The Power of an “Amen!”

Back in 2006, I had the privilege to preach in a predominantly African-America Baptist church. My wife was with me and we had a very unique experience, at least unique to us. The service began with singing, a lot of singing. It started soft and slow, and got louder and faster as the songs changed and progressed. I remember looking at the bulletin and wondering exactly where we were in the order of service. After studying for a few moments and coming to the conclusion that the church had sung six or seven songs, I projected that it was about time for me to preach. Sure enough, a man got up to the podium to introduce me. Except, he didn’t. He welcomed everyone to the church. Stupefied, I looked back at the bulletin and realized we had only gone through the prelude. It would be another 30 or 40 minutes before I got up to preach. Maybe longer.

Let me tell you, I love to preach. I love to proclaim God’s Word and I seek to do it in prayer and in faithfulness. I enjoy preaching though sometimes if I had my druthers, I would skip passages as they are sometimes hard to digest. Like Ezekiel and John, taking in the Word can have a bitterness though it be sweet. But I digress. I love to preach. Yet, in this particular church on this particular Sunday, I had fun preaching. “Fun” is not the word I typically use for preaching. But it is the correct way of describing that pulpit experience.

Why was it so fun? I was encouraged to preach. This is not something that typically happens to me. Like I said, this was unique. Having preached for 20+ years, this was the only time I experienced this kind of encouraging. “Preach! Preach it! Amen! Bring it!” and many other comments came from the congregation as I proclaimed God’s Word. There seemed to be an excitement about the receiving a Word from God.

I don’t think about that time much, but I recently heard a conversation in which the idea of encouraging a musician through claps and shouts could be applied to encouraging the preacher through “Amens” and claps as well. That took me back to my experience 13 years ago. Since then, I have been thinking about the power of an amen, and I’ve come up with three empowering marks of an amen.

1. It encourages the pastor/preacher. Imagine being a preacher who has prepared a sermon, having studied for hours. Words were chosen to be used and others thrown out. Illustrations were found or made and carefully put in the right place. He gets up to preach, believing he has what God desires for him to preach. He proclaims his message to people completely silent. He’s not sure if anyone is taking in what is being said or not. He’s not sure if there is silence out of respect and wanting to hear every word spoken, or if there is silence because no one is listening. An “amen” here and there tells the pastor that people are listening.
   Brian Croft has likened weekly preaching to a nightly supper. Most sermons are that way. They are nothing “special.” Try to remember what you ate for dinner last Wednesday. It’s not that easy. It was a meal. It nourished you. It kept you going, but it was nothing special. That’s what most sermons are like. Rarely do we eat a meal that is memorable. Rarely do we receive a sermon that is memorable. I like that illustration. But to take it a little further. At some point, in at least some of the meals, someone in the family will say as they are eating (as they are being fed), “this is delicious, mmmmm, wow! That’s good,” or something like that. It is a response to the goodness of what was received but it is also an encouragement to whoever cooked.
2. Which leads to the second empowering mark: it is a response to the goodness of what has been received, but it is a response not only to the preacher, but to God. If the sermon preached is a biblical sermon, you can be sure that the Holy Spirit has been at work long before you heard any of it. He was at work in the preparation of the message and at work in the preparation of your heart to receive it for what was said. Thus, in saying, “Amen! Yes!” clapping or whatever, it is reaffirming the work of the Spirit in your own soul. One could say that it is a little prayer. “Amen” means “that’s true” or “truly” or even “So be it.” In this way, saying “Amen” is praying that what was said be seen and known as true in your life.
   At the end of Revelation, John quoted Jesus, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’” Then he responded: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20, ESV). Amen. So let it be. Let me see it happen; come, Lord Jesus. There was an inward response that came out as a word: Amen.
3. Lastly, just as it testifies to your own soul, it testifies to others in the congregation. Let’s face it, we all begin, at some point, to have our minds wander. Something in the sermon causes us to chase a rabbit of our own. An “Amen” can actually bring us back to the sermon. Something was just said that affected someone in the congregation. What did I miss? I had better pay attention. It tells visitors, non-believers, and others that God’s Word preached from that pulpit is alive and well. It is like a two-edged sword laying bear the soul. It just laid something to bear in your own soul. Everyone needs to know that the Spirit is moving in the service through the Spirit-filled preaching of the Word of God written by men who were moved by the Spirit.

I readily admit that this is coming from the perspective of a pastor who preaches on a near weekly basis. This is not an indictment on the church I am pastoring or any church in which I have pastored previously. It is simply an explanation of what I have been thinking about recently when it comes to saying “Amen” or something similar during the service. And these responses need not only need be during the sermon. If a biblically-sound song is sung and someone wants to say amen at the end, raise hands during, or clap when its over, I don’t know why that would be wrong.

