Russell Moore on "Preaching Like the Devil"

Russell Moore provides a good reputation for Baptists every time he writes for Touchstone (which readers of this blog will know is one of my favorite magazines/journals). His article in the May/June 2010 issue is no different. It is about preaching, but it deserves to be read not only by preachers, but also those who listen to preaching. It is titled "Preaching Like the Devil" (below is an excerpt).

The devil is a preacher. From the third chapter of the Bible onward, he is opening up God’s Word to people, seeking to interpret it, to apply it, to offer an invitation. So the old Serpent of Eden comes to the primeval woman not with a Black Mass and occult symbols, but with the Word she’d received from her God—with the snake’s peculiar spin on it. Throughout the rest of the canon he does the same, implicitly or explicitly.

Throughout the Old Testament, he preaches peace—just like the angels of Bethlehem do—except he does so when there is no peace. He points God’s people to the particulars of worship commanded by God—sacrifices and offerings and feast-days—just without the preeminent mandates of love, justice, and mercy. Satan even preaches to God—about the proper motives needed for godly discipleship on the part of God’s servants.

In the New Testament, the satanic deception leads the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees to pore endlessly over biblical texts, just missing the point of Christ Jesus therein. They come to conclusions that have partially biblical foundations—the devil’s messages are always expository; they just intentionally avoid Jesus.

So, the scoffers feel quite comfortable asking how a man from Nazareth could be the Messiah when the coming King is of Bethlehem. They find themselves wondering how the Son of Man can be crucified when the Bible says he lives forever. When Jesus says those who follow him should eat his flesh and drink his blood, there’s little doubt that the Adversary was there to point the crowds to Leviticus’s forbidding of the consumption of human blood. When the satanically inspired crowds crucified Jesus, they did so pointing to biblical texts that called for the execution of blasphemers and insurrectionists (Deut. 21).

When the early Church rockets out of the upper room in Jerusalem, Satan is there, with false teachers, to preach all kinds of things that seem to be straight from God’s Word—from libertinism to legalism to hyper-spirituality to carnality. He never stops preaching.

Read the whole thing here.