The Reformation and the Return to Preaching
October 2007
October was
always a significant month for me as a kid. It contained one of my
favorite holidays - Halloween. Halloween meant one full night of begging
candy off friends, family, and neighbors. I could easily fill a
one-gallon pail with chocolate bars, caramel apples, and popcorn balls.
Popcorn balls were just space fillers so I would toss them on the floor
of the car right away lest homeowners suspect that we had too much candy
and decide to be a bit stingy with the goods. I loved October 31st.
As a
believer, October 31 has an entirely different significance which
is all but ignored and lost in most churches. Our family doesn’t go
trick-or-treating. Nor do we spend our time focusing on “the evils of
Halloween.” Instead we make it a day of celebration! We go out to dinner
at our favorite local restaurant (Jalapeńos). When we get home we watch
the old black-and-white classic movie Martin Luther and then our
evening family Bible study centers around some significant element of
the doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone.
Why do we do
this on October 31st? Because on October 31st in the year 1517 a
catholic monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses on the
door of the church in Wittenberg to spark public debate. That event
officially marks the launch of the Protestant Reformation. The
significance of that event cannot be overstated!
Among the
many benefits of the Protestant Reformation is the fact that the
Reformation marked a return to the primacy of preaching in the life of
the people of God.
Preaching
in the Early Church
In Acts 2 the
church was born around a preaching event. Peter stood up on the day of
Pentecost after the coming of the Holy Spirit and gave an exposition of
Joel 2, Psalm 16, and various other texts. Three thousand people
got saved and were baptized. Afterwards they “continually devoted
themselves to the apostles teaching.”
The story of
the book of Acts is a story of the preaching of the early church.
Sermons of Peter, John, Philip, Stephen, and Paul take up a major
portion of the book.
Early in the
life of the church, the Apostles were set apart for the Word of God and
prayer (Acts 6). Paul continually emphasized the centrality of
preaching in his letters, particularly the pastoral epistles (Timothy
and Titus).
The early
church was a growing, dynamic, powerful force, largely due to the role
of the Word of God in the life of the people of God. All that would
eventually change.
Preaching in
the Middle Ages
About 500 AD,
preaching in the church began to wane. What we know as the “Middle Ages”
marked a gradual but steady decline in the life of the church.
The merger of
Church with State in 313 AD with the Edict of Toleration by the Emperor
Constantine marked the beginning of a long steady slide. The church
increased in worldly power and influence while it decreased in real
strength.
By the time
of the Reformation, biblical preaching had reached an all-time low.
Clergy, Bishops, and Priests were well established and numerous, but
they did not preach at all. It was not uncommon for weeks or even months
to go by without a single sermon in a local parish. Oftentimes priests
would abandon churches only to check in on them occasionally. The
English reformer, Hugh Latimer, called these absentee priests
“strawberry parsons” because “they came only once a year and stayed for
a very short time.”1
In the event
that a bishop or priest did preach, the quality was insufferably poor.
In the course of a worship service a brief time was reserved for the
homily - a brief sermon.
The priests
did not do any of their own study and preparation or give an exposition
of the text. Their homilies were for the most part sermons and/or
readings borrowed from the early church fathers. Most homilies were
topical, filled with stories, fables and anecdotes.
With the Word
of God so absent from the church, something had to fill its place.
Charles Terpstra notes, “It is also striking but sad that with the
preaching so bad and the people so ignorant, another method of bringing
the gospel to the people was being used - drama. Groups of dramatists
would travel from town to town putting on mystery plays and passion
plays.”2 There is nothing wrong
with drama per se, but when it replaces the proclamation of the Word of
God - WRONG!
By the 1500s
true biblical preaching was no longer central in “Christianity” and had
all but vanished.
The Reason
for the Decline
Several
things contributed to the forming of this desperate situation, but there
are three primary factors.
First, a
low view of Scripture. With the rise of the papacy between 300 and
600 AD, the Word of God began to lose significance. The people were
taught that the Church and the Pope were the authoritative sources of
truth. They came to believe that God spoke through the Pope.
Consequently, the Word of God was no longer viewed as authoritative and
sufficient for all of life and godliness. People did not turn to the
Word to hear the voice of God, but to the Church, the Pope, and his
representatives, the priests. The Pope and priests even went so far as
to teach the people that having the Bible in their own language was
dangerous. When the church no longer believes that “when the Word of
God is rightly preached the voice of God is rightly heard” they will
neglect the Scriptures. The Bible disappeared from the lives, the minds,
and the hearts of the people.
Second,
false doctrine abounded. When the Word of God was taken from the
people of God, it left the sheep unable to defend themselves from the
ravages of false teachers and their teachings. Falsehood swept the
church. False doctrine, practices, and superstitions became entrenched
as dogma. True biblical preaching would pose a threat to the false
doctrines and so it was neglected.
Third, the
laziness of the “shepherds.” Priests and Bishops did not study
Scripture to prepare sermons because study, preparation, and preaching
are hard work! It takes hours to study the text, outline the text,
research background and history, then to write out a sermon. Preaching
itself is an exhausting enterprise! It is far easier to simply tell some
stories, moralize an anecdote, and do the Mass.
The Reformers and Preaching
The
reformation marked a return to the centrality of preaching because it
marked a return to the centrality and authority of the Scriptures. If
the Word of God is what it claims to be, then it mandates that we
proclaim it and preach it.
Once the
authority of the Pope was challenged and the legitimacy of the Mass was
questioned, then something had to take their place. What would it be?
Preaching. The Reformation restored the church to her central task -
preaching the Word (2 Tim. 4:1-5).
Luther
believed that the “true treasure of the church is the most holy Gospel
of the glory and grace of God.” After posting the 95 Theses, Luther
later wrote in his Treatise on Christian Liberty, “One thing
and one only is necessary for Christian Life, righteousness and liberty.
