Video Transcript: Session 11 Laleo

Welcome back. This is session 11, of preacher preparation presentation preparing to preach. Now in our last couple of sessions, we have begun this exploration of what it means to preach at least according to the New Testament. And we've seen these first couple of words here that euangelizo , that proclaiming of good news or proclaiming of the gospel and how this is giving an evangelistic message basically. And then last time we looked at didasko is that idea of teaching, that we have to be people who occasionally in our ministries of preaching, teach, and that means convey a truth and contract the facts in such a way that people will learn them. Now, today, we're going to take an interesting word. The word is laleo in the New Testament, and it simply means to speak. In fact, I'm giving it this definition for the for the sake of this particular lecture today, to speak of important things. But there are times in our messages. As we plan our sermon series. As we plan our year of preaching, however you do that practice or that you speak of important things, what I mean here will become clearer as we go on. Now, laleo can refer to just common speech in the New Testament. In other words, it's not a presentation of something to people, it's not a sermon that's coming to people, but it's just the fact that, you know, people have spoken to each other. For instance, here's Jesus saying, I told you that every one will have to give an account for every empty word they have spoken. In other words, he's saying that there are some words that are empty words, but every words all of our communication, somehow, we're going to be judged on at least according to Jesus there. And you can do a study of that passage, if you want to understand more deeply what it means. But then Ephesians 4:25, these words of Paul, therefore, each of you must put off falsehood, and speak, laleo, truthfully to your neighbor, so we are all members of one body. So they're not necessarily speaking about spiritual things to each other. They're not exactly telling great doctrinal truths to each other, it's just the talking to each other, don't lie to each other, speak the truth. So that's just common language kind of laleoing. And then this one from Ephesians 4. My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this everyone, or this is actually from James 1, I missed the reference there. So I'm sorry, James 1, my dear brothers and sisters, take note of this, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak slow to laleo and slow to become angry. Now, speaking here, is not necessarily again, a sermon. It's not necessarily conveying truth and facts and the teaching way, it's just speaking. So we should be listening more than we are speaking in our lives. Because, you know, we should take time to be intimate with other people in the sense of understanding where they come from, and slow to become angry. So James is talking there, and it and that's what he's saying to His people who sometimes apparently, we're just talking over each other. And you probably know some people like that. And so this is the direction here, it refers to common everyday language, but the word laleo sometimes, just speaking, refers to preaching. In fact, sometimes it is translated that way. You see it in the life of Jesus, while Jesus was still talking to the crowd, and the word is laleo, so he's laleoing to the crowd. He's speaking to the crowd. Now, that sounds a lot like sermon doesn't it? Making a sermon speaking to the he's, he's making a presentation to the crowd. And then his mother and brothers stood outside wanting to speak to him. And then another place, the disciples came to him as Why do you speak to the people in parables? Now, the ministry of Jesus, therefore can't be understood without understanding the idea of laleoing that, again, here's a picture of him with his disciples and some others, and they're reflecting on something together. But But Jesus is speaking of important things to them. It's not just the common everyday language, like, what do you think of the weather we're having, oh, this is something that's not it's not that kind of conversation. It's a conversation that goes deeper. It's a conversation that has a life to it because it's about important stuff. Now we find the same thing when we look at Paul's ministry. He sometimes refers to himself as someone who was speaking. And speaking what he means is I was presenting some things to you, I was speaking not just about the weather, not just about, you know how the local baseball or football team is doing, but I was speaking to you about some important things about life. This is how he puts it in II Corinthians 12:19, he said, Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you, we have been speaking, Laleoing in the sight of God as those in Christ. And everything we do, dear friends, is for your strengthening. So he says, We're speaking where we've been with you here in Corinth, and we're telling you about life. Now, if you look at the letters of I and II Corinthians, you get an idea of what Paul was talking about, because he talks about a lot of important things. And you can almost picture him gathering with people and, and speaking to them about things like division in the church, because very early on, he said, What I'm hearing some rumors about you Corinthian people are some of you are identifying with Paul, and some with Apollos, and some with Peter, and who am I who was crucified for you. We're just workers in the vineyard. So he's talked to them about division in the church. He talked to them about the way of salvation. He talked to them about spiritual gifts, because they had some problems with how they were dealing with spiritual gifts that each of them had gotten spiritual gifts. And some, like the gift of tongues are being raised above others in importance. And so he teaches them about spiritual gifts. In I Corinthians 13, he teaches them he talks to them about love. It's a teaching in one sense, but it's talking about important stuff about how the world in the Christian's life has to be engaged with loving people, a chapter 14, church service, he gave me some direction about that, but he's