Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? –Proverbs 6:27
I, like many others, have been listening to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. It’s an incredibly sobering look, by Mike Cosper, at the ministry of Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill in Seattle. I thought of Proverbs 6:27 as I was listening to one of the more recent podcasts.
At a conference Driscoll was talking about the importance of a plurality of elders. It’d protect from one preacher not being the center, people not following a single man. He talked about the dangers of celebrity. It was as if he was saying that it was holding fire to the chest. It was incredibly insightful. I only wish he had listened to his own advice.
That’s the thing with Solomon. He didn’t listen to his own advice. He held fire to his chest and it cost him his entire empire. How could this happen? Why would Solomon have done this if he knew better? Solomon knew better. So did Driscoll. So, why? I think Bruce Waltke gives a helpful answer:
“If one should ask, ‘If Solomon is the wise author, how could he have died such a fool?’ let it be noted that he constructed his own gibbet on which he impaled himself—that is, he ceased listening to his own instruction. Spiritual success today does not guarantee spiritual success tomorrow”.
The other day I picked up my copy of Dangerous Calling by Paul Tripp. Look at the back cover:
Harris no longer identifies as a Christian and Tchvidjian had his own fall. A dangerous calling indeed. How does this happen? Ironically enough, I think one answer is found in Tripp’s book; namely, we lose our awe.
This means that every sermon should be prepared by a person whose study is marked by awe of God. The sermon must be delivered in awe and have as its purpose to motivate awe in those who hear…Now it’s very hard to preach and shape the ministry of the church this way if familiarity has produced a blindness that effectively robbed you of your awe of God. It is very difficult in ministry to give away what you do not possess yourself. (Tripp, 118-119)
We lose our awe but the machine keeps churning so we have to fake it. We pastors have put together Bible studies and sermons enough times that we can put together words which appear to be passionate and God-wrought but are still empty. And because God’s Word is powerful and because God can speak through a donkey, the posing preacher may even lead a “successful” ministry. He may even be known as a great preacher—but it’s built on oration instead of awe. And this will eventually brutalize his soul. You cannot hold this fire to your chest and not get burned.
You can fake sermons and teaching—but you cannot fake awe. The pastor who is not motivated by awe of God is engaging in a type of pornography every time he prepares a disinterested sermon or Bible study. Consider this definition from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.
I appreciate Carl Trueman’s commentary on this. The biggest problem, says Trueman, is that “it repudiates any notion that sex has significance beyond the act itself, and therefore it rejects any notion that it is emblematic of the sacred order.” (Trueman, 99) That’s why I say that the preacher is engaging in a type of pornography when he delivers a sermon or Bible-study without awe. He’s pretending like the act itself—getting through that 30 minute talk—is sufficient. But the sermon, the Bible study, the counseling session, etc. has a significance outside of itself.
If your pastor was consuming pornography on a daily basis, how long do you think he could go without a very public collapse? How long before his soul withers and what is done in the dark is brought to the light? I would argue that the same is true for a pastor without awe. Every time he preaches a sermon or leads a Bible study without awe—and gets away with it—he is feeding a monster which will destroy him. How much more will this happen if he not only “gets away with it” but he is platformed, even though his soul has been untethered from awe for quite some time?
What do we do if we find ourselves losing awe? Well, we don’t need a list of things to do. Law never awes. We need the gospel—fresh, anew, and inspiring. Not a gospel to preach, but a gospel to feast upon for ourselves. We have to be willing to not settle for anything less. We cannot let ourselves get away with it.
Awe-less sermonizing is a fire that you cannot hold up to your chest without getting burned. Thankfully, the gospel burns brighter. Hold the precious truths of Jesus up to your chest instead.
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