Video Transcript: Session 12 Proclamation

Welcome back, as we continue to look at making preaching sermons, as you know, we have been looking at words that reflect something of the preaching act as it exists in the New Testament. And so we looked at euangelizo the proclaiming of good news, the gospel in in a simple presentation, we looked at didasko, teaching about important things. And last time, we looked at laleo, that idea of speaking about important things that we hit some important subjects that are related directly to the lives of the people. Now today, I want to look at the word kerusso, k, e, r, u, s, s, o, it doesn't show up on the screen there very well. But that's what the word should be there. Now, kerusso means to proclaim the news. Now, here's, here's a man that I'm going to introduce to you via video in just a sec. This man lives in Holland, Michigan, which is right near where I live. Now, Holland, Michigan, if you know by the name, is a reflection of Dutch immigrants who came to this country in the mid 19th century. And they bought a property in the area that is now called Holland and as a result, and they retain a lot of Holland culture, Dutch culture there, and one of them is the growing of tulips. Every spring at the end of May, there's a time in Holland called tulip time. And hundreds of 1000s of people come from all around the country and other countries as well, to spend time looking at these massive fields of tulips and to purchase tulip bulbs, and etc. To watch the parades to engage in the various events and there's coffin dance, and there's those sorts of things that go on during this time. But one of the key figures is the town crier. This is the man who is the town crier there and you will find as you hear his story, something about what it means to kerusso. K, e, r, u, s, s, o that it means to proclaim the news. Here's the story, now he's in the news because he's retiring from his his position after 40 years, but try to catch the words where he describes what he does as the town crier announcing the news. Here it is. And Marcus. Good evening John Carson became Holland's town crier in 1979. There's just so much I could say about his out of this world personality but I'll just let you take a look for yourself. Gather round. My lords and my ladies, you got the voice, supplies and the wardrobe too this very hat, This pants not the jacket belonged to the first town crier. Meet Holland's town crier. I'm John Karsten. And I am writing from Holland, Michigan, but I'm originally from Holland or the Netherlands. Two timers probably recognize John's face 40 years he's been on the job and kicking off parades with his commanding voice (dutch phrase) and then I say it in English. And the mayor says the streets are so dirty and they must be scrubbed. After serving in the military. Karsten moved to the US that was in 1957. He'll celebrate 62 years of marriage this year to the woman he moved here for. Reader's Digest, named the Tulip Festival, their number one festival in the country. He still got the zeal, but after four decades he says he'll retire while he's ahead. I enjoyed every minute of it. And I feel kind of sad to say it's time to quit. But at the same time I look forward to relaxing and see what the other guy does. But it's not over until the big bells ring. Tulip time organizers tell me it was only right to hold an international town crier competition to celebrate Karsten the judges. They're very serious judging judicious good, not too good. This is good, but the good. Seven people from near and far England, Canada, the Netherlands. Even Saugatuck will compete on Friday. They're all measured against Karsten's benchmark cry. One judge doesn't even look at the competitors. Remember, don't shoot the messenger. I got nothing to do with it. This is what the City Council or the general or the king or the queen told me to say. So that is very important. from Belgium to Australia, Karsten has been spreading the word himself and everywhere I go, I do a cry like this so that everybody wants to come to Holland, Michigan. Oh, yeah. May God bless you all. May God bless America. Such a great guy there and he says there's only 500 Town Crier still in the world right now. John Karsten will be one of this year's parade grand marshals along with Storm Team eights alum Ginger Z The crier competition again, is this Friday at the Holic civic Holland civic center that runs from two to four o'clock PM. Did you catch the words there? What he said, rather than this isn't exactly. This isn't an exact quote, but it's close. Don't blame me, the king or the city council, the magistrate told me what to say. That's the job of the Herald or the town crier or the person who brings the news. If you went back into the New Testament time, you would find that this was common. Of course, it didn't have telephone. They didn't have television. They didn't have newspapers much back then. And so how did people get the news? Well, these town criers would go from corner to corner, and they would shout out the news. Anything that the king or the mayor of the town or whatever it was in the Roman culture of that time, anything that person wanted the citizenry to know, he would send through the heralds, not just one, but many of them who would go out and be in the streets, and stand