telling them about important things. They're talking about important things about what it's like to hold a church service, chapter 15, the great resurrection chapter about the fact that you know, Christ has not been raised and then our our preaching's in vain. Now, he's not preaching that he's talking to them. It's, it's a conversation. So you find this with Jesus that laleoing sometimes it's just talking about important subjects, subjects that these people need to know about. And the same is true of Peter. Now, Peter, you know, we learn a lot about him in the gospels as kind of this impetuous follower of Jesus Christ, but also not one who's a failure in his ministry in that he denied Jesus Christ. And then we find him recommissioned in John 21. That happens to be a passage I read this morning, in my devotions, where Jesus comes to Peter after the resurrection, and says three times do love me and recommissions Peter to feed his sheep to take care of his flock. Peter became a passionate, passionate advocate for Jesus Christ and passionate preacher. And, you know, tradition about him is that when he came to the end of his life, he was going to be crucified. And he asked to be crucified upside down. He says, I'm not worthy to die the same way my Lord died. And so that Peter uses this word laleoing to describe a ministry of spiritual gifts, even look at this passage. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received, to serve others. If anyone speaks, they should do so as well as speaks Laleo only the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides. So that all things God may be praised for Jesus Christ, to Him be the glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Now, what he's talking about here, is not necessarily the preaching, but it could be the preaching. It's that fact that this is a spiritual gift for some people to be able to speak on a regular basis to be able to speak in such a way that important things are, are understood and important things are discussed and important. Things are decided because there's been this conversation, there's been this reality check that is given by a speaker to listeners and then hopefully back and forth. Now, when we're going to talk about laleoing here, then we're talking about this kind of speaking, speaking about important things. Now, some people call this therapeutic preaching. In other words, we're going to speak about things that relate to the life and the heart of the people. Others talk about it in the sense of preaching practical sermons, as opposed to doctrinal sermons. You know, it's it's one of the great pains of a preachers life when, when the congregation gives back the word that, you know, we want more down to earth sermons, in other words, that sometimes theology is seen as something up there, and we want something down here. Well, there, you know, it's a dichotomy that doesn't really have to exist. But what they're talking about is, is the messages that are down here that relate to my life, that are practical, but are, are about important things. And I just made a brief list of some of the important things that can be and should be talked about in the life and ministry of a preacher. And so occasionally, you will schedule into your preaching plan for the year for the month for the three months, however you do that you will schedule in sometimes where you talk about important things, Scripture gives a lot of important directives on how we should apply the Word of God to our lives, that the gospel, the good news, as it infuses our life impacts every part of it. And so marriage and family house, if there's anything that needs some insight from God's a word of the kingdom in into us to tell us how to do this better. It's in the area of marriage and family in the United States, you know, the divorce rate, as is skyrocketed over decades, and has now reached a plateau. But, you know, the general wisdom is that one out of every two marriages, ends in divorce. And so Wow, let's talk about what it means. Let's have a conversation that we begin in our church that talks about, what does it mean for wives to submit yourself to your husbands and husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her? What does that mean for people? Let's talk about that important thing. I once did a series on scripture, in order to initiate conversation about family life and talking about family life. I did a series on the the dysfunctional families in the Bible. I mean, if you look early and Isaac's and Rebecca's family, it was dysfunctional. Isaac had a favorite, and it was Esau. And Rebecca had a favorite, and that was Jacob. And they played off each other, they deceived each other all of these four people. And you know, Jacob gets the birthright. And as a result, he cheats. His father lies to his father deceives his father, and gets the blessing of the firstborn. And then Esau says he's gonna kill him. And so Jacob runs for his life, at cetera, et cetera, dysfunctional family. And, and we talked about dysfunctional families, where parents show favoritism, where parents have tried to undercut the other one and aren't on the same page. It was, it was just young. But now that story is part of the redemption story, certainly. And that's an exciting thing to talk about. But it also gives us some good lessons to talk about in family and life, or being a better employee. There are things that we can learn from scripture, about doing our work faithfully, about taking on the attitude of slaves in Ephesians 5, after talking about family, Paul talks about slaves. He says, you know, you've got to work for your earthly masters, not as if you're working for them, but you're working for the Lord, everything we do is for the Lord. And so there are directions there that we could take into our messages. And we can make applicable to speak about these important subjects. There may be some principles that should be applied from scripture that we talk about these things, being a good citizen, you know, from Jeremiah, where God tells the exiles into Babylon, settle down, build houses, have children, grow your life there, because of the city where you are planted prospers, you will prosper. And I'm going to bring you