The Desperate Need for Clarity in Preaching

In Albert Mohler's essay on expository preaching, his quotation from John MacArthur really brings us to the heart of the preacher's task: "I want people who listen to me to understand exactly what God's Word demands of them when I am through" (GPTG pg. 114). This is the job of a minister of the Word, and he must not shirk from it. In Joshua 24, we see Joshua himself doing this exact thing when he delivers an ultimatum to Israel: you must choose either God or your idols. A preacher must not leave his people mentally sitting on the fence, not knowing what God requires of them. He must speak with clarity and seek to deliver a message that leaves no doubt in anyone's mind what their duty is before God and man.

As I pondered this, I remembered what I have been reading in "The Courage to Be Protestant", as well what we had read at the beginning of Mohler's essay last week. Wells has written about the postmodern approach to Christianity and its deemphasis on the objectivity of truth and an accompanying lack of clarity in postmodern teaching. Actually, in many cases it is an intentional ambiguity that in part leaves the actual meaning up to the reader himself. The problem with this indistinct language and the deemphasis on the knowability of truth is that it is incompatible with Christianity. Christianity is all about objectivity and concrete facts. When we remove this, we lose the knowledge of what exactly God requires of us.
In 1 John, we see a strong emphasis on knowing things that pertain to the faith: our salvation, the truth, the presence of the last days, etc. Jesus himself said "and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (Jn. 8:32). If there is not a dedication to the objective truth of the Word in its exposition, there will be foundationless churches that really have no message for the world. This is what Paul spoke of in Ephesians 4 when he said: "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes."

Since some of us may end up being pastors in the future, the points that Mohler and Wells make are incredibly important. One of the tasks of a pastor is to equip the saints towards the attainment of the knowledge of the Son of God. That is why we need to look to the Bible as the objective, revealed truth of God and preach it as such.