By Hershael W. York
His entire life was a series of sermons about Himself. Whether He was standing on a ship beside the shore of Galilee preaching to a pressing throng of listeners or quietly speaking in hushed tones with His disciples in an upper room, Jesus was always preaching His glorious self, revealing more of Himself. Without Him, nothing else would matter. What would the kingdom be without a King? Where are the sheep without the Great Shepherd? What are the branches without the vine? What is a story about forgiveness without the one who alone can forgive? The Last Supper fades into meaninglessness apart from His body and His blood.
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For all these reasons, it would be extremely dangerous — even blasphemous — indiscriminately to model one’s preaching after Jesus. He just has too much on us. He’s God after all, and has a few more tools in His homiletical utility belt than we are equipped to handle.
On the other hand, the need of our day is every bit as acute as when Jesus walked physically on the earth. Furthermore, the truth He taught remains the only antidote to the world’s spiritual poison. The insight of the parables, the beauty of the Beatitudes, the woes against the ways of the outwardly religious Pharisees are not at all out of style or step with the times. While we cannot preach like Jesus in certain ways, we must follow his example in some significant identifiable ways.
The key lies in distinguishing the person of Jesus from the preaching of Jesus, His divine prerogatives from His human performance. In other words, if our preaching can reflect Him rather than merely mimic Him, our preaching can honor Him. Jesus’ preaching was both Self-centered and God-centered, while ours can only be the latter. If we can distinguish between the aspects of His preaching that belong solely to His deity and those characteristics that can still be communicated by earthen vessels, we can learn how to reflect Him better when we preach.
Once we take a step back from His person and evaluate His preaching, we understand five key ways in which Jesus preached Himself. One could easily find additional ways that Jesus preached Himself which we can emulate, but these core issues should mark and define our preaching as they did His.
Whenever Jesus preached, He always preached and pushed for a decision. He never concluded a discourse with, “But that’s just what I think. You might feel differently.” He forced a crisis, asked for a verdict, often confronting His audience with only two options — follow or don’t, be wise or be foolish, sell all or turn back, be a sheep or a goat! He forced his followers to face their future and to take responsibility for their actions. He made it clear that indecision was impossible because making no decision was actually making the choice to reject Him and His message.