Ephesus reveals no difference in the pattern. “He entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8). Later, “he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus…so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord…” (vv. 9-10). There is clearly no conflict between authoritative procla¬mation and a methodology of explaining, arguing and reasoning, in order to persuade. We need to regain this balanced approach in order to bridge the gap in our own context.
Our problem today lies in our sometimes frenetic quest for “relevance” in preaching, as though we have to “do something” with the text of Scripture, to enable it to speak into our culture. We do not have to make it relevant, nor do we need to try. Nothing could be more relevant than the living Word of the living God, spoken with all His unchanging authority to our gener¬ation. And that is what the word of Scripture actually is. Our task is to explain and prove, to proclaim and persuade. We have to allow the Bible to “do something” with and in us first, if ever we are to be able to speak “as one who speaks oracles of God” (1 Pet. 4:11).
Luke’s careful vocabulary indicates that there was no substantial difference in approach or methodology, whether Paul was in the synagogue or the marketplace. He did not conduct a research project among his pagan hearers in order to decide which of their pressing issues or felt needs he could use as a springboard for his gospel presentation, because that would mean that their agenda was in the driving seat. Of course, he was an acute observer of their culture, so that he can tell the Athenians, “I perceive that in every way you are very religious” (Acts 17:22ff.).
Of course, he spoke to them where they were, in their cultural context, using language and thought forms which were normal and natural to them. But the con¬tent of his preaching was never governed by that culture. The striking thing about his Areopagus address is that its content is entirely devoted to declaring the character and activity of the true and only living God. “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23).
It is surely the mark of an enfeebled church, on the defensive, that it seeks to meet the agenda of the secular culture, in what is preached and how it is preached. We need to dialogue with its questions, but we dare not dance to its music. The mark of the apostles’ authority was that they confronted and challenged the first-century Graeco-Roman world, by posing a different set of questions and proclaiming a radically different agenda, both of which emanated from God.
Yet all this was always in the context of reasoned explanation and persuasive argument. Dick Lucas has often put it with characteristic insight and penetration in this way: so much contemporary preach¬ing is persuasive but in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. We tend to enquire of our hearers whether there might be some way in which they could be “persuaded” to accept God. But the real issue, which the Bible stresses over and over again, is whether there is any way in which a holy God could be “persuaded” to accept us, in all our sinful arrogance and ignorance. And that leads to a wholly different preaching agenda.