Most preachers have a basic tendency, I think, to feel more comfortable either rebuking/exhorting or encouraging in their preaching. That will be to do with the complicated mixture of background, culture, personality, theology, hopes and fears that make up the person that each of us is. If you’re not sure which way you go on this, those who hear you regularly can most likely tell you. It’ll be the tone you often default to when you’re freewheeling or when your mouth is on autopilot or when you’re busking it a bit due to lack of preparation.

My hunch (and I might be wrong) is that significant elements in our evangelical culture lead a larger number of us to be more natural rebukers, or at least exhorters, than encouragers. Certainly, whatever our natural tendency is, we’ve got to be especially alert to when our preaching text is calling us to do what comes less naturally. The encouragers are likely to blunt the hard edge of biblical commands; the rebukers/exhorters are likely to turn God’s indicative statements into commands.

This came to my mind today when doing some work on the parable of the sower in Matthew 13.1-23. A sermon was naturally forming in my mind (and you’ve heard and maybe preached it a thousand times on this parable) that urged Christians to focus on all the elements of soil-types 2 and 3 that still lurk in us. Fair enough: there is plenty there that pushes the preacher to urge believers to persevere. But Jesus ends with the very wonderful v.23 describing the fruitful soil – this one ‘hears the word and understands it’ and ‘produces a crop’.

In just about every church where this could be preached there are believers hearing the message who have proved not to be soil-type 2, because they’ve endured through trouble for more than a while; nor are they showing many signs of being soil-type 3, because their evident desire is to press on with Christ through all the cares of this world. This passage surely demands that the preacher describe such people (probably the majority, in any healthy church), and say: “You’re doing the right thing. Press on. The fruit is evident and is growing. God is graciously giving you the ‘abundance’ that Jesus promised (v.12).” So, for such people, if I’m only going to make one application to them in my sermon, it should surely be not, ‘You know you’re being choked by the cares of the world, don’t you – stop it!”, but, “You show every sign of being a good and faithful servant. What a joy and grace that is!”.