Prophetic Preaching

The Preacher Is Both a Pastor and a Prophet

In the past two years, God has continued to bring renewal, teaching the Seminary to embody the “excellent” heart of Jesus Christ. During this time, we have entered a stage of synergy as a community of disciples has formed who seek consciously to practice what we proclaim in the pulpit and move toward a life practice of embodying our “preaching.” Throughout our effort to bring renewal, our hearts have been filled with so much joy and contentment.

When it comes to the life practice of preaching, I pray that God will continue to empower us with the gift of preaching as we serve our churches. I fervently pray that God will continue helping HKBTS’s teachers and students to be wise heralds and effective pastor preachers.

In the February issue of the Seminary’s Newsletter, I talked about the importance of mutuality as heralds and pastors preach. I discussed at length the pastoral aspect of preaching, highlighting the preacher’s need to integrate his or her heart with the hearts of the congregation and the importance of sharing renewal experience through the sermon. I pointed out that a good preacher is one who listens, observes and loves while ministering to the congregation. However, I need also to emphasize that a preacher must not only be a pastor but also a prophet. Prophetic preaching is both significant and necessary. In prophetic preaching, we proclaim that God’s sovereignty must always be clearly acknowledged as always remaining as over and above the authority of the world’s rulers and leaders. A prophet must speak the truth in love, proclaiming the truth with courage and daring to uphold clearly the truth through deeds. Faithful preaching must always include the prophetic element. Therefore, I trust that HKBTS students will learn and practice the art of prophetic preaching.

Prophetic Preaching Points out the Identity Crisis of Our Churches

In the current world, prophetic preaching needs to address the identity crisis of our churches. It is obvious that some of our contemporary churches have been unconsciously swallowed up by secularism as they have allowed the world to set their agenda so that they have left little room for Jesus Christ who has called them. As a result, too many churches have become chameleons so thoroughly defined by the secular environment that they are no longer able to safeguard their unique identity and mission or to stand firmly as witnesses of Christ Jesus.

How then must today’s churches deal with this severe identity crisis? This problem can be closely connected with the erosion of faithful preaching. Recognizing the watering down of preaching, pastors are challenged to renew their commitment by faithfully proclaiming God’s truth in our secular age. When we become aware of the secularism of today’s churches, we are jolted into acknowledging the necessity of prophetic preaching.

If this is the case, we must then ask, what is prophetic preaching?

Prophetic Preaching Is Not Moralistic Preaching

Before exploring the nature of prophetic preaching, let us first consider what it is not. Prophetic preaching is not moralistic preaching resulting from finding texts that have moral connotations for the congregation’s lives. Such moralistic preaching reduces the gospel to a rule book for moral conduct and legalistic thinking and burdens hearers with guilt. Sermons will then become moralistic exhortations and the gospel message will actually be distorted so that “God’s will” is replaced by the preacher’s “human will.” What the preacher presents is a straight forward action plan while failing to proclaim the gospel as God’s will and His transforming action plan.

To be sure, the Bible certainly contains moral discourses. At the same time, we must remember that the Bible is far more than a set of moral instructions. The Bible’s concern is primarily theological and not merely moral. Even as the Bible records the history of humans acting upon other humans, God remains at the center of the Bible acting upon men in ways we can never imagine or predict. Preaching must then be much more than human advice or moral command. Moralistic preaching distorts the gospel of God so that God’s grace is reduced to human action and power.

Another important fallacy of moralistic preaching is that the preacher exerts his or her “superego,” assuming the role of the congregation’s parent in order to put forth his or her way as the model to be followed. Such preaching will produce two kinds of believers. One type comprises those “child-like” believers willing to rely on the “parent-like” preacher to tell them what to do and what not to do. The other type is made up of those who quickly become resentful and are likely to defy everything an authoritarian preacher says. This group will quickly react to an over-controlling preacher who insists that his or her high moral ground is indisputable. Such individuals will refuse to be taught and influenced by such a controlling preacher.

Prophetic Teaching Comes from a Preacher’s Sincere Heart in the Presence of God

In contrast with moralistic preachers, prophet preachers are keenly aware that they themselves always stand under God’s judgment and demand, and always remember there can never be any other high moral ground. Being fully aware that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” they acknowledge that they too are weak, always facing many temptations, just like everyone else. It is this pure-hearted humility in the presence of God that prevents the prophet preacher from giving in to the temptation of flinging moralistic abuses at the congregation or sliding into simplistic moralizing. If the preacher sincerely confesses facing personal moral dilemmas, then the congregation can identify with the preacher and find the message credible. The sincerity of the preacher can change an otherwise moralistic message into prophetic preaching teeming with personal concern and care. In this way, putting on a prophet’s robe does not mean that the preacher must ever take off the garment of pastoral care.

