Jesus Preached Prophetically

What Did Jesus Do?

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Matthew 4.17

Some sermons sound a lot like history lesson, they tell you about what a Moses or a David did. Sometimes you sit in a pew and hear something that sounds a bit like it came out of a cookbook, as you are told what ingredients you need to live a good life. Then there are the messages that come from cheerleaders who try to pump you up and get you excited, especially about their “gospel” of success and prosperity.

Jesus preached, but His style was not like any of the above—Jesus preached prophetically. Oh, Jesus was fully aware of the past, after all, He had been around from the beginning. But His purpose in referencing the past was always to point to the future. Jesus fully understood what “good” was all about, it was Jesus, the Word of God, who created all the “good” things God called forth during the six days of creation. (See Genesis 1 and Colossians 1.15-16) The Lord also understood that no man or woman could ever put enough “good” into their life to ever break free from the burden of sin. And the last thing Jesus would have preached was to get wrapped up in worldly success and prosperity, which would all pass away, at the expense of eternal riches in the coming kingdom of heaven which He came to proclaim.

In truth, I am not sure we should really call anything preaching that does not follow the model established by Jesus. If the message is not about the kingdom of heaven being at hand, is it preaching, or is some other kind of oration? Certainly, how can we call preaching “Christian” if it isn’t about the imminence of the kingdom of heaven? If preaching isn’t prophetic, it is, if you will permit me to say, pathetic.

The Incarnation of the Son was an enacted vision of the kingdom of the Father, a kingdom that, in and through Jesus, was breaking into the world. The prophetic nature of the preaching of Jesus was not a matter of fortune telling or predicting what might be, but proclaiming what had already begun and what would in fact be the record of the days, weeks, years, and eternity to come.

And the kingdom is now closer to hand than it was at the time of Christ (See Romans 13.11). Indeed, every day countless people die and leave this world behind and enter into eternity. The purpose of the prophetic preaching of Jesus, and of every faithful Christian preacher since His time, is to proclaim a message of repentance and salvation by grace that, if received, transports one immediately into the kingdom, and for the rest of one’s days on earth continually equips one to be a kingdom worker.

In this light, all Christian preaching should, in a way, sound somewhat similar. High church or low, Pentecostal or liturgical, it does not matter, the content of prophetic Christian preaching echoes the proclamation of the Lord. If a person never hears Christ’s call to repent and receive the kingdom, what good can come of any other word that they might hear in a sermon?

Considering what I said above about the people who die every day, many totally unprepared for eternity, there is an undeniable aspect of urgency and need for prophetic preaching. We cannot sit back and leave preaching to the pastors, and confine it to Sunday mornings. Every Christian is a preacher, for the prophetic message “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” needs to be proclaimed every day. That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4