Russ from Tolle Blogge commented on my post Is God Man Centered? with a reference to a message that Richard Pratt gave at Calvin Seminary back in 2003 on the subject. The message that Russ referred to is the second message Pratt had given at Calvin's conference on expository preaching. I decided to listen to the first message to get some background and instead of just taking notes on paper or in MSWord, I thought I would blog them and share the notes with you.
So, the post continuation here has my notes from Pratt's message titled: "The Concept of the Kingdom of God--Ancient Near Eastern Backgrounds and Preaching Today." It was deliverd on March 13, 2003 at Calvin Seminary and when you click on the link you'll need to scroll down the page to the messages on that date.
Link to Calvin seminaries lectures page
Permalink which I think will get you to this lecture.
BTW - these things are in Real Audio streaming format. If anyone knows anyone at Calvin it would be a great thing to put a bug in someone's ear to convert these lectures into downloadable mp3's. As it is you have to listen to them online so you are captive to your computer.
1. Our current situation
There are models for preaching that have been shifting for several decades.
a. The greeter, who is there to welcome visitors, welcome unbelievers to the church so they can become Christians.b. The monologue - the Jay Leno model. Say a few jokes, tell a few stories, make sure everyone is entertained and we have good church.
c. The therapist - the preacher''s job is to help people figure out their problems and give them spiritual help.
d. The politician - the preacher is a politician, on the stump arguing for certain kinds of social change.
e. The teacher - the preacher is giving a lesson. The main thing is to give a lesson, communicating doctrinal information. This turns worship services into classrooms. We feel good if we have communicated something new and they feel good if they have learned something new.
Some say that a postmodern church is a post-preaching church. Preaching is out, we need to renovate the role of pastor.
The above models are different from the ways the Reformed Tradition has thought of it. You can't have a church in our tradition if it is "post-preaching."
Belgic Confession Article 29 - "The marks by which the true Church is known are these: If the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached therein; . . ."WSC #89
Q89: How is the Word made effectual to salvation?
A89: The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation.
It is not just through the Scriptures, but through the preaching of the Word. The preaching of the Word is the means by which the Spirit makes the Word effectual.
What we need to do is understand how preaching relates to the kingdom of God. One thing of note about the postmodern movement is they like to play with metaphors. Even if you don't like metaphors, you are using them all the time. Along these lines, Pratt suggests an imperial model. My role as a preacher can only be understood if I incorporate the imperialist model the Bible gives us.
2. Divine Kingship and the Preacher
To discuss this Pratt starts with the Lord's Prayer as a point of departure - "They kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
Unfortunately, we have often been taught a misconception of what the Lord's prayer means. Often, we are taught that "Our Father," in effect means "our granddaddy." It is often taken to mean that God is very kind and intmate and loving, etc..
Grandchildren think of grandfathers as a jungle jim, they are always climbing on them. Pratt talks about how he is sure his granddaughter loves him, maybe more than anyone (grin), but he is not sure she respects him. Unfortunately, that is the way many in evangelical circles think of God, and they do it based on the Lord's prayer and parallel passages dealing with God as father, or "Abba."
In this case, our Father is in heaven. Heaven is always described as God's throne room. Jesus is saying "Our Father who is enthroned in heaven." This is a royal motif. In the Ancient Near East (ANE), the great kings always called themselves the father of their people in much the same way we call George Washington the father of America.
When we pray we should pray "Our Royal Father, Who is enthroned in heaven." This helps the following lines of the prayer make sense. The imagery of kingshp should be most central in all our thinking when it comes to who we are and how we think. The wonder of it all is that we are received by this royal king. The most prominent way in which God is described is as the king of all things.
This will change how we preach. In the ANE there was one image used to describe God - that of the great king. It was common sense in the world of the bible that if you think "God," you think "king." What kingship meant in the ANE.
a. Supremacy in heaven - they would exist and they would be in courts and there would be one God who sat on the greatest throne of all.b. Enthronement on the earth - thus, all the various temples and holy sites on the earth, the gods were symbolically enthroned in earthly palaces.
Without undrstanding this kind of a world, it disables us from seeing this in the Bible. We don't live in this kind of world. In VA, the state logo is a picture of a woman with a spear in her hand and her foot on the chest of a dead man - the slogan is "thus always to tyrants." We have to change our way of thinking to think of submission to a king.
c. Divine kings always had spokespersons on earth - they always had prophets or spokesmen. even earthly kings had this. There was always someone who communicated the will of the god in heaven to the people on earth. These were the royal heralds of the king. This is the image of preaching which fits with the world of the Bible. The great king communicates his will through a herald.