It must be pointed out that the “pastoral care” aspect of prophetic preaching must involve a considerable degree of confrontation. This comprises a kind of “protest” spirit. The prophet who is faithful to the word of God must make every effort not to be affected by people’s reaction and must not dread the price that must be paid for an uncomfortable message. Instead, such a preacher always strives to confront wrong attitudes and action with courage, exposing the deep-rooted sin and pointing out ways men get entangled in sin. No one would deny confrontation is sometimes a bitter experience. Nevertheless, confrontation is an indispensable part of responsible pastoral care. Confronting is made for healing and to ensure that failure is not repeated. Stated simply, to confront is good; not to confront is bad.

Paradoxically, the preacher who does not confront his congregation will negate love. For example, an overly kind mother who does not punish a disobedient child does not love responsibly. Again, a non-confronting preacher can be compared with an adult who sees a boy sitting in a place infested with many vipers and warns the boy, “Don’t sit here. You will be bitten to death!” When the boy refuses to listen to him, this adult explains to another adult, “Since this boy refuses to take my word seriously, we have to drag him out or even beat him to rescue him from this place of death.” Unwisely the other adult replies, “No! Leave him alone! Don’t beat him!” The tragic result is that the boy is bitten to death.

The Prophet’s Proclamation Is to Help Men Stand in the Light of Truth

These shocking examples are warnings that sometimes before the gospel can be seen as good news, it must come as judgment. Before there can be healing, the gospel must first come as bitter pain. If we want to experience the abundance of the gospel and the sincerity of a God who cares for us, there must sometimes be confrontation. That is why the true prophets who continually called out, “Peace! Peace!” The prophet’s mission is to help people face even the most uncomfortable reality and stand bravely in the blinding light of truth. When men can bear disturbing truth, they are ready to be changed and able to make hard choices.

Matthew 18:15-20 involves prophetic confrontation. This passage points out that if a brother sins, the victim of the wrongdoing or the one discovering it must go to confront that person privately, pointing out his fault. If the person is willing to repent, we who confront the person have won the sinner over and have found the lost sheep. If this initial attempt fails, we are told to take one or two others along to confront him as witnesses so that every matter can be verified by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If that person still refuses to listen, then we must share the problem with the church so that the matter is exposed to the entire congregation. If the person still refuses to listen even to the church, then he or she must be treated as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector. This is the last step in confrontation: treat the one who refuses to repent as a non-believer and excommunicate that member. This is a kind of spiritual deportation, implying spiritual death.

Matthew 18:18 points out the need to have church consensus and the need to exercise authority through confrontation. The truth that Jesus wants to teach us can be found in Matthew 16:19: Peter, the cornerstone, or the rock, is given the authority to bind and to lose. In the same way, a local church is authorized to bind or to untie anyone. In this context, the community of disciples is granted the authority to proclaim the truth by testifying to the truth, pointing out sins, and announcing God’s judgment and promising the grace of redemption. The church does in accord with God’s will as it continues to call men to God.

As the cornerstone of the church, Peter assumes the prophet’s role denouncing sins, especially those sins that alienate people from God. In Acts 5:1-11, we see Peter denouncing the sin committed by Ananias and his wife Sapphira in the early church when they sold a piece of property, claiming to give all the money to the church. In fact, they kept back part of it for themselves. Peter condemned them first of all for lying to the Holy Spirit and then for allowing Satan to control them as they lied to the church. Worst of all, they had lied to God, thus alienating themselves from God. After being confronted by Peter, the couple fell down dead before his feet.

In today’s society, Peter’s bold confrontation goes against the acceptable way of doing things. The socially acceptable way of dealing with wrong behavior is to do everything possible to reduce conflict and always to avoid conflict at all costs. The popular way today would be to appease the Ananias and Sapphira in the church or try to help them reduce their anxiety but never even consider condemning them. The popular way is to appropriate the findings in contemporary counseling and see this couple as all the other couples who are bound to have problems; the pastor needs to appease them and accept them unconditionally, allowing them plenty of space and making them feel at ease.

This principle of always making someone “feel at ease” is in fact a dangerous way of encouraging people to settle for a kind of self-deceiving peace. The church ministers excuse themselves by claiming they bear patiently with the sinfulness of “Ananias” and “Sapphira” out of love for them. In reality, they are agreeing to bear with liars in order to keep large offering coming in which means they let money and power dominate the church. Without knowing it, such churches allow the possession of property to become the basis of power. The prophet preacher must confront the illusionary “peace” that results and point out the unrecognized idolatry of bowing to power and wealth. They must help churches avoid this self-deception and the false comfort zone of the church. This means they must hold up the mirror of truth before them, allowing them to see their own chameleon image and challenging them to free themselves from the paralyzing tentacles of the secular environment. As a prophet preacher, one must always struggle to have a pure heart, practice self discipline and pray for self understanding in order to confront himself or herself as well as others. Such a preacher strives not to be self-deceiving but longs to be honest before God, honest with men and honest with oneself.

Pray that God Will Build up Pure Pastors and Prophets

Consequently, a prophet preacher can help the church be honest before God, able to face God and Christ in order to face the truth. This kind of preaching is an important component of true pastoral care. Only then can the church safeguard her unique identity, mission and witness in this present age. I pray that God will build up more pastor prophets and that the teachers at HKBTS will join together to train and produce many more pastor prophets.

Aug 2011