“Were you able to preach it with tenderness?”

That’s the question which came in response to the sermon on Psalm 9.17: “The Wicked shall be turned into hell”

How do you preach that text?  

Not just the content. Not just the truth of the text.  But how do you preach that text within the full compass of biblical revelation? How do you preach it within the gravitational pull of the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the risen, incarnate One?

How do you do it?

So the question, with the gentle rebuke in it,  was asked:

“Were you able to preach it with tenderness?”.

Who were these two men? The preacher and the questioner?

The preacher was Andrew Bonar. The questioner was Robert Murray M’Cheyne.

You see M’Cheyne had been deeply concerned in his own life that he would not permit a bitterness to develop  in how he viewed the people. The reason was that although judgement needed to be preached clearly, it also needed to be preached so as to pierce through the conscience with God’s gracious love.  This meant that every grave and urgent warning needed to be marked with “angelic tenderness.”

Bonar said of M’Cheyne:

Of this bitterness in preaching, … so sensible was he of its being quite natural to all of us, that oftentimes he made it the subject of conversation, and used to grieve over himself if he had spoken with anything less than solemn compassion.  

Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 53.

Here are seven ways to avoid bitter preaching.

1. Watch Strong Passions

Desire is a key component to the preachers calling (see 1 Tim 3:1). Desire must be there. Passion for preaching the truth must be in hand.

However, the virtues of desire and passion for a good thing like preaching can get distorted later on into the vices of wrong passion and selfish desire.

Consider that all of Paul’s ministerial opponents (Judaizers at Galatia, Super-apostles in Corinth, etc) must have had a strong sense of ‘desire’ to preach their message!

Paul could say, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!’ (1 Cor 9.17).

There was desire and passion in that statement. But there was never the distortion of passion into something else.

Distortions come when we are overruled by passion for select truths and desire for select types of change.

Remember, the prediction made by Paul in 2 Tim4.3 that people “ will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,”

Teachers who are passionate about the noble task, are easily tempted to be passionate about various selective passions, causes, movements,  and desires.

There was a man that I know whose ministry was very influential on me, introducing me to some of the more detailed elements of historic protestant theology. He was passionate about reformation. He was passionate about revival. Sadly today after a series of doctrinal changes, his passion is for unity between denominations with particular sympathy for the Church of Rome. He is not a Roman Catholic, but it is striking to see the following which he has among Roman Catholics who are courting dissatisfied Evangelicals.

His passion for ecclesiastical unity led him to find the grass always greener everywhere else, except in his own backyard. Yet in his new tolerance there is an edge of intolerance for the leaders and theology which he used to embrace, an apparent bitterness toward former friends.

When we adopt passion for individual causes we can develop bitterness for those who don’t do the same. Since others aren’t accompanying this “one-note tune” then it can be easy for us to feel frustrated and injured. Then we can get bitter in our preaching.

2. Avoid Being Quarrelsome

From this point I want to trace out 2 Tim 2.24-25, which begins with this statement, “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome”.

Being the Lord’s servant, means you are owned by one greater than you.  By contrast, being quarrelsome means you are protecting your own bit of turf.

It is easy for us to think about people in our church as the opponents. And we are amassing our arguments to defend our positions so that we can slay our opponents in three easy moves.

When we are passionate about our position. When we have staked out our ground on the issue. It is quite easy to change our view of the sheep into a crowd of potential debate partners, adversaries and challengers.

This leads to polemical preaching which fights battles like Don Quixote— charging at windmills.

This is ‘battling for the truth’ that is akin to those who ‘devote themselves to myths and to endless genealogies’ (1 Tim 1.4).  

This is why guys who are known as being ‘battlers’ often lack what real defenders of the faith have: solemn compassion.

When a godly, learned man gives a denunciation of falsehood, it is always so thorough, so gracious, so comprehensive, so as to be utterly devastating.

But you can never say, “Oh, ya… that guy was just taking cheap shots”.   

No. The preacher’s solemn compassion for the deceived, makes him just and fair in denouncing the deceivers and their deception.

3. Seek Kindness to Everyone

Consider the next point in Paul’s bullet list in 2 Timothy 2:24-25, “be…kind to everyone”.
This makes pastoral unkindness an oxymoron. Yet how often are we given to speaking in unkind ways to people, and especially about people.

