Proclaimer Blog
When the passage overwhelms
Last week I preached Luke 4.1-13 (the temptations of Jesus). I found it an overwhelming passage. There is immense truth in it: deep, deep things which search the very nature of salvation determined for all eternity. Here is the second Adam (hence the genealogy) rejecting the way of the first Adam, tempted in the same way, but standing firm. Here is the Son of God where every temptation threatens his very sonship loudly acclaimed by the first three chapters of Luke (and also hinted at in the genealogy). Here is our High Priest being tempted as we are, in every way, yet without sin.
I had 25 minutes.
What do you do with such a rich passage where words seem barely able to convey the depth and enormity of what is going on? What do you with such a rich passage where you have been moved to tears in your preparation and you worry that you will be totally unable to convey that intensity in an evening sermon at the end of a long weekend.
Here’s what you do: you do what you always do. You prepare faithfully. You pray diligently. And you trust that the Spirit who made the text live for you will make the text live for your hearers. You don’t try to artificially stimulate a reaction. Nor do you worry that your words will be insufficient. As with every other sermon, you realise that you can’t say everything about everything, and that is OK. You don’t – in other words – prepare the purple passage in any different way than the other passages. For, you see, they are all purple. They all proclaim Christ in a deep, significant way. Perhaps you see it here more than you did in Isaiah 55. But it is the Scripture, nonetheless.