This is very much true of Israel. We know that God is enthroned on earth yet He is also enthroned on earth. Throughout the Bible God speaks his will through His heralds.
It is time to stop giving in to the pagan influences of our culture and adopt the model that is given to us by the Bible.
"Where two or three are gathered in my name" - the imagery 'in my name," comes from the Old Testament. I Kings 8:29 - the name of God becomes resident in the temple. Jesus is referring to the "name theology" of the OT. The name of God goes with the temple of God. In the NT the church is the temple, wherever the church goes the name goes. "In my name" is temple talk. Temple was royal, it was God's palace. When we are gathered in church, "in the name," it is a royal image - the preacher is the royal herald.
The preacher receives the message from the great king of heaven and has the objective of giving the message to the people of God. This is a far cry from the greeter, therapist, politician or teacher. A herald of God must be a holy herald. This is not an ordinary event, Not all things are holy as this is.
Also, no herald in the ancient world would have dared to say anything different from what the king said. A royal herald says what the king says, no matter what.
Heralds had authority. When preaching is true to the word, it is the word, and thus the peoplel of God are to hear it.
Second Helveltic Confession Chapter 1The Preaching of the Word of God Is the Word of God. Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe the the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful; and that neither any other Word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good.
Neither do we think that therefore the outward preaching is to be thought as fruitless because the instruction in true religion depends on the inward illumination of the Spirit, or because it is written And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor . . ., for they shall all know me (Jer. 31:34), and Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth (I Cor. 3:7). For although no one can come to Christ unless he be drawn by the Father (John 6:44), and unless the Holy Spirit inwardly illumines him, yet we know that it is surely the will of God that his Word should be preached outwardly also. God could indeed, by his Holy Spirit, or by the ministry of an angel, without the ministry of St. Peter, have taught Cornelius in the Acts; but, nevertheless, he refers him to Peter, of whom the angel speaking says, He shall tell you what you ought to do (Acts 10:6).
This can dovetail nicely with postmodernism. What could be more modern than a greeter, therapist, politician or teacher in the pulpit. When we go back to the Biblical model we go back to the ancient.
3. Divine Kingship and the Preaching that you do
People tend to have a celestial vision of "thy kingdom come" - one day we will go to heaven and play harps forever. Jesus said that the kingdom comes when God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. In heaven, it is done perfectly, no one disobeys. On earth it is not done very well, God's kingdom comes when the earthly looks more like the heavenly.
We know that God chose a people for Himself and gave favor to those people. Just because our God is the great king doesn't mean that things are always going well for us. Why is this? It is not because God is weak. At times it is because God is angry with His favored people. At other times, it is because God is patient toward us - not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
God's kingdom comes from God's earthly kingdom coming to be. The gospel of good news is that our king reigns over all, not just over heaven, but earth as well. The Israelites hoped for return from exile and captivity. Jesus came and brought release from captivity, this is the gospel. Chrisitan gospel is fundamentally the announcement that God's will is coming to earth as it is in heaven. Our God is reigning, not just up there but here as well. Unfortunatley, we have focused on salvation as very personalistic. That is not the heart of the gospel.
The fulfillment of the worldwide reign of God does not come suddenly. It comes at the inauguration of the kingdom with the first coming of Jesus and the preaching of the good news of the kingdom. It also comes at the consummation when the kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. This is the good news of the second coming.
We live in-between, during the continuation of the kingdom. During this time the preaching of the kingdom is given to all nations and then the end will come. My gospel preaching today is about what our great king has done, what He is doing, and what He is going to do.
The NT is devoted to explaining this kind of eschatology and its practical implications for daily living.
Thank you for posting your notes to Dr. Pratt's lecture on this important topic. A similar message from Dr. Pratt that is available for free from SermonAudio.com. The message is entitled "Christ is Winning," and its theme and contents is similar to the notes you have posted above, though this particular message is applied toward world missions.
As one of his students at RTS Orlando, I can say that Richard's (as he prefers to be called) passion and vision for the Kingdom of God is transforming my life and my perspective on preaching. Specifically for preaching, understanding the nature of what the preaching act is (the herald of God proclaiming the Gospel of God to the people of God for the Kingdom of God) cannot but impact how one preaches. Would to God that we had more preachers who understood their role as God's heralds in the current continuation phase of Christ's inaugurated Kingdom.
Posted by: Laurence O. | August 03, 2006 at 12:05 PM