture is understandable. If you don’t believe that, then you shouldn’t be preaching. But if you do believe it, that conviction will provide great motivation for you to persevere in exposition.
3. The Usefulness of Scripture
A third conviction we must have about God’s word is that it is useful. In the same text in which we learn that all of Scripture is breathed out by God, we’re also told that Scripture is “profitable” (2 Tim. 3:16). God intends his word to accomplish all sorts of useful good. His people live, flourish, and grow only by believing and obeying his word.
How does Scripture exercise its usefulness? It is not by a mystical operation. Second Timothy 3:16 tells us that it happens through “teaching, . . . reproof, . . . correction, and . . . training in righteousness.” By these means, the Bible shows itself to be remarkably useful. It’s easy to see how these uses shape our preaching. Certainly one implication of this conviction is that God’s word can be trusted to set the agenda for our preaching. We don’t need to go fishing around for topics.
Because your people are facing real-life challenges, you will regularly hear calls to be “relevant” in your preaching. You’ll be tempted to address their needs. You’ll think, “Shouldn’t I be giving them something more immediate to their life situation instead of just continuing to plod through Exodus?” But God’s word is always exactly what is needed. We live by the words that come from the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3). It is profitable. It is ever so useful. And it is our special duty as pastors to unapologetically preach it.
Of course, we need to study the word to see how it intersects with real life. We need to work hard to bring it to bear. Five minutes into our sermons, our listeners should feel that God is addressing them and be fully aware that what we are saying has to do with them. But let that all rise from the usefulness of Scripture, a facet of it that you believe in and are eager to show.
This is our third conviction, that Scripture is useful. If you do not believe that, then you shouldn’t be preaching. But if you do believe it, that conviction will motivate you to do nothing other than faithfully preach the content and intent of the passage.
God has spoken objective and specific things. He has put his thoughts into words and spoken them to us through the Bible, God’s word written down.
4. The Efficacy of Scripture
We’ve just acknowledged that Scripture claims a usefulness for itself. But is it really able to do what it claims it can do? Is it really efficacious? It is more than interesting to me that virtually all the metaphors the Bible uses to speak of itself have to do with efficacy— a sword (Heb. 4:12), fire (Jer. 23:29), or a hammer (again, Jer. 23:29). Even the less aggressive metaphors speak of efficacy—rain (Isa. 55:10) or a seed (Luke 8:11).
Just consider all the things God’s word claims it can do:
- It initiates faith (Rom. 10:17).
- It gives new spiritual life (1 Pet. 1:23).
- It helps us grow (1 Pet. 2:2).
- It sanctifies us (John 17:17).
- It searches and judges our hearts (Heb. 4:12).
- It liberates (John 8:31–32).
- It revives our souls, makes us wise, rejoices our hearts, and brightens our eyes (Ps. 19:7–8).
- It refreshes us, renews us, gives us life, and does a hundred-plus other things (Ps. 119).1
I could keep going. Is it any wonder that David says, “Blessed is the man . . . [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord” (Ps. 1:1–2). The person who delights in God’s word is “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither” (Ps. 1:3). Don’t we want that for ourselves?
Don’t we want that for the people we preach to? God’s word says that it can bring all this about. Simply put, it is God’s intention to effect great good in the lives of his people through his word. If you do not believe that, then not only should you not be preaching, I don’t know how you could possibly preach another sermon. What would be the point?
However, based on this conviction, we can and should expect God’s transforming work to be done through our faithful preaching of his word. Preaching communicates the force and efficacy of God’s word like nothing else.
These four convictions—that Scripture is God-breathed, understandable, useful, and efficacious—are why we preach expositionally and must continue to do so.
In the end, because the word is what it is, when it is handled rightly, God will use it to accomplish that for which he sent it— the salvation of people, the strengthening of the church, and the spreading abroad of the glory of his name.
Notes:
- A version of this list appeared in my article “What Does Scripture Actually Accomplish?” Crossway, January 18, 2012, www.crossway.org.
This article is adapted from The Heart of Preaching: The Functional Centrality of the Gospel in the Life and Work of the Preacher by Mike Bullmore.
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