Beyond Information Sharing: Preaching that Reveals Secrets

The prophet Jeremiah faced a challenge unlikely to be encountered by most modern preachers in the western world: his family were plotting to kill him.

...the men of Anathoth...are seeking your life and saying 'Do not prophesy in the name of the LORD or you will die by our hands'. (Jeremiah 11:21)

According to Jeremiah's own account of the incident, he was unaware of the conspiracy before it became an immediate threat. His insight into the plot came about, he claims, as a result of God revealing it to him:

Because the LORD revealed their plot to me, I knew it, for at that time he showed me what they were doing. (Jeremiah 11:18)  

The exact reasons for his family's extreme hostility are not fully given in the passage (Jeremiah 11:18-12:6) but it centred around their strong dislike of the prophet's message.

Great bible scholars whose opinions I respect and whose qualifications greatly exceed my own suggest that Jeremiah may have come to an understanding of the murder plot through a message being passed on to him by someone who was aware of it. The late John A Thompson, for instance, cites the influential archaeologist and biblical scholar Dr John Bright when he writes:

A sympathetic relative who brought the news may well have been Yahweh's informant. 

(JA Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah, p. 350, NICOT series)

While it is quite possible that this was the case, there is an alternative view at least worth considering: that the news of the plot on Jeremiah's life came to the prophet through immediate divine revelation, without any human intermediary.

The following factors seem to suggest that this was in fact the case:

• the repeated insistence in 11:18 of the agency of Yahweh in disclosing the deeds (“revealed”, “he showed me”)
• the inclusion of the possible word-for-word content of the revelation (12:6)
• the absence in the passage of any reference to a third party 
• the use of the word “reveal”; its only other use in the book indicates an immediate disclosure, without human means (38:21) 

The frequency in the book of auditory and/or visual messages as a means of divine communication with the prophet, messages which included the prediction of invasion, defeat and exile at the hands of the "enemy from the north", also suggest that the revealing of a secret conspiracy was not outside the scope of the spiritual possibilities experienced by Jeremiah as he sought to follow and discharge his call to be a "prophet to the nations" (1:5).

Taking a wider biblical view, we can see the revealing of secrets as an aspect of many of the great teachers, prophets, reformers and apostles of both the Old and New Covenants. These include Daniel's ability to describe both the content and the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar's unspoken dream (Daniel 2), the insight Jesus had of the Samaritan woman's five previous husbands and her current domestic arrangements (John 4), Peter's discernment of the motives and action of Ananias and Sapphira in their financial dishonesty (Acts 5).

A striking example from church history is from the preaching of Charles Spurgeon. The person on the receiving end of the revealed secrets explains:

Mr. Spurgeon looked at me as if he knew me, and in his sermon he pointed to me, and told the congregation that I was a shoemaker, and that I kept my shop open on Sundays; and I did, sir. I should not have minded that; but he also said that I took ninepence the Sunday before, and that there was fourpence profit out of it. I did take ninepence that day, and fourpence was just the profit; but how he should know that, I could not tell. Then it struck me that it was God who had spoken to my soul through him, so I shut up my shop the next Sunday. At first, I was afraid to go again to hear him, lest he should tell the people more about me; but afterwards I went, and the Lord met with me, and saved my soul. 

The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon [Curts & Jennings, 1899], II:226-27)

Commenting himself, Spurgeon says:

I could tell as many as a dozen similar cases in which I pointed at somebody in the hall without having the slightest knowledge of the person, or any idea that what I said was right, except that I believed I was moved by the Spirit to say it; and so striking has been my description, that the persons have gone away, and said to their friends, ‘Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did; beyond a doubt, he must have been sent of God to my soul, or else he could not have described me so exactly.’ And not only so, but I have known many instances in which the thoughts of men have been revealed from the pulpit. (ibid)

The link between revealing secrets and the power of the word of God is stated explicitly by the writer to the Hebrews:

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. 

(Hebrews 4:12-13)

Jeremiah, like some evangelists and pastors today in parts of the Muslim-majority world, experienced such extreme hostility to his message that his life was at risk. It was through an act of divine disclosure that he come to know of this danger and was able to take preventative measures (Jer 12:6).

In the age of encryption and Wikileaks, secrets are everywhere and feature powerfully in the activities of governments, corporations and nations. Individuals also carry secrets, for good or evil. As Christian believers read, hear and (especially) speak the word of God, may we do so not as mere conveyors of general information but as those who speak with that revelatory edge to our communication, confident that "there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries." As Daniel expressed this discovery:

He reveals deep and hidden things;

    he knows what lies in darkness,

    and light dwells with him.

(Daniel 2:22)

As the church learns to speak with such insight, may the hearers respond not with adulation of the human messenger but as Nebuchadnezzar did when he fell prostrate, with reverence for the God who reveals:

"your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings."

Seeker Friendly, New Testament Style (Part 2)

A common assertion made in debates about church meetings being seeker-friendly is that the use of charismatic gifts is off-putting to outsiders.

If that is the case, perhaps it is because we do not really see many expressions of charismatic gifts being exercised in local church life in the way the apostle Paul envisaged. That is, involving the active participation of all members in the use of the gifts they have been given for the common good. Instead, we may see at best a platform-dominated use of prophecy or healing and the occasional use of tongues sung or spoken corporately.

