Emotions That Correspond With the Weight of Reality

John Piper on George Whitefield again, on the acting of preaching as "real acting" (bold is mine)...

If a woman has a role in a movie, say, the mother of child in a burning house, and as the cameras are focused on her, she is screaming to the firemen and pointing to the window in the second floor, we all say she is acting. But if a house is on fire in your neighborhood, and you see a mother screaming to the firemen and pointing to the window in the second floor, nobody says she’s acting. Why not? They look exactly the same.

It’s because there really is a child up there in the fire. This woman really is the child’s mother. There is real danger that the child could die. Everything is real. And that’s the way it was for Whitefield. The new birth had opened his eyes to what was real, and to the magnitude of what was real: God, creation, humanity, sin, Satan, divine justice and wrath, heaven, hell, incarnation, the perfections of Christ, his death, atonement, redemption, propitiation, resurrection, the Holy Spirit, saving grace, forgiveness, justification, reconciliation with God, peace, sanctification, love, the second coming of Christ, the new heavens and the new earth, everlasting joy. These were real. Overwhelmingly real to him. He had been born again. He had eyes to see.

When he warned of wrath, and pleaded for people to escape, and lifted up Christ, he wasn’t play-acting. He was calling down the kind of emotions and actions that correspond with such realities. That’s what preaching does. It seeks to exalt Christ, and describe sin, and offer salvation, and persuade sinners with emotions and words and actions that correspond to the weight of these realities.

If you see these realities with the eyes of your heart, and if you feel the weight of them, you will know that such preaching is not play-acting. The house is burning. There are people trapped on the second floor. We love them. And there is a way of escape.

Read or listen to the rest of Piper's powerful talk on Whitefield. A great example and explanation of what preaching should be like. I don't think we do this well, not nearly well enough. Maybe this kind of preaching would change the face of Christianity in America and the western world today. Maybe it's not just the *how* of preaching but the *where* that would enact this change.

What do you think?

Comments

[Keith]

Great word brother....thanks for sharing!

Light & Heat!

[Steve McCoy]

Thanks Keith.

[Adam Ford]

Implying we need more open-air preaching?

[Steve McCoy]

Adam, I am continuing to grow in my opinion that open-air preaching today is typically bad and even shameful, and that gospel-saturated pastors and evangelists (not church revivalists) need to revive what we've always seen when the church has grown: Jesus, Acts, Luther, Whitefield, Wesley, Spurgeon, & many others preaching the gospel to the lost openly & publicly.

[Adam Ford]

That's intriguing indeed. I can't say I disagree regarding its importance. Have you blogged about this at all? If so, could you point me toward it? I'd love to hear more of your thoughts.

[Adam Ford]

Scratch that, just found the sidebar compass ;-)

[Steve McCoy]

Adam, yes. A lot, actually. Let me know what you think.

[Steve McCoy]

Scratch my response. :)