Carl Trueman was speaking at a Banner of Truth Minister’s Conference in the last couple of years. In an offhanded (or what I took to be offhanded!), Trueman challenged ministers who might have a weak view of preaching to read Martin Luther’s commentaries on Genesis. There, in those commentaries, he said, you will see the power of God’s Word. You will see a man who believes that God’s Word is transformative.
This is decidedly the need of the hour. I remember several years ago being with a group of evangelical ministers. A minister we all knew and liked approached the group and excitedly told us that his leadership board had just given him the okay to cancel, for good, their Sunday evening preaching service. One of the other men said, “Great! Now you can do something useful with the time.” At that moment, the words of Sinclair Ferguson came to mind. He said with that Scottish accent, “You may say that your preaching is no longer effective, but you may not say that preaching is no longer effective.”
That is where Luther comes in. We need to recover the power of the transformative Word of God in the preaching of His Word. I consider myself to have a high view of the preached Word, but I took up Trueman’s challenge and read Luther on Genesis. It was worth it. In our world of debates about how God created, it was refreshing to read Luther’s simple but powerful, “God speaks a mere Word, and immediately the birds are brought forth from the water. If the Word is spoken, all things are possible, so that out of the water are made either fish or birds.”[1] Luther then applies the word, “Therefore we must take note of God’s power that we may be completely without doubt about the things which God promises in His Word.”[2] Brothers, is that word a challenge to you? Do you believe without doubt that God’s Word is powerful?
This same kind of no-nonsense approach to the Word is seen in many other places of the commentary. Perhaps one of my favorites is when Luther is describing the Tree of Life and how God might have used a simple fruit to sustain life forever. After a paragraph or so Luther asks, “Here again a question is proposed: How did a physical food or a fruit have the power to preserve a body in this way that in the course of time it did not become more inactive or sickly?” For Luther the answer was simple. He writes in the very next sentence, “But the answer is easy (Ps. 33:9): ‘He spoke, and it was done.’”[3] That is the sort of decidedness the minister needs when in his study, counseling chair, and especially the pulpit.
In fact, when Luther is discussing the seventh day, he writes that “there is another life after this life; to attain it we need the Word and the knowledge of God.”[4] He goes further, “Early in the morning of the seventh day, which had been sanctified by the Lord, God speaks with Adam, gives him directions concerning His worship, and forbids him to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the real purpose of the seventh day: that the Word of God be preached and heard.”[5] My brothers in the ministry, is this the conviction you have regarding the Lord’s Day? That it was made so that the Word of God could be preached and heard? And now, since the Fall this preaching is imperative and vital? Does the conviction that this Word is powerful and able to transform the lives of those sitting under it lay hold of your mind and affections? My brothers, may this conviction grip you as you prepare to stand behind Gods’ holy desk this Lord’s Day.
Jeffrey A. Stivason, Ph.D. is pastor of Grace Reformed Presbyterian Church in Gibsonia, PA. He is also the New Testament Professor at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA. Jeff is the editor of Ref21 and Place for Truth.
[1] Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 1-5, vol. 1 (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1958), 49.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 92-93.
[4] Ibid., 81.
[5] Ibid.