Perhaps it is this latter use of spiritual gifts that is reportedly off-putting to the outsider rather than the usage that Paul envisaged when he wrote to the believers in Corinth about the administration of spiritual gifts.

Paul's guidance for regulating the use of spiritual gifts in church meetings is twofold: their use should be both intelligible and edifying. The manifestations of the Spirit must be understood by those present so that they can be built up by them. For this reason, Paul gives some practical guidance in 1 Corinthians 14 on how the gifts should to be exercised in an intelligible and edifying way:

• tongues should be interpreted (13-17) and spoken one after another (27)
• prophecy should be delivered one after another rather than blurted out at the same time (29-31)
• prophecy should be weighed (29)
• women should not disrupt the meeting by chatting out of turn (34)

It is in this context that Paul applies the same principle of intelligibility to the needs of the non-believer who might be present in the meeting:

The key passage - and one that often proves difficult to understand - is 1 Corinthians 14: 20-25:

Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. In the Law it is written: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me," says the Lord.

Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!"

At first glance, the passage appears to contradict itself in several places. In v. 22, firstly, Paul says that tongues are a sign for unbelievers but in v 23 he says that when unbelievers hear the gift of tongues in the meeting, they will think the church is mad. Hardly a convincing sign, we might think.

In v. 22 and 24, Paul appears to make another contradiction. On the one hand, he asserts that prophecy is for believers but in 24, its use appears to be instrumental in convincing unbelievers of God's presence and their own guilt.

How do we resolve these apparent contradictions?

What is a Sign?

Firstly, we should understand what Paul means by "sign" in this passage. It is often assumed that the apostle is asserting that the gift of tongues is an evidence of the truth of the gospel that will lead unbelievers to faith in Christ.

Actually, the context of the passage requires us to see the use of the word sign in quite a different way. The quotation from the Old Testament is taken from the book of Isaiah. In that passage (Isaiah 28: 11-12) the prophet is predicting the impending invasion of the Assyrian army as a judgment on Judah and Jerusalem, an event which subsequently took place c. 700 BC. The "strange tongues" described by Isaiah are therefore the voices of Assyrian soldiers as they lay siege to Jerusalem and their presence indicates God's judgment on the nation.

The "sign" that Paul is referring to, therefore, in 1 Corinthians 14 is not a sign that confirms the truth of the gospel to the unbeliever, but is rather a sign of judgment upon him. When a non-believer hears the gift of tongues used without interpretation in a church meeting, that event signifies God's judgment on him. He is, to use another Pauline term, an "unspiritual man". The gift of tongues without interpretation highlights this fact and results in the seeker drawing an incorrect conclusion about the phenomenon he is observing.

Paul does not say that the presence of this sign is a good thing! Rather, Paul's point is that it serves no value to the outsider beyond confirming him in his ignorance of spiritual things. Therefore, implies Paul, tongues without interpretation is definitely NOT seeker-friendly!

Who is Prophecy For?

The second apparent contradiction can be resolved in a similar way. Paul does not say that prophecy is a "sign" for believers. Rather, he simply states that it "for believers." In other words, believers (rather than seekers) are the intended recipients of the gift of prophecy.

This being the case, the use of prophecy, unlike the use of uninterpreted tongues, is intelligible to both believers and outsiders. To the former, it serves to build them up. To the latter, its revelatory element serves to highlight their own guilt before God because they can understand it. A message in tongues may well be full of revelation (Paul earlier describes it as "uttering mysteries with your spirit") but, because it is not intelligible, the believers are not edified and the outsiders think you're all mad.

Prophecy, by contrast, which is also full of revelation, is intelligible to both saint and sinner. Its effect, therefore, is to edify the former and convict the latter.

Paul's conclusion should not come as a surprise in verse 39:

Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.

Paul saw the use of spiritual gifts as a positive thing in the life of the local church, both for the sake of the believers and for the benefit of the outsider. The key was that they should be exercised in ways that are understandable to both.

Struck by Isaiah

Prophets tend to be fairly direct in their style and delivery. Isaiah, I'm reminded as I reread his message, is no exception.

The opening five chapters of the book that bears his name is a stinging indictment against a society that owes its existence to God's gracious calling of them and which now has abandoned God for the pursuit of false gods and material wealth.

Without pulling any punches, the prophet laments the nation of Israel's slide into unfaithfulness and injustice:

"See how the faithful city has become a harlot!"

Particular evils highlighted in these opening chapters include:

• bloodshed (1:15)
• corruption (1:23)
• injustice towards the economically vulnerable (1:23)
• occult practices and pagan religion (2:6)
• the accumulation of wealth (2:7)
• the worship of created things (2:8)
• arrogance (2:17)
• conspicuous displays of wealth (3:16f)
• economic speculation (5:8)
• alcohol abuse (5:11)

In the midst of these opening pages, which for a book written over 2,700 years ago reads with alarming contemporary relevance, the prophet announces a ray of hope.

Firstly, God promises cleansing from sin (4:4). Secondly, he announces a mountain that draws the nations (2:2f), the latter containing imagery resonant with the emergence of the Christian church.

I think I'm going to enjoy becoming reacquainted with "the evangelist of the old testament."