Theocentric Preaching

A great quote from a book review by Katie Galli in the April 2008 issue of Christianity Today:

Yes, we’re Americans. We multitask all day long. Efficiency is one of our top cultural values. I, too, am pragmatic. I’d like to use Sunday morning to worship God, to get a few pointers on how to improve my relationship with Jesus, and to reconnect with community. But every Sunday, the first words I hear are, “Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” And I’m reminded that we gather weekly not to hear a practical talk on how to better live out our faith or to provide a venue to tell our friends about Jesus. We gather to corporately worship God, to celebrate the redeeming work of Christ on the cross, and to remember that our lives are not about us.

I used to subscribe to the tape ministry - remember the days before digital downloads? - of a large church. I remember getting the Easter Sunday message one particular year. The main idea of the sermon was something like, “You’re good, but you could be better.” The preacher used the illustration of Tiger Woods’ golf swing. It was good, but Tiger went back and and learned a new swing to be even better. We can do the same with our lives when we come to Christ, he said.

I remember being shocked. The message of Easter isn’t that we’re good but Christ came to make us a little bit better. Earl Creps has said that Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, or good people better. He came to make dead people live. I agree. Dead people need the message of Easter, and nothing else will do.

At Easter we get to proclaim the timeless story of God in Christ taking the place of sinners so that we who were dead could live. There are so many riches within this story, so many angles, so much depth, that we don’t have to drift from the meaning of Easter to be relevant.

Let’s stick with the message of Easter. It’s far better than any other message we could offer, and it’s one that people desperately need to hear.

Proverbs is a book that’s concerned with everyday life. It covers parts of life that we don’t normally label spiritual. It may be tempting to approach Proverbs from a human-centered perspective, concluding that while most of the Bible is about God, this book is mainly about us.

It doesn’t take long to realize that even in Proverbs, the core of the message is centered on God. Proverbs 1:7 encapsulates the theme of the book: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Edward M. Curtis and John J. Brugaletta comment:

For the Israelite the search for wisdom had to begin with a deep commitment to God and a genuine submission to God’s authority and truth. The theme of the book of Proverbs is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom/knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the essence of piety in the Old Testament, and it begins with a recognition of who God is - the all-powerful, sovereign Creator of the universe - and a contrasting recognition of who we are - creatures made by God. As a result of this awareness, those who fear the Lord live under the full acknowledgement that God’s authority is over them. (Discovering the Way of Wisdom)

Derek Kidner writes, “Wisdom as taught here is God-centered, and even when it is most down-to-earth it consists of the shrewd and sound handling of one’s affairs in God’s world, in submission to His will.”

Even the most practical of books in the Bible has as its core who God is, and who we are in relationship to him. It’s also proof that you can be God-centered and practical at the same time.

I’ve been posting my recent article that appeared in the Evangelical Baptist magazine. Here’s a link to the entire article in PDF:

God-Centered Preaching

Previously covered human-centered approaches to preaching: therapeutic preaching and moralism

A third human-centered approach is allegorical preaching. Surprisingly, allegorical preaching is widespread. For example, preachers use the story of Jesus calming the storm to talk about how Jesus calms the storms of life. They use the story of David and Goliath as an example of how we can slay the giants in our lives, like fear, cancer, or joblessness. The miracle of the wine at the wedding in Cana is used as a springboard to talk about God’s provision when we are at the end of our resources. Elements of the stories - storms, giants, and wine - are taken out of the historical context and made to stand for something else in the listener’s life.

The preacher must bring the text into the present. Allegorizing sections passages is a quick way to do this, but it fails to wrestle with the authorial intent and often leads to inaccurate messages. For example, the preacher who says that Jesus calms the storms of life not only misses the purpose and meaning of that text, but promises something that the Bible does not warrant. This is both unbiblical and unhelpful.

All three of these approaches come from a desire to be relevant in our preaching. Relevance is essential, but human-centered messages fall far short of what preaching is supposed to be. We need an approach to preaching that is both God-centered and relevant.

Tomorrow: presuppositions of God-centered preaching

continued from yesterday

A second human-centered approach is moralistic preaching. This type of emphasizes life application and take-home action steps. Many popular preachers argue that sermons need to be practical and offer clear application points.

While application is essential, preaching that over-emphasizes application can lead to numerous problems. Application points, by themselves, can lead to application fatigue, in which the listener is overwhelmed with more tasks to put on a list that is already full. Our listeners need a vision of God and his gospel that changes every part of their lives, not just more tasks to be completed. To-do lists don’t change souls.

In Scripture, obedience is always a response to the gospel. Application that is not rooted in gospel leads to pride if the listener succeeds, and defeatism if the listener does not. The law does not give us power to obey its commands; we need good news (the gospel), not just good advice. The Bible does contain commands, but these are always applications of the gospel.

Moralism can creep into how-to sermons (e.g. “Four Steps to Better Parenting”), but it can also creep into expositions of a text. For example, preaching the imperatives of Ephesians 4-6 will be moralistic unless we link the imperatives to the gospel described in Ephesians 1-3. God’s gift and his commands (theology and ethics) are always linked.

Moralism can also creep into biographical preaching if we offer characters as examples to emulate. We are sometimes called to emulate their faith (Hebrews 11), but are rarely told to use them as moral examples. Tim Keller describes what happens when we use them this way. “An example - even a great example - can only crush you,” he says. “It’s crushing because it’s an inaccessible standard.” Because of our fallen natures, we cannot simply do what Jesus, or any other great character, did. Even when we encounter great characters, they are examples of faith and of God’s grace.

In any case, most of the characters in the Bible have mixed records at best, and point to God as the real hero of the text. Keller says:

You’re assuming that the message of the Bible is “God blesses and saves those who live morally exemplary lives.” That’s not the message of the Bible. The message of the Bible is that God persistently and continuously gives his grace to people who don’t ask for it, don’t deserve it, and don’t even fully appreciate it after they get it.

Our preaching must root obedience in what God has accomplished in Christ. It is the motive and source of all obedience. Preaching application without gospel is moralistic and fails to transform lives.

tomorrow: a final human-centered approach to preaching