(bright music) - Hello, my name is Kevin Smith, teaching pastor here at Family Church in South Florida, and it is a joy to be able to spend some time with you thinking about one particular thing, preaching with purpose. Preaching with purpose is something that's dear to my heart and I wanna kinda anchor our thoughts. In Nehemiah 8:8 it says, "When Ezra was reading the law that he read in the law distinctively, he gave the meaning of the law, and he caused the people to understand the reading.
" So preaching with purpose means that I have a objective and a goal for my preaching ministry. I pray, and I desire that God's people would be transformed by my preaching ministry. And so let me say three things and see if these things will be helpful to you.
One is to see that purpose as a priority. Over the years of encouraging planters, and I myself, I planted a church nearly 25 years ago, more than 25 years ago in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I have found that the logistics of planting, the emotional toll of planting, the missiological thrust of planting, the investment of getting to know your community and getting to know people in your community, the relational dynamics of planting, of building up a core team and then building up a leadership team, all those kind of things take valuable time and energy. And are all those things are a worthwhile expenditure of time and energy.
And so I find myself always encouraging church planters and replanters to give priority to the preaching of God's Word, to give priority to the preaching and preparation to preach of God's Word. Sometimes we can find ourselves in a cycle where there are so many things to be done, and those things are good and legitimate things, that sermon preparation, time in God's Word, personal devotion, the preparation, the spiritual preparation of the preacher, we can find those things lacking sometime. And so the first thing of preaching with purpose is to make preaching a priority in your thought process and your life as a church planter or replanter.
So one thing is to take Ephesians 4:11 very seriously, even from the core team level. You need to begin to develop other leaders and other people who can do significant task. I know with those years of set up and breakdown alike, and loading stuff up, and having your office in a trunk of someone's car, and doing your counseling at Waffle House or some other kind of cafe or diner, I know the transitory nature of that lifestyle, and so one of the things that's gonna have to be a priority for the preacher is giving priority to preaching.
Sadly, I think sadly, and certainly unfortunately, sometimes I encounter people who have a burden for a community and a burden for planting, or a burden for revitalizing a dying congregation, and yet sometimes they think of preaching as a necessary evil, or they think of preaching as something they just have to do and they don't have a eager desire to proclaim the Word of God. And I wanna suggest that preaching with purpose begins with giving priority to the preaching of the Word, because you believe that the scripture and the preaching of the gospel, and all of those things are, one, a lamp unto the feet of God's people and a light unto their pathway. And secondly, you believe in a very pneumatic Spirit-empowered sense what Paul says in Romans chapter 1, that the power of the salvation is in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And then secondly, that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And so part of preaching with purpose is giving priority to the act of preaching, to preparation for preaching, and to preparation of the preacher. I did not do my best in preaching when I got up on Sunday morning after a week of logistical heavy work and a week of Saturday heavy work, and then I'm trying to get everything straight on Sunday morning, And you grab to the moment of preaching like, "Hey, I'm the tired church planter or replanter.
" I never felt like I was giving my people my best when I was in that scenario, so give priority to preaching. That's real important. Nehemiah said that he read in the word distinctively, he gave the sense of the scripture, and he caused the people to understand the scripture.
And so secondly, I would encourage you to value your people understanding God's Word. Again, if preaching is not a priority and it's kind of a necessary evil, something we feel like we need to do, then we don't always give our people the air or the feel that the Word of God is a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path, and you need to give good heed to studying and preaching the Word. And so Dr Danny Akin, who's the president of Southeastern Seminary, and who is a friend of the Send Network, he often says that when we preach the Word of God, we teach our people how to read the Bible.
And so if you're dealing with the scripture in a very superficial way, if you're dealing with the scripture where it's really a launching path for you to do a lot of talking points and a lot of just stuff you could really say without the scripture, we're not giving our people a grounding in the Word of God and doing, as Nehemiah said, causing them to understand the reading. So I would encourage you to value your people understanding scripture. They need to understand the context in which you are planting, and certainly your core team needs to understand that.
They need to understand the context of idolatry and sinful patterns within your community. They need to understand all the missiological data of your community with demographics and socioeconomic things and all that. All of that is important.
But I wanna encourage you as a planter or a replanter to make sure that you, and your core team, and your initial leaders have a strong understanding of the value of God's people being fed the Word of God, understanding the Word of God, obeying the Word of God, and walking in the Word of God. We are Bible people. Hey, as planters, we are supported by thousands of congregations who the Baptist faith and message says we believe in the authority, and the truthfulness, and the sufficiency of the scripture, and so may our church planting, and may our replanting reflect that type of belief in the sufficiency of God's Word for the shaping, and the molding, and the fruitfulness of God's people.
So I wanna encourage you to preach with purpose. You gotta really give priority to preaching in your life, and in your thinking, and in the preparation of the preacher to preach with purpose. Secondly, you have to desire for your people to understand the Word.
And then thirdly, to preach with purpose you have to desire that your people would be transformed and changed by the Word. So faith without doing is a deception according to James. Let us be doers of the Word and not hearers only.
And so not only do you want to make sure that your people understand the Word, preach with that purpose, I have a purpose that people understand the scriptures. Not just that they're impressed with my illustration, not just that they laugh at my jokes, not that they think I'm a good communicator or I dress nicely, but that people understand the scripture. Why?
Because I believe that is how people are transformed. And so when the Bible says that the scripture is good for correction, and rebuke, and training in righteousness, that the person of God will be prepared for good works and for fruitful living as a Christian, we have to desire that. What is our purpose?
Our purpose is that we might preach that God's people, those who are mature, those who were saved and baptized in our church plant last week, that God's people would be transform by understanding God's Word and then creating a congregational environment where they're provoked to obey God's Word. And so I pray that you would preach with purpose. I pray that you would value the scripture.
And as a very practical point, I pray that you would think about the priority of preaching in the planter or replanter's life, us, you. I pray that you would make sure that you desire your people to understand the scripture and that they would leave thinking about the truth of the scripture, not just our illustration, or our joke, or how we looked, or how we communicated. And then thirdly, that you have setups of accountability, group leaders, other type leaders, where we could provoke one another to be transformed as we obey and believe the scripture.
Preaching is not a necessary evil. Preaching is a joy that we get to speak on behalf of the Holy God and communicate his Word just as the prophets did, just as the apostles did. And I hope you see that as a privilege, and I pray that you will preach with purpose.
