The Place to Start
What is the single most crucial thing that you need to understand when doing ministry? What is the one thing that everything else must hinge upon? From the title of this post, you can probably guess what my answer will be. It is that Christ is Lord. Everything else flows out of this understanding. As you work to grow your church and seek to raise up expositional teachers, the Lordship of Christ in all things has to be the most important thing. If we depend on our own strength or on our ability to teach people, then we have failed before we even start. If you rely on the platform you have built or the gifts you have been given, you have already stumbled. This is true of everything we do in ministry. This is clear in the great commission that Christ gives to his disciples. He says, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18, ESV). This must be our starting place.
Lordship In Acts
In Scripture, one of the most transparent things that we see, if we are willing to look, is that the authority of Christ is the means by which we are to do everything. In Acts, this is especially clear. Luke's account starts with the ascension of Christ and his final words to the disciples. These final words are an echo of the great commission. Jesus tells them that they are to be his witness to the world. This idea of being his witness means that they do not go out in their own authority but are his messengers, speaking his words under his authority. It is all about Christ. When Peter stands up at Pentecost, he is able to speak boldly because he knows the one who has all authority. This boldness comes only as a result of his faith in the Lordship of Christ. Paul, later in Acts, demonstrates the same boldness when he interacts with the Athenians in Acts 17 or with Felix in Acts 24. They preach repentance and judgment, not worried about people responding negatively because they know who is really in control.
The Danger of Seeker Sensitivity
This is an understanding we need to come back to. We need to be more worried about what God thinks rather than what the world around us or a particular person will think. Sadly, it is increasingly common to find churches more concerned about what people think rather than what God thinks. People believe that if we preach on repentance, judgment, hell, or the need for obedience, people are going to be turned away from Jesus. This is one of the central premises of the seeker-sensitive movement. The idea is to get people into the door and to do nothing that would cause them to be offended and leave. The result is a watered-down gospel that is no gospel at all. We make ourselves out to be more intelligent or more civilized than the people who came before us. We look at people like Paul and say we can do better. This is a severe error. We need to come back to the understanding of Paul and Peter and their faith in the Lordship of Christ.
Training Teachers
As we look to raise up teachers in the church, we need to remember the Lordship of Christ. We need to follow the example of Peter, Paul, and Christ himself to preach and teach with boldness. Peter and John's words to the Jewish counsel must always be in our minds. “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20). They are not worried about upsetting the Jews. They are more concerned about being faithful to Christ. If we allow someone to teach in our churches who does not have this same concern, then we have a severe problem. We will be held accountable for everything we teach and for what we allow to be taught. When we are training teachers, we need to be okay with the idea of people not being qualified. We must be okay with people being upset with us because of what we teach. Christ teaches us that if they hated him, they will hate us who teach his words.
Lordship Exposition
If we start with the Lordship of Christ in all things, we are much less likely to make errors in expositing the text. It is much harder to bring my own ideas into the text when I have a good and proper fear of the Lord. This is the beginning of wisdom. Like John Knox, we should tremble when we take up the teaching of God's Word because mishandling it is serious. So commit yourselves to be faithful to God's Word, to be faithful to teach all that he has commanded, and to remember that it is in his authority. Train your people to have this same commitment. A host of errors will be avoided if we hold fast to this commitment. We will be much bolder in calling our listeners to repentance and faith. When people reject the message we preach, we do not have to worry because we know that it is not us they are truly rejecting, but it is Christ they are rejecting. Anyone who is teaching in the church is teaching in authority. We had best understand that it is Christ's authority.
Soli Deo Gloria
Resources
MacArthur, John. The Truth about the Lordship of Christ. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012.
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