I don’t think that services should become a circus or like a sporting event. You can read my thoughts about that here. But I do think there is something to be said about the power of an “Amen” or a clap of praise.

I’d love to hear form you, if you’d like to respond. Whether you agree or not, please leave a comment.

Were the First Five Books of the Bible Really Written by Moses?

For over a century Higher Criticism (aka Source Criticism) has plagued Christianity with theories and hypotheses about the reliability of Scripture.  One such hypothesis is what is known as Documentary Hypothesis (DH). DH is simply that; it is a hypothesis, an educated guess as to the authorship of certain texts within Scripture, specifically speaking of the first five books of the Bible: the Books of Moses. The proponents of DH claim that because the books differ stylistically, use varying names for God, have updated names for towns, cities, people, supposed repetitions of accounts, etc., Moses could not have been the one who wrote the Pentateuch. Instead, the educated guess is that there were two, three, or even four writers from four different centuries, with perhaps four different motives who wrote what we now read as Genesis through Deuteronomy.  The first collaborator was a Yahwist (“J” for short [for Jehovah]) around 850 B.C. Most of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers was sourced by the Yahwist. One can find his handiwork because of his affinity to call God by His proper name: YHWH. It is assumed that the Yahwist was from Judah (the Southern Kingdom) since Judah was more faithful to the traditions of Judaism. However, about a hundred years later, one from Ephraim (the Northern Kingdom who were not so faithful to the traditional Judaism to say the least) sourced other portions of Genesis similar to that of the Yahwist, using Elohim–the generic name for God–in reference to the Almighty. For that reason, the second source is named after his favorite designation: Elohim (“E” for short). At some point, when the Northern Kingdom was overthrown by Assyria, the two sources (J and E) were brought together by some good-hearted refugees.

The third source for the DHers, is simply known as Deuteronomy (“D” for short) which covers the book by that name.  The thought process is that when Josiah ordered the reformation of Judah in his twelfth year on the throne, “D” got to work. Since the material only covers the one book of the Pentateuch, it is not much help with the other four.

The fourth source: those were the Priests (“P” for short). The priests, by the very nature of man and office, sought to conserve their position and their jobs. Thus the portions of the Law that dealt with religious matters (practices, tabernacles, instruments, etc.) were sourced by the post-exilic priests.

All in all, the DH denies the possibility of one author. It also denies the possibility of these books being original. Some men like Delitzsch would argue that they simply plagiarized from the Babylonians, going so far as to say that the Law and perhaps the entire Old Testament is not to be trusted and is which is to be done away.

That being said. . .like all hypotheses, DH must be tested to assure its truth. If it cannot pass the test–multiple tests–then one must admit that the guess is untrue and begin again. DH cannot pass the tests that it must face. The issues that it seeks to answer, DH complicates. William of Ockham was correct: “The simplest answer is usually the correct one.” DHers tend to seek complicated guesses to explain the apparent discrepancies or questions they have. They began with two sources and worked their way up to four, and now are unsure if there were four or if there are four when they actually sourced the material. The simpler (and probably the correct answer) is that Moses did write the first five books as traditionally held. Within those books, he cites his sources. The varying names for God are varying for good reason: they describe God in the way that fits with the story; using God’s name (YHWH) before telling us when he learned it (Genesis 2 vs. Exodus 3) does not mean multiple sources. It does mean that the Uncreated One created all life. Updated place names were probably updated by scribes since location was a major component for the Jews to understand their history. It is not much different that the scribes who translated the Hebrew to Greek, forming the Septuagint. Repetitions of stories, if read closely, are not repetitions; sometimes it takes people a while to learn their lessons, and often times their descendants must go through the same type of circumstances. Common sense can answer virtually every problem that DH presents without muddying the waters or complicating the issues.

What DHers have done, whether advertently or inadvertently, is brought doubt into the hearts and minds of Christians wanting to be faithful to God’s Word. By nature, Documentary Hypothesis leads to question authenticity, historicity, and reliability.  Rather than spark doubt, one can easily explain the supposed difficulties.

I’d love to read your feedback and comments. Please feel free to reply to this article or any of my others.  If you’re wondering why this article was written, let’s just say I started seminary this week, and this was one of my assignments. I have precious little time to blog, and since I found the assignment interesting and enjoyed writing it, I thought I would share it with you. If you enjoyed the article, please feel free to like and/or share it on your social media pages.