WHY PREACHING MUST BE FOR THE HEAD AND HEART

Do you have a head relationship with Jesus or do you have a heart relationship with Him? I find that many people I talk with do not a have a heart relationship with Jesus Christ but only a head knowledge. That is why what makes me tick as a pastor is that you would have a passion for the supremacy of Christ in all things in your hearts, not just merely a knowledge of the supremacy of God. Oh for the hearts of people to come alive along with their heads!

The apostle Paul says,

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. 4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths' (2 Timothy 3:16 - 4:4).

This text is addressed to a pastor about what he should do with his sheep, not to an evangelist about what he should do with unbelievers. Preach the Word. I love teaching, but that is not the word here. Teaching is part of it, but he says preach, that is: Herald! Announce! And the Word is “All the Scriptures” and “the truth.”

John Piper says "preaching is more than teaching; it is the rising of the preacher’s heart to exult over the exposition of truth. It is both exposition of biblical texts and exultation over the reality in those texts. This is implied in the vocabulary of preaching: heralding and proclaiming and announcing Good news. This form of speech—preaching—is designed by God to correspond to his aim in creation and redemption to be glorified by his creatures, namely, his aim to be known and enjoyed."

That is why God has ordained preaching not just explaining. He has ordained that there would be men who stand before the congregations and exult in God and His word. My aim in teaching is to be alive, zealous, authentic, and passionate to God's word in a way that Christ would be exulted in the use of His word in my proclaiming of His word . To be exulted means to be cherished, treasured, loved, valued, precious, enjoyed, deemed worthy in one's heart.

When I preach to you every Sunday I am not merely a dispenser of information. When Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2, "Preach the word," the word for "preach" is a word for "herald" or "announce" or "proclaim". It is not a simple word for teach or explain. It is what a town crier did: "Hear ye, Hear ye, Hear ye! The King has a proclamation of good news for all those who swear allegiance to his throne. Be it known to you that he will give eternal life to all who trust and love his Son." John Piper calls this heralding "exultation." Preaching is a public exultation over the truth that it brings. It is not disinterested or cool or neutral. It is passionate about what it says. God intends preaching by real human beings to inform and awaken. To instruct and inspire. To show people, not just tell them, what relationship of joy and faith in Christ looks like.

Jonathan Edwards explained that preaching—is designed by God to correspond to his aim in creation and redemption to be glorified by his creatures, namely, his aim to be known and enjoyed. What he said has deeply impacted me since the day I first read it five years ago:

God glorifies Himself toward the creatures also in two ways: 1. By appearing to . . . their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in and enjoying the manifestations which He makes of Himself . . . God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart.

In other words, God desires us to see God and to savor God. You can't separate these. You must see him to savor him. And if you don't savor him when you see him, you insult him. His intent in the word is for understanding with the mind and feeling in the heart. Understanding must always be the foundation of feeling, or all we have is baseless emotionalism. But understanding of God that doesn't give rise to feeling for God becomes mere intellectualism and deadness. This is why the Bible continually calls us to think and consider and meditate and remember on the one hand, and to rejoice and fear and mourn and delight and hope and be glad on the other hand. Both are essential for loving God and worshipping Him.

We live in an age of information overload. There is so much information that we are vulnerable to make what is important trivial and what is trivial unimportant. Oh how dangerous it is for us to get lots of bible information but for it to have little or no effect upon our souls and lives. Many years ago Keith Green asked the question "How can you be so dead when you have been so well fed?"

That is why we need exultation along with education in preaching and teaching. Jesus said
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. (John 4:23)
The content of exultational preaching is the truth of God’s word and that truth is meant to move the spirit so that preaching expresses the value of what is being heralded. People are changed into God-glorifying lovers of Christ by seeing Jesus Christ in the fullness of his biblical beauty through Spirit-anointed expository exultation. When they see Christ they exult in Christ and the end of exultation is exaltation which is WORSHIP!

Listen to what the scriptures say that preaching does:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18) We behold Christ in His word and we are changed! Beholding is the way of becoming.
And the LORD appeared again at Shiloh, for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the LORD. (1 Samuel 3:21) God reveals Himself by hearing the word. We see God by hearing. We hear in order to see.

Oh that we would be awakened by preaching in order to think and feel and live in ways that display the worth of God in Christ. We will do that when we stop treating God and His word as mere information or data or irrelevant to our daily lives. Oh that we would by the preaching of the word be lifted to savor the Lord and the glories of God himself and his Son Jesus. Let us be educated through the exaltation of God's word so that He would be exalted in our hearts that we might exalt in Him! That is my aim, my passion, my mission, my breadth, my life, today and all the day that God graces me to herald His word to His people.

Pastor Bill