back. After seven years, I'm going to bring back people back to Jerusalem. Spiritual Warfare, something we should talk about, here are some other ones, depression. A lot of people experience depression, we could initiate a conversation about that, how to handle it handle anger. One of the books I'm reading now is overcoming emotions that divide and destroy. It's written by Chip Ingram. And Becca Johnson. He is a pastor, a radio preacher, as well as the pastor of the church. And she is a licensed marriage and family counselor, and they talk about anger for the whole book, the kinds of anger, but related to Scripture, because this is an important subject, because if we handle this poorly, we're going to be setting things off badly. Now, how to evangelize sex and dating, etc, etc. I like the way one man put it. I accessed his blog, and in fact, I have some quotes from him in my blog, which is preachingacts.com and Sherman Haywood Cox II, he said living as a member of God's Kingdom has relevance to our life down here. In other words, we got to be aware that there is an important part of life here that we should learn. And how do we get that we talk about important things. Now, these messages that we create could be called Teaching. Maybe not, maybe it's just the fact that we're trying to initiate a conversation so that people begin to apply principles that they pull from Scripture to their life down here. Now, if you're going to do this on a regular basis, you've got to know there are some dangers to laleo preaching. One is preaching to the crowd, or need versus need, you'll find that if you preach on something that people love, they're, they're going to love you. And they're going to be excited about it. And you might want to do that more and more and more. And the reality is, people have felt needs, right, they have these needs, that they feel they want a better control of their finances, they want a better marriage. And all these are wonderful felt needs that Jesus can speak to in a variety of ways, but there are other needs, that they may not feel so much, one that they come to understand the Holy Spirit in their life, or they come to understand who God is, and the various characteristics of God, or they understand Jesus and how the Trinity operates together, and those kinds of things that that are the big needs. And maybe that's the next part there that the dangerous, neglecting the big themes. In fact, we can pull things out of Scripture that missed the big story. Fact, I was part of a Vacation Bible School recently, and helped out there. And you read the story of Joseph, what is the story of Joseph about? Well, you know, it's about God's providence, about God, who took this young boy who had been sold into slavery by his brothers and made him the second ruler in Egypt so that he could save the promised people, the descendants of Jacob. And that's the story is God is above this world. But that story was reduced to the fact that Joseph was such a good employee. I mean, look at that, he goes to Potifer's house. And he becomes a top slave there, because he's worked so hard and faithfully, he's thrown into prison, after being accused of attempted rape of Potifer's wife, and he becomes so faithful there that he rises to being second in command in the prison, the only prisoner in charge there and etc. All of that's true, and it's a good principle to call from there. But if you do that sort of thing consistently, you will neglect the big themes. And then there's interpreting the Bible. God's word versus your opinion. Now, that give you an example of politics, when you say anything about politics, you've put yourself in a pretty dangerous position, because you can pull some principles from scripture, perhaps. But is that really what Scripture saying? Now in my world, you know, we have a Republican saying why they are the they are the party that represents the church and are protecting the church and Christians and Christians place in the politics of this world, and cetera, et cetera. And there are those who say, Well, you know, you can't be a Christian if you're not a Democrat, because they look at the same stories and scripture, maybe some different ones, and they come to a different conclusion. And so if you're going to do laleo, preaching, speaking about these things, you got to be very, very careful that you're speaking, not your opinion, but God's word, and not locking people into a false understanding of what the Bible says. And then secondly, interpreting the Bible, are you the person to preach on this particular subject? Yeah, all of that is, is part of this word called laleo. And so occasionally, in your preaching schedule, you should include some time, when you laleo, I pulled this off a blog that I saw, I thought, this is wonderful that there are certain parts of life, you know, that's the metaphor here of the iceberg, certain parts of life that poke up above the surface. And so those are the needs that people feel, but there's a Down down down deep, that is deeper, and more meaningful, and more powerful to address. And so we don't want to stay just on the surface. We want to go deep with people. So we're going to speak about important things, but we're going to make sure that we relate it to the big theme of Jesus Christ changing our lives. If we don't do that, we're stuck with the surface stuff. In fact, I remember right near where I lived. As many years ago now, there was a billboard that just said Jesus saves a Christian was riding with a fellow employee who was not a Christian. And the not Christian person saw that billboard and said, You know, Jesus saves, so do I. I'm gonna start setting apart part of my check every week to have it be a wonderful stewardship of what God has given you. And it might be a wonderful truth in using your finances in a way that glorifies God as a steward of all that he's given you. But the deeper issue is, Does Jesus own your heart and soul? And so when you laleo make sure you connect it to the big themes, the deep themes, make sure you connect it to the people's hearts and lives but you always connect it to Jesus as Lord and God will bless you in your speaking ministry. See you next time as we continue this subject