Good News ... with Exhortations?

By Stephen Portner

Scripture - Luke 3:7-18

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism once preached a sermon called "Scriptural Christianity" to his teachers and classmates at Oxford University on August 24, 1744.

In his sermon he challenged his fellow students and instructors. He called them "a generation of triflers; triflers with God, with one another, and with their own souls."

Wesley went on to say, "For how few of you spend from one week to another, a single hour in private prayer! How few have any thought of God in the general tenor of your conversation! Who of you is, in any degree, acquainted with the work of his Spirit,... In the name of the Lord God Almighty, I ask, What religion are you of?

Even the talk of Christianity ye cannot, will not bear. Oh, my brethren! what a Christian city is this! 'It is time for thee, Lord, to lay thine hand!'"

You can well imagine that his listeners were not smiling by this point. How well was this sermon of exhortation received?

It is noted in the book Wesley's 52 Standard Sermons (by Rev. N. Burwash, STD, c. 1988, Scmul Publishing Company) something which should be no big surprise:

"This was the last sermon preached by Mr. Wesley before the University. ...This style of religious excitement was so distasteful of the collegiate mind, that they would have readily dispensed with the presence and the services of one who, in their estimation, was lowering the dignity of his clerical and literary standing" (p. 27; sermon excerpt from p. 38)

We Methodist preachers are required to read Wesley's sermons but not required to preach like him. Otherwise we might end up ruffling many more feathers, raising a few more eyebrows, and rubbing more people the wrong way than we do now. But is that the way it should be?

Every once in a while I will have someone greet me after a worship service with the comment: "Well, you certainly stepped on a few toes with that sermon, Preacher!" I am not so sure I should take that as a compliment or not.

Sometimes another person, overhearing the conversation, will say, "We need our toes stepped on every once in awhile." And I heard one person say, "If you can't stand the heat, then pick up your feet!"

At any rate, I cannot say I enjoy hearing such exhortative sermons and I certainly do not rejoice in giving them. After such sermons I will ask my wife, "Do you think I was too hard on them?" And I can always depend on my wife to be an honest critic.

John the Baptist was the archetype of one who gave exhortative sermons: "with many ...exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people" (Luke 3:18)

An exhortation is an urgent message, and that was what John was trying to convey. John told it like it was, no matter who you were. He was no respecter of persons.

John even told it like it was to king Herod. When you tell an authority figure that they are in the wrong, they just might use their power to have you silenced.

Because of his being so outspoken, John was imprisoned and eventually beheaded. But John proclaimed the truth, regardless of who it might rub the wrong way.

You would think that a person with such an abrasive message would be highly unpopular, yet people flocked from all over Judea to hear him speak and ask him advice.

Was it because people enjoyed being called a brood of vipers (Luke 3:7)? One would hardly consider that to be good news!

No. My guess is that the people knew that their lives were not up to God's standards and, deep down, knew that they should do something about it.

But even when we know we should do something about our lives, we tend to procrastinate. Yes, we will do something about it ...tomorrow, or when I get around to it ("round tuit?"-- Children's sermon?)

What the people needed was more than a little nudge. John gives them a shove in the right direction.

If they didn't straighten out their act, then they would be cut down like trees that do not bear good fruit. And they would be thrown into the fire (3:9).

If they continued in their ways of wickedness, they would be like the chaff separated from the wheat and thrown into the unquenchable fire (3:17).

It may be difficult to hear these words as "good news." But bad news is when you only tell what's wrong with people and what's wrong with the world, and offer no solutions.

I have heard bad news sermons before -- and I regret to say, in hindsight I realize I have preached a few of them myself.

Bad news sermons are ones which only emphasize what's wrong. They might indicate that it's our fault that the world is in the miserable shape it is in, that we should feel guilty about all the things that we do wrong and then leave the sermon there. A person could walk away mightily depressed after hearing that.

I once drew a cartoon with a preacher beating the pulpit with his fist and waving his other fist in the air, hollering, "With this sermon I will blast you about why you always do everything wrong, why God is angry with you, why you fail to be loving neighbors, and why -- for some reason -- you have such lousy self-esteem."

Bad news sermons are also those which emphasize only what's right. They may indicate that we're essentially all good people and that if we continue to be such good people, then everything is going to work out just fine and dandy.

Such sermons are deceitful in nature. They sound wonderful. They are really upbeat and send people away with a smile. But things are not always fine and dandy. And if being good was all that mattered and we could actually be good, then we would not need a Savior.

Good news sermons, on the other hand, not only point out that what's wrong, they also point out what needs to be done to correct it. They are proclamations, with many exhortations, of good news to the people.

People are looking for discipline in a world in which the motto "Anything goes" has led to chaos. People are looking for corrective guidance in a society where they find no meaning or direction.

This was the kind of discipline --the kind of hope, the kind of good news! -- that the people were looking for when they approached John. They knew they had a problem and John offered a solution. They came asking John, "What should we do?"

They came to be baptized and John was calling them to repent. What did they need to do? He told the crowds to share, the tax collectors to be fair, and the soldiers to be honest.

Yes, they were sinners -- that was bad news. But there was a way out -- that was good news! Repent and believe in the One who was coming, the One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.

A Sunday School teacher once asked a class what was meant by the word "repentance." A little boy put up his hand and said, "It is being sorry for your sins." A little girl also raised her hand and said, "It is being sorry enough to quit." (Donald Grey Barnhouse)

We just cannot arrive at the good news until we repent of the bad news in our life. The only way to the good news of salvation is by ridding ourselves of the bad news that is keeping us from God.

The question is, Do we need a little push to get us to make the decision to repent or do we need a mighty shove?

Many of the people who came to hear John preach were used to coasting in their walk with God. They were in their own little comfort zones.

What they needed was a mighty shove, and John knew it. They thought that as long as Abraham was their ancestor, they needed nothing else for salvation.

Some people use a similar excuse in their relationship to God today: "Well, my ancestor was so-an-so, a pillar of this church, so that should be enough to earn me salvation."

Not so. All of us need a personal -- and a corporate -- relationship with God. And not only do we need to know God, we need to act out our knowledge and our love of God.

When we act out that love God becomes more than just a name we hear about on Sunday morning. God becomes an integral part of our life every day.

When we act out that love our community of faith becomes more than just an unknown person we see occasionally sitting across the aisle from us. Each person becomes an integral part of the one body of Christ.

Today is Gaudete Sunday, "gaudete" meaning rejoice. We readily associate the theme of rejoicing with Paul's words in Philippians: "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say Rejoice" (4:4). But we seem to strain the term "rejoice" when John the Baptist exhorts us with words of repentance.

I like what Laurence Stookey had to say about this: "Can it be that 'rejoice' and 'repent' are the two sides of the same coin? If it seems a strange suggestion, perhaps that is because we have defined both words too narrowly. Rejoicing is knowing that God has opened up a new road; repentance means getting off the old path and walking on that new road.

...[T]urning from evil to good, in both our lives and in our corporate existence, is a necessary part of experiencing the deep joy of the season. Anything less results only in a superficial joy that fades with the disappearance of seasonal Muzak and decorations at the local mall" (from Circuit Rider, October 1991, pp. 16-17).

Let us not be "a generation of triflers; triflers with God, with one another, and with [our] own souls." Let us repent and, through our repentance, find the joy that only God can give.

Lightstreet United Methodist Church
(near Bloomsburg, PA, USA)
(Comments to: ltstumc@csrlink.net.)
Church Page
Church Growth Cartoons