Nehemiah 8:8  They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read. (NIV)

—

Hearing and understanding don’t always go together, do they? 

People can look you in the eye and not understand a thing you are saying. This isn’t just a teenage problem. There are a lot of adults who are adept at hearing without understanding. The truth is, I have been, at times, one of those adults. I was most certainly one of those teenagers. 

Sometimes the reason we don’t understand is that we’re hearing brand new information. It’s hard for everything to stick in all the right places the first time you hear it. 

Consider the toy you purchased for your child that requires assembly. You have two options. 

First, you can read the instructions. If, however, those instructions were written in China, the English translation might not really completely make sense the way we speak it, say, in Texas. This is also true in translating things from Swedish to English. Please never, ever ask me to assemble something again from Ikea. 

Second, we can watch a YouTube video. This works most of the time. Of course, you have to watch something and then watch it again, back it up, and watch it one more time while also getting good at pausing the video in just the right places. I did this one evening as I was working to repair our clothes dryer. After a couple of hours, I gave up and called our son-in-law, who is a superb handyman. 

Neither of us could make sense of the written instructions or get things to work the way the video said they should. So, we purchased a new dryer after spending a couple hundred dollars on our failed experiment in saving money.

Therefore, a third option is to pay for someone else to pay attention. 

Too many times, preachers don’t make things as plain as they ought to. Plain and simple is always better than impressive. Oratorical skill alone is not good instruction. 

The best teachers teach like Jesus. What did he do differently? He told stories everyone could relate to that had a simple and obvious point. Many preachers today are taught to exposit the text in a manner that will surely impress our professors and other preachers, but may well leave our congregants confused. 

We preachers frequently spend a lot of time on jots and tittles. Jots and tittles are important. But if you’ve not heard those words before, you probably need a dictionary to look up what they mean. 

On the other hand, just about everyone knows what a sheep is. They understand green pastures, calm waters, and long walks on paths with people who know where they’re going. 

Some people nerd out on PhD-level sermons. The other 99% prefer plain and simple. It’s hard to apply a formgeschichte. (Don’t bother looking it up. You don’t need to know it unless you are one of those PhD students and you just came across this word for the first time. Trust me, it will not be the last.)

Seventy percent of Jesus’ sermons were stories. The points practically made themselves. The applications were clear. How does that compare with how we preach and teach and lead? 

People who don’t even know the Bible know many of Jesus’ stories, like The Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan. Without even looking at your Bible, you could tell the essence of those stories in a couple of minutes. Now, consider the last time you taught something in front of a group. What are the chances those people still remember with clarity what you said and how it applied to their lives? 

I spent 20 years preaching just about every Sunday, and half of that 20-year time frame was spent preaching three times on a Sunday. I shudder to think how little of what I said sank down to the depths of a person’s soul and still shapes their lives today. If I could do it all over again, I would do it more simply. I would work to preach and teach more like Jesus. 

Also, I would outlaw Ikea. 

—

I will communicate clearly and simply.

—

Our Father, deliver me from the temptation to preach impressively. Empower me to teach clearly and simply. Amen.