Explaining the Bible?

I’m sure we’ve all heard it, or maybe even done it ourselves. The person leading the service on Sunday says, ‘And after x comes to read the Bible, y is going to come and explain it.’

These days, if people say this before I enter the pulpit, I’m always tempted to blurt out, ‘No, I’m not! I’m going to preach!’ Because preaching is not just ‘explaining the Bible.’ Nor is it lecturing or simply ‘giving a talk’ (consisting of our exegetical notes and a few bolted-on applications).

This is very clear in the Bible itself. Recently, I was meditating on 1 Timothy 4 where Paul says this:

Command and teach these things. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. (1 Tim. 4:11-16).

Some might say there is just one main point to this paragraph. But I think I heard at least 14 things God was saying to me here about preaching:

1. Your speaking can be a command which believers should follow, not just an abstract explanation.

2. Your speaking sets an example to others about how to speak about God. Make sure you aren’t flippant or casual about it. 3. Your speaking must be backed up by your godliness. Your conduct and purity should eloquently back up your words. 4. Your speaking should be based on publicly-read Scripture. But is

the reading just your jumping-off point, to a different message you think is more important?

5. Be devoted to the task of speaking. It requires dedication.

6. You must exhort people. Move them, don’t just teach them!

7. You must teach people. Teach them, don’t just move them!

8. Your speaking is part of your gift and office. As the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker rightly says, ordination to ministry is a solemn and public thing, and you can’t ‘put it off and on like a cloak as the weather serves’.

9. You need to work hard at improving your speaking. Don’t wing it, or coast just because you can. Get better.

10. You need to keep a careful eye on what you’re speaking about. Satan certainly will. He’d love to steer you off-course.

11. People, including you, are saved through your speaking. Be a source of salvation, not a source of scandal.

As Richard Baxter said: ‘The ministerial work must be carried on purely for God and the salvation of souls, not for any private ends of our own.’ It is not just a ‘worldly livelihood’, a trade or a profession, but something of much greater eternal value.

12. You must keep speaking. Do not let your gift lie idle, while you focus on some other aspect of being a minister. Yes, there’s so much else that needs doing these days; those famous silhouettes of Charles Simeon preaching in the pulpit don’t even get close to representing all the other things that you need to think about each week. But don’t forget to practice preaching. Be immersed in it.

13. The authority of your preaching is not in your age (or your accent, or your education), but in the Scriptures. Calvin says Paul instructs Timothy to ‘supply by gravity of demeanour what is wanting in his age’. Lean on the authority of the word; it doesn’t need human enhancements.

14. In the context of 1 Timothy 4, Paul warns Timothy about deceitful spirits and false teaching, telling him to ‘put these things before the brothers’. So your speaking must refute and expose error. You can’t just be positive and cheery, while wolves are growling at the door. Gangrenous lies are eating away at the hearts you need to heal.

There may be other lessons in this passage too. What did I miss?