Just Say It!
Author: Michael Gott
There is a story of two women who walked away from a church after a typical Sunday morning service. One said, “Well, I must say the pastor didn’t say much today, did he?” The reply was quick in coming as the other woman said, “That’s true; no, he didn’t, but he implied a lot!”
A major producer of sports gear coined the phrase “Just Do It.” We who are called of God need to rephrase it to “Just Say It.” That is, to plainly tell people the truth, for that is what we are called to do. John Stott said, “There is an urgent need for courageous preachers in the pulpit of the world today, like the apostles in the early church who ‘were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness’ (Acts 4:31).”
A European Christian told of visiting a certain evangelical church on Easter Sunday. He heard the pastor take the text of the Emmaus two walking from Jerusalem. The application was of “the lovely benefits of walking and talking out our personal disappointments.” We should react with shock at this true story, for it brings us to the lowest possible point, the trivializing of the pulpit! Not only poor preaching, but worse, taking the magnificent and making it meaningless and mean.
John Wesley once said to his preachers, “Be not nice!” He was saying, let there be no deplorable cheapening of great truth; do not mince words. Paint in big, bold letters on a large canvas. That is, with all your force and with all your fire and focus attack the challenge of telling the truth plainly and boldly.
Again, Stott said, “Neither men-pleasers nor time-servers ever make good preachers!” Buttrick once commented that “People are driven from the church not so much by stern truth that makes them uneasy as by weak nothings that make them contemptuous.”
There was once a preacher of whom it was said, “He spoke of great things and made them small, of holy things and made them common, of God and made Him of no account.” So I believe, to the very limit of my powers, that the preacher should deal passionately with the great themes and the key issues regardless of the cost. Deny yourself and take up the preaching cross!
Let us all beware of homiletical drivel. A great Scottish preacher of long ago moaned over the state of the pulpit as certain preachers danced around truth “with some pretty bit of text on the outskirts of things.” Oh, what powerless but picturesque language some churchmen choose to convey their puny thoughts.
Here I call on a message preached in 1877 by Phillips Brooks. He said with authority, “If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to fit them. Go even and paint pictures which you know are bad but which suit their bad taste. But do not keep on all your life preaching sermons which shall say not what God sent you to declare, but what they hire you to say. Be courageous. Be independent.”
Another such statement is found as Ian MacPherson spoke of those in the pulpit that “nibble away at niceties in the text.” Mincing words does not honor Christ, and a prim and proper approach to pulpit ministry is far from the New Testament standards that we observe in the early preachers of Christ.
God’s wisdom comes to mind. Proverbs 29:25 says, “. . . the fear of man lays a snare.” What can be worse than a man of God becoming ensnared and the servant of public opinion?
Picture in your mind a prophet—a lonely voice taking a solitary stand with courage as God’s true patriot. Let this picture linger long in our minds. Let us have profound respect for such a person and desire to follow his example. Furthermore, never let it be forgotten that Jesus himself earned a certain respect for fearlessness and for uncompromising courage. Overlooked is a statement spoken to Jesus by the Pharisees, “. . . we know you are a man of integrity and that you . . . aren’t swayed by man, because you pay no attention to who they are” (Matthew 27:16, NIV).
Chrysostom, the famous preacher, once offended the Empress in Constantinople with plain and courageous preaching, and she had him immediately banished. He courageously replied, “. . . let me have no rich man, no potentate, puffing at me here, and drawing up his eyebrows . . .” God give us such men today!
In the mid 1500’s John Knox stood before an offended Queen Mary in Edinburgh and said, “I am not the master of myself, but must obey Him who commands me to speak plain and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the earth.” Mary actually cried before this fearless, plainspoken man of God who stood little more than five feet tall! When Knox died, it was said at his grave side, “Here lies one who never feared the face of man.” God give us such men.
Hanging in my study is a painting of the fearless Micaiah. Standing before two kings with dazzling robes and a full and impressive court, he said, “As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak.” And for that he was slapped in the mouth! (Read I Kings 22.)
The truth is rather simple; the pure authoritative gospel of Jesus is, in fact, extremely offensive to human pride. Therefore, all that preach it plainly can expect some self-righteous resentment and angry reaction. But mark it and fully believe it—courage to be a preacher of integrity gives any person a fresh authority and a disturbing presence that honors the truth of God.
When the great Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte was often accused of being “a maniac” because he preached so boldly about sin and repentance, he was encouraged to soften his message and to muffle its strident tones. The great man of God went to his favorite place in the Scottish Highlands for a retreat. As he walked in the seclusion, “the Voice” spoke to his conscience and said, “Go on, and flinch not! Go back and boldly finish the work that has been given you to do. Speak out and fear not . . .”
John Wesley organized his preachers for the evangelizing of England and beyond. He demanded they fast two days per week to show seriousness and a sense of calling, saying, “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and . . . such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of God on earth.” Again and again the emphasis is on courage mixed with compassion; that is, tender boldness that never compromises and is clearly understood.
Spurgeon said he had only one dread, that he would become a “mere preaching machine, without my heart and soul being exercised in this solemn duty.”
A. W. Tozer reminds us to fully understand who we are. “We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.”
All this is said not to extol harshness but rather boldness and plainness in preaching. Christ’s sermons were often deeply disturbing, and we need courage not to neglect this aspect of our role as God’s messengers. But Jesus the Prophet wept as He preached! We must find a biblical balance. So we must preach self-denial as well as self-discovery, the labor of faith as well as the rest of faith, Christ’s Lordship as well as His servant-hood, heaven as well as hell, grace and guilt and mercy and judgement—all of it woven together as the gospel of Christ.
And we must say it plainly yet preach it tenderly. Somehow we have to strike the balance for both. We must be both a son of thunder (Boanerger) or a son or consolation (Barnabas). Possibly, John Newton, the slave trader who was gloriously converted to be both a great songwriter and a godly preacher, said it best, our task then is “to break a hard heart and to heal a broken heart.”
To disturb and to comfort! To awaken and to assure! To confront and console!—Just say it with the authority of God’s word as the source from which every word from our mouths comes.
Oh, just say it! Say it so that they will not just understand, but cannot misunderstand!
Just say it!
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