Would Jesus’ preaching pass muster in your church?

Imagine that your church has slipped through a time warp and you find yourselves sitting in the usual building but an unusual location; Capernaum, in the first half of the first century AD.

There is a kerfuffle outside and someone tells you that Jesus himself is passing by. You run outside and invite him in to preach. He accepts!

What could possibly go wrong?

Five thousand people once forgot their hunger just listening to Jesus teach, so he must have been interesting. His talks were peppered with stories; some were clear, revealing the truth, others were designed to conceal it. Matthew tells us that one of Jesus’ sermons was a cascade of seven stories about the kingdom of God. Seven stories with little explanation, that would be unnerving on a Sunday morning, wouldn’t it? But Matthew’s most famous example of Jesus in action is the Sermon on the Mount, a master class in preaching.

It begins with a verbal drumbeat: ‘Blessed are the… blessed are the… blessed are you…’ . One of the most famous speeches in modern history was directly inspired by this: ‘I have a dream… have a dream… I have a dream…’. Jesus disciples were already in the front row, here He is drawing in the rest of the crowd!

The first few minutes of a sermon are crucial and should answer the question: ‘What has this person got to offer?’ We should give our audience a compelling answer to that question; Jesus did.

Torah tour

After His crowd-pulling introduction, He settled into the Biblical content: ‘This is what Scripture says… and this is what it means’. It was a tour of the Torah applied to real life, anger, vengeance, sex-life, relationships, love, prayer, anxiety and much more. It was all so specific and utterly clear.

I now listen to more sermons than I preach, and I’m struck by two things. First, a lot of preaching has no clear relevance to how to live my life apart from: ‘Read your Bible, pray every day’. Second, a lot of preaching comes down to: ‘Are there areas of your life outside the Lordship of Christ?’ Well of course there are, I just need a little more detail to help change that.

In contrast, Jesus’ preaching was wide-ranging, specific, and challenging. He covered the whole of life, and He didn’t hold back. Neither should we.

The end of Jesus’ sermon was an unforgettable story – the houses on rock and sand. I once told that story to a group of seven-year-olds, none of whom had ever been to church. ‘What do you think it means?’, I asked. One of the kids said immediately: ‘It means that you need something firm to build your life on.’ Jesus taught in pictures, the clarity and power of which had not diminished in 2,000 years.

Preachers should prepare the end of their message first, asking the question: ‘Where is my sermon going and what is its heart?’ Turn that into a picture and finish with it.

Let’s get back to Capernaum. Jesus has gone for lunch and the elders are troubled. ‘Too many stories’, says one. ‘He dotted around the Bible a lot’, says another. But one of them nails it: ‘It was too lively, too pictorial and frankly not graduate-level’.

Jesus was drawn like a magnet to the people we instinctively avoid. He bent over backwards to be understood by them, whilst deliberately veiling His meaning from the cognoscenti. His teaching was vivid, compelling and, interesting. How does your preaching measure up to His?