up on high places. And they were known for their booming voices, and they would say what the news is. Now, here's some definitions. To be a herald, here's a definition of kerusso to be a herald to officiate as a herald, to proclaim after the manner of a herald always with a suggestion of formality, gravity and an authority which must be listened to, and obeyed, to publish, proclaim openly something which has been done. It's used as a public proclamation of the gospel and matters pertaining to it made by John the Baptist, by Jesus by the apostles, and by other Christian teachers. And so, to kerusso means you're announcing something. Now, here's from the Greek Lexicon, just how many times this word is used 61 times 61 times. So this is an important word in the New Testament. Here's how it's how it's defined, sometimes made proclamation one time is how it's translated. And the New American Standard Version of preach, it's translated that way. 16 times, preached 10 times as a past tense and preacher one time preaches two preaching 11, proclaim eight times, six times is translated as proclaimed. And then six times it's translated as proclaiming. And so this is something where news is proclaimed to the people. The most powerful example of this in Scripture is John the Baptist. Now, here's a picture of him from one of the many Christian movies that exists, where he's receiving somebody who baptizes now we're told in Matthew 3:1-3 these words, in those days, John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, and then let every mountain be made low and every hill, be raised up in the rough places, made a plane, etc, as quoted after that from Isaiah. But he comes preaching in the wilderness. He's kerussoing in the wilderness. He's announcing something. And what is the news that these people so hungered to hear that they traveled out into the wilderness from Jerusalem and Jericho, and the other larger towns of that time? What was the news? The news was simply the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. He's proclaiming news. Now, for those people, that must have been a wonderful thing, because people responded, it was according to studies of that area, about seven miles from Jerusalem to the traditional place of baptism, or Jericho. A miles from that as well. And people would come out there because this was something they wanted to hear. They hadn't heard from God officially, for almost 400 years. At the end of the Old Testament, and the beginning of the new where all of a sudden angels are showing up in the New Testament and giving messages from God like to Mary hail you favorite one, God is with you. People hadn't heard that they hadn't heard messages like John the Baptist, parents being told about him being born 400 years. And now here comes this man who's dressed in this weird way. He lives out in the wilderness. He survives on honey and locusts and wild animals, et cetera. And he wearing this animal fur, he's strange but the message that the news he's proclaiming is so important that people are coming to the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. Now there are times in your preaching ministry where you may choose to do a kerusso kind of message. Now there are a variety of ways you can do that. One is to proclaim to the flock. In other words to believers, that there are things that they will want to hear good news about there are times, they will want to hear good news. And I'll give you just a couple of them. One would be the financial downturn. In 2008. We were actually gearing up for a building program in the church I was serving, we had just gotten approvals from the congregation, and we were starting to raise the money. And the stock market crashed here in the United States and around the world. And a deep recession followed. In fact, in my country, it's referred to as the great recession. And all of a sudden, people were losing their jobs and people were losing their homes and people were all of a sudden having their hours cut. And it was a horrendous time for so many people. And that was a time we determined as I was working in the church and working with another person who was part of my preaching team at that time. We said we got to do some of we didn't put it this way. But we want to do some kerusso messages announcing good news. And so we had one service where we just handed the mic around and said, How are you folks doing? What's happening in your life? What's happening in your life. And then the news we proclaimed was the news of Jesus, as he says, I'm the Good Shepherd, you know, no one can snatch you out of my hand, I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. And then a beautiful song by Michael W. Smith, sung by Israel Houghton called Help is on the way. That's a kerusso kind of matches message of announcing the news and announcing the truth that I want you to understand you, church downturn. Some people need to hear good news. I'm working in a church right now as pastor partner, as I've indicated before, with a younger man, 40 year old man who has seen the church go down. He's been there about five years, but the church has been on a 20 year decline. And so when I came into the church, we tried to figure out how are things going. And one of the things we did was a congregational survey. And as we I