A pastor friend shared the counsel that he gave to a married couple who were struggling greatly and fighting often. He said to the husband, “She is not the enemy!”

And in the relationship between the pastor and the church, we must be careful that we don’t view each other as ‘the enemy’. Satan and sin — those are enemies. False teachers are enemies. Not blood bought sinners bound for glory.

In our preaching and our speaking, we must resist any temptation to pastoral unkindness. We must be valiant for truth, but we have to work at waging our warfare without unkindness.

4. Work at Teaching

Being “able to teach” (2 Tim 2:24) is that distinct qualification of an elder/pastor/overseer (1 Tim 3:2). And in this context of resistance, or potential confusion, clear teaching is what is required. To teach is to be compassionate. It is to empathize with where people are at and bring the truth to them. It is harder work to teach someone than it is to be careless of their lack of understanding. 

It is like the picture in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian was given a telescope by the Shepherds. Through it he saw the gate of the Celestial City. So also a pastor’s teaching offers the vision of what lies ahead, and the pathway to get there.

When we are bitter or harsh we will wonder why these people can’t figure this out? But we will fail to work at teaching because it is simpler, and sometimes lazier to trumpet the goal, but offer no assistance to get there.

5. Patiently Endure Evil.

Fulfilling the calling as the Lord’s servant, the preacher must be marked by patience in enduring evil (2 Tim 2:24). 

Why does Paul have to say this?

He says it because the tidal wave of evil in the world makes one a) impatient for an end of it, and b) unwilling to endure the waves rolling over us.

Bitter preaching or harsh preaching is often impatient and unwilling to endure evil. It calls for justice and change and transformation now. It is unwilling to trust in the superiority of God’s global solution in Jesus Christ, a salvation for sinners that is both cosmic in scope and personal in experience.

Solemn compassion in preaching exhibits a clear view of the now/not yet of the kingdom, and so patiently endures the evil tide.   Solemn compassion knows that ultimately this tide too will pass (Rev 21:1).

6. Correct Opponents with Gentleness

 This is where preaching that has a corrective function is proven whether it is done compassionately or with harshness.

Can correction by Spirit-wrought, biblical argument be made without resorting to strong-arm tactics?  Or is the bully pulpit required to ‘correct’ others.

Often the use of the harsh bully pulpit by a preacher betrays their lack of thought, prep, study, and reasoning about an issue.

The ethos is this: You don’t agree with me—- So let me shout louder!

Of the many examples in Jesus’ ministry, his lament over Jerusalem epitomizes his strongly convinced condemnation of Jerusalem’s sin. He is compassionate in telling them the truth but unbending in the truth of it. He said:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

Matthew 23:37

We need to be Christ-like in this way, loving people enough to clearly tell the truth and not hiding behind gentleness as a cover for our negligence. In the same way we should love people enough to temper the edge of our truth-telling with gentleness. 

It’s like the blacksmith crafting the iron of the forged knife. It will never keep a sharp edge unless the hot blade is quenched and cured. Our preaching can be sharp and surgical when its unbending truth is holding the keen edge of gentleness.

M’Cheyne made the observation:

It is not saying hard things that pierces the conscience of our people; it is the voice of Divine love heard amid the thunder. The sharpest point of the two-edged sword is not death but life

Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 53.

7.  Look to God to Change People

This is the final perspective that creates compassion versus harshness in our preaching, even in the midst of controversy.

We must look to God to change people.

There is a calm and secure resignation in the ability of God to “grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:25).

Trusting in God’s sovereign ability is always a good policy. We should be expectant of the possibility that God, in his freeness, may choose to grant repentance to the stubborn. When we aren’t expectant of this, we betray our own creeping unbelief. Such unbelief is soil for bitterness in our preaching.

Of course we must look to God because in all of our conflict, we are engaged in spiritual warfare, especially when we are attempting to correct opponents who need to “come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Tim 2:26). Only God can do this supernatural work of changing stubborn hearts.

We must look to God to change our own hearts that we would repent, and then expect him to be able to do the same for others. 

So in all of our ministry, like M’Cheyne said to Bonar, the question remains:

“Did I preach it with tenderness?”