That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the Gospel of Christ. . . .
Let us then consider it certain and conclusively established that the
soul can do without all things except the Word of God, and that where
this is not, there is no help for the soul in anything else whatever.
But if it has the Word, it is rich and lacks nothing, since this Word is
the Word of life, of truth, of light, of peace, of righteousness, of
salvation, of joy, of liberty, of wisdom, of power, of grace, of glory,
and of every blessing beyond our power to estimate. . . . On the other
hand, there is no more terrible plague with which the wrath of God can
smite men than a famine of the hearing of His Word, as He says in Amos,
just as there is no greater mercy than when He sends forth His Word, as
we read in Psalm 107.”
John Calvin
had an equally high view of Scripture and said in his preaching on
Ephesians 4:11-14, “Now the fact is that [the church] cannot be
built up, that is to say, it cannot be brought to soundness, or continue
in a good state, except by means of the preaching of the Word.”
When the
Protestant Reformation was well underway and established, Luther gave
all the credit to the power of the Word of God saying, “I have
opposed the indulgences and all the papists, but never by force. I
simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. . .
. I did nothing; the Word did it all. . . . For it is almighty and takes
captive the hearts, and if the hearts are captured the evil work will
fall of itself.”
Luther’s
commitment to preaching was more than mere words. John Piper notes that
“in the church in Wittenberg in those days there were no programs,
but only worship and preaching; Sunday 5:00 a.m. worship with a sermon
on the Epistle, 10:00 a.m. with a sermon on the Gospel, an afternoon
message on the Old Testament or catechism. Monday and Tuesday sermons
were on the Catechism; Wednesdays on Matthew; Thursdays and Fridays on
the Apostolic letters; and Saturday on John.”3
Walther von
Loewenich said in his biography, "Luther was one of the greatest
preachers in the history of Christendom ... Between 1510 and 1546 Luther
preached approximately 3,000 sermons. Frequently he preached several
times a week, often two or more times a day."4
Reformer John
Calvin had just as tenacious a commitment to the preaching of the Word.
“To give you some idea of the scope of the Calvin's pulpit, he began
his series on the book of Acts on August 25, 1549, and ended it in March
of 1554. After Acts he went on to the epistles to the Thessalonians (46
sermons), Corinthians (186 sermons), pastorals (86 sermons), Galatians
(43 sermons), Ephesians (48 sermons) – till May 1558. Then there is a
gap when he is ill. In the spring of 1559 he began the Harmony of the
Gospels and was not finished when he died in May, 1564. During the week
of that season he preached 159 sermons on Job, 200 on Deuteronomy, 353
on Isaiah, 123 on Genesis and so on. One of the clearest illustrations
that this was a self-conscious choice on Calvin's part was the fact that
on Easter Day, 1538, after preaching, he left the pulpit of St. Peter's,
banished by the City Council. He returned in September, 1541 – over
three years later – and picked up the exposition in the next verse!”5
Both Calvin
and Luther established schools in which they sought to train men for the
exposition of the Word of God. They believed that the majesty of God is
revealed in His Word and that God’s glory was put on display when God’s
Word was preached. In his commentary on Jeremiah 5:13 Calvin
writes, “If His word is not allowed to have authority, it is the same
as though its despisers attempted to thrust God from heaven or denied
His existence. We hence see how the majesty of God is, as it were,
indissolubly connected with the public preaching of His truth.”
The
Reformation was, therefore, not just a rediscovery of the glorious truth
of justification by faith alone, but it was the greatest revival of
preaching in the history of the Christian church.
And Here We
Go Again
Satan knows
no new tricks. We can see the same thing happening in our day as
happened in the years preceding the Reformation, promising the same
disastrous results. The irony is that it is churches with a rich
protestant heritage that seem intent on taking us back to another dark
age.
Worship
services are packed with announcements, beautiful singing, specials,
dancing, videos, dramas, and every conceivable form of entertainment.
The one thing that can find no place in the modern worship service is
the preaching of the Word!
“Sermons” are
called “talks” or “conversations.” We are told they should be short and
relevant - geared to a topic of the day. Pastors download their sermons
off the internet or buy their outlines and manuscripts from someone
else. The hard work of exegesis and exposition is neglected in favor of
stories, anecdotes and feel-good, self-help homilies.
Protestant
churches have forsaken the sole authority of Scripture and the worship
service has become an hour of pandering to people’s flesh instead of
preaching in the power of the Spirit. The voice of God is no longer
heard in most churches because the Word of God is no longer preached and
explained.
Commenting on
the dearth of biblical preaching in our own day, one of the greatest
expositors of the twentieth century, Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote,
“While men believed in the Scriptures as the authoritative Word of
God and spoke on the basis of that authority you had great preaching.
But once that went, and men began to speculate, and to theorize, and to
put up hypotheses and so on, the eloquence and the greatness of the
spoken word inevitably declined and began to wane. . . As belief in the
great doctrines of the Bible began to go out, and sermons were replaced
by ethical addresses and homilies, and moral uplift and socio-political
talk, it is not surprising that preaching declined.”7
We don’t have to imagine what the results of this trend will be.
May God give us the grace to “preach the Word!” PRAY THAT IT BE SO!
Without Wax -
Jim Osman
Pastor/Teacher
Footnotes:
1. Much information contained in
this article can be found in an address delivered by Rev. Charles
Terpstra available in written form at
http:www.prca.org/pamphlets/pamphlet_90.html.
2.
Ibid.
3.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1470_Martin_Luther_Lessons_from_His_Life_and_Labor/
4.
Ibid.
5.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1471_The_Divine_Majesty_of_the_Word/
6.
Ibid.
7. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching
and Preachers (“Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House), pg. 13.
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