got a team together to look at this survey to say, what can we learn from this, we asked all sorts of questions of people, you know, how long they've been at the church. You know, what, what, what they thought about the various ministries on a scale of one to five, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I remember the moment because there was young man, youngest man in the room, as we were looking at this, as you know, he said, I sense a lament here, people are, are feeling sorrow over what they've lost. They've lost friends over these past years, as they've left the church over various issues and conflicts with pastors. And they miss some of the things that happened some of the mealtimes that they'd have to gather the celebrations they'd have together, they miss parts of worship, because they used to have a big choir that was effective and leading and worship. And now we're not enough people there do that anymore. And so we looked at that, and decided we've got to do some kerusso kind of messaging. We've got to do some announcing of news. And the news we announced was, God wants His Church to thrive. He wants this church to thrive. And he's blessed us with everything we need to do that. And now, we're getting now into the instruction part of that, what does that mean? What does that mean? And how we relate to each other? What does it mean with the spiritual warfare that we're going to face and trying to turn this congregation around so it begins to grow again, all of these kinds of things are the things that went into kerusso preaching, but it was designed to give people hope. There's news to hear, that relates to your situation. And the news is about Jesus Christ, the kingdom of heaven is near. A shocking death is a time for a kerusso message, some of my most delightful, that's the wrong way to put it at times. But times have seen people respond to the message of the gospel about eternal life was at a time when there was a shocking death. And one of them was particularly horrendous. A woman who was not quite middle aged, and her father died, and she was at the wake or the funeral visitation in our country here, in this area of the United States. There's a tradition that when somebody dies, you go and visit a family at the funeral home. And so the family was receiving people at the funeral home and this woman dropped over and they got an ambulance, they took her to the hospital, she had had a major aneurysm in her brain burst, and she died a day later. And at the funeral was this sense of horror that she's at a funeral for her father, and then all of a sudden, she's joining him in heaven. And there was a heaviness about the funeral in spite of the fact that you normally was music about hope and his music about hope. And I remember getting up there and just telling the story of Lew Smedes, in his book, how can everything be all right when it's all wrong? He wrote in the introduction to that, his experience of leaving his good friend who was dying of cancer. And he knew he would never see him alive again, because Lew was driving, was flying back to California and his friend lived in Michigan. And so he's going and he turns as he's leaving the room, and his friend says to him, don't worry Lew. It's all right. It's all right. And he said, I walked out. And he said, I saw his wife, weeping. I saw his children grieving and dealing with this shocking, shocking prediction that he's going to die within a few days. And he said, it's not all right. I shared that message at the funeral and there was such a sense of the spirit there. It's okay to feel this way. It's now right. But then I did kerussoing, as Lew leaves does the rest of that book, that God has promised to walk with you. I'll be with you. I'll be with you. In fact, that's the one great promise that rings through Old and New Testament, I'll be with you. And so no matter how much we don't understand what's going on here God's promises, I'll be with you. So we as kerusso to the flock, we announced news, announced it in such a way that it brings hope to the lives of people tend this is a huge thing to pronounce outside the wall, to hopeless people. To people I put Adam in there is a friend of mine, man's an alcoholic and became homeless as a result of that, and ended up coming to Christ. Because of a series of events. He was homeless, but he had a car so he was driving from Muskegon, Michigan, to Grand Rapids, Michigan to get to the mission in time for a meal. A rescue mission. It was a place where people who don't have any home can go, it was winter, and his car broke down on the freeway. And so he goes walking to the nearest exit little town called Utica. There's nothing in Utica, except that a grain elevator and a post office. And it was early in the morning. And so he noted that the post office had people working in it. So he went to the back door and pounded, so they're not supposed to let anybody in, but they let me in to get warm. And they gave me a phone, a cell phone to call a friend who hopefully could come and help me pick me up and help me get my car off the freeway before they come into work. Because he didn't have money to tell he lost his wife, he lost his home, we lost a daughter. He no longer had relation with him. And while he was waiting for his friend to come pick them up. One of