DOES YOUR PREACHER PREACH FOR A VERDICT?

The message of the apostles in Acts consists of two parts: the first is the proclamation of Jesus as Savior and Lord (1 Cor.1:23;2 Cor.4:5). The second is the appeal to come to him in repentance and faith. True evangelism seeks a response. It expects results. It is preaching for a verdict. Heralding is not the same as lecturing. A lecture is dispassionate, objective, academic. It is addressed to the mind. It seeks no result but to impart certain information and, perhaps, to provoke the student to further enquiry. But the herald of God comes with an urgent proclamation of peace through the blood of the Cross, and with a summons to men to repent, to lay down their arms and humbly to accept the offered pardon.

We are called to be ambassadors for Christ: “All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor.5:18-21).

The proclamation begins with God being the author of reconciliation between God and man. The initiative in the work of atonement has been taken by the Father. It is not man’s. ‘All is of God. The only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.’ (William Temple) God the Father is the author of reconciliation and the agent is Christ. God made Christ to be sin with our sins, so that we might become righteous with his righteousness. This mysterious exchange is possible only to those who are ‘in him’ who are personally united to Christ by faith. God was in Christ to achieve our reconciliation; we must be in Christ to receive it. It is this reconciliation which we are called to proclaim as heralds.

We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. By preaching God makes past history a present reality. The great lesson the herald metaphor can teach us, as it is used in the New Testament, is that proclamation and appeal belong together. We must not separate them.

First, we must never issue an appeal without first making the proclamation. The gospel is not fundamentally an invitation to do anything. It is a declaration of what God has done in Christ on the cross for our salvation. The invitation cannot properly be given before the declaration has been made. We must grasp the truth before we are asked to respond to it. The apostles …sought to make an intellectual conquest, to persuade men of the truth of their message, to convince them in order to convert them.

Secondly, we must never make the proclamation without then issuing an appeal….It is not enough to teach the gospel; we must urge men to embrace it.

(THE PREACHER’S PORTRAIT, John Stott)

The truth Stott is presenting to us is that the message of the Gospel in the sermon must consist of these two parts: proclamation of what God has done in Christ to reconcile us to himself and the appeal to respond to this message in repentance and faith. All Gospel preaching should lead to a verdict on the part of the listener. What is my response to this message? What result is expected? What I learned under John Stott was that my preaching should lead to a verdict. Too many sermons peter out at the end. Many preachers do not know how to end a sermon and instead offer up an ascription to the Trinity: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!” In the name of God lead the hearers in a prayer of commitment and response rather than give them the impression that they can take it or leave it and it is not that important anyway!!!! Such endings give preaching a bad name as though the preacher is glad that it is over and we can go home. Richard Baxter said that he preached as a dying man to dying men. What if the message that is preached is the last Word of God a man or woman might ever hear in this life. Surely there should be some urgency to it, some closure to take place.