the postal workers says you look like you need this more than I do and handed him a book that simply said, promises, God's promises. And he said, I began to get hope as I read those. That night, he went to the mission stayed there. And he heard a message. And the message was kerusso it was announcing good news that God takes people who failed and doesn't crush them restores outside the walls, kerusso to the hopeless and to the wondering, one of my mentors in ministry is this man. And his name is Steve Brown is the speaker on key life radio. And also does a variety of hosting of television events and as a speaker for various places. But he tells a story about being on a plane one time and a man died of a heart attack. And at least that's what they thought. But they had gotten them down into the aisle and they were working on him doing CPR, and they pronounce the guy dead. Now imagine who you are in this plane. With all these people, I don't know how many. But they've all had to watch this death. And so they took the body got as much out of the way as they could up in the front of the plane, pull those curtains there. But you can still this is all gone on. And so Steve Brown goes to one of the flight attendants and says, you know, I'm a pastor, if you'd like, I can say a few words here thinking this is ideal, kerusso time to talk about important things, but also to give the news that the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn come near. And her response was no thanks. We're, we're taking care of it. We're offering them all free drinks. That was her solution. But she said no, no. He said, I've got news to announce here. That's the point of kerussoing, we have news to announce, news to announce. Now, there is a group that is has become a well known for pushing, announcing news in the Herald way of being on the street corner. And I want to close this session by just having look at video and think again, where God might call you to kerusso certainly to the flock, if you're a regular preacher somewhere, but maybe I'm looking at this listening to it. I've listened to it about two or three times I've also had got it on my blog. But when I listened to it, I think maybe I could do that this summer, where I live is kind of a tourist destination. And that would be something around the corner, just start proclaiming the good news announcing. So I'm working up courage for that maybe you don't need to maybe you're already thinking about it. But these folks will talk about announcing good news about proclaiming things. And so just pay attention. And we'll join together next time. And we'll further explore what it means to preach. Mention public preaching to the average Christian, and they may think back to that one time when they saw some angry arrogant preacher. Now don't get me wrong. Public preaching is definitely not glamorous. And sometimes it does cause people to wonder but the biblical picture of a public preacher, it's much different than today's angry or arrogant stereotype. If we truly have a relationship with God, we truly have been transformed by him. It should be evident in our preaching as well. I do not think we should have a lower standard for the street than we do for the pulpit. You share the gospel in a way that is harsh and condemning. People have a right to say something back to you. So we need to have a tenderness in our hearts. You know, Whitfield would weep over the people see, the preachers of Scripture, they weren't angry or arrogant, but they were sometimes considered a bit radical. But then again, so are most people who have a burning passion for something that they're willing to live and die for. Street Preachers, even when they're doing the best they can. They're in the will of God, they're filled with the Spirit. They're preaching according to the word, this world, and the contemporary western church is going to judge them. You see all in all, the biblical picture of a public preacher. It hasn't changed. It's the same now, as it was then and people are still getting called today, to go out and preach in the public, regardless of their culture, or their society. We should be going out into the streets, we should be taking this message that has been culturally preached within the walls of the church and take it out and proclaim it to the world the victory that Jesus Christ had by defeating death and going to the cross for our sins and our response to repent of our sins of First of all, trusting so that, that making full proof of our ministry for me is clear in how Paul exhorted Timothy so what is a biblical public preacher? It's someone who is called by God to publicly proclaim an urgent message of life, death, forgiveness and hope, and most importantly, to show his audience that God demands that they repent, and trust Jesus Christ as King, Savior and Lord. Go to Genesis, you got Noah, you know, you just go, we go through the whole entire bible and it's public proclamation for the people hear the way that God gives His gospel. public proclamation. street preaching may not be the most politically correct way of reaching the lost, but it is the most biblical way. The Bible is full of examples. Jonah did it. Stephen did it. And yes, the Lord Jesus did it too. My question to you is are you call? If so, what do you wait? Go stand an speak.