Theocentric Preaching

What is the chief end of preaching? I like to think it is this. It is to give men and women a sense of God and His presence…I can forgive a man for a bad sermon, I can forgive the preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God, if he gives me something for my soul, if he gives me the sense that, though he is inadequate himself, he is handling something which is very great and very glorious, if he gives me some dim glimpse of the majesty and the glory of God, the love of Christ my Saviour, and the magnificence of the Gospel. If he does that I am his debtor, and I am profoundly grateful to him. (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers)

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Only as we see our story enfolded in the larger story of redemption will we begin to live God-honoring lives. Lasting change begins when our identity, purpose, and sense of direction are defined by God’s story. When we bring this perspective to our relationships, we will have a dramatically different agenda. It will take the principles and commands of Scripture and use them as God intended. We will see how each principle, promise, and command finds its meaning and fulfillment in Christ. Separate them from Christ and they lose their God-intended meaning and get hijacked by other agendas. (Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands)

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Tim Keller from last Sunday’s sermon at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York:

There are two ways to read the Bible. The one way to read the Bible is that it’s basically about you: what you have to do in order to be right with God, in which case you’ll never have a sure and certain hope, because you’ll always know you’re not quite living up. You’ll never be sure about that future.

Or you can read it as all about Jesus. Every single thing is not about what you must do in order to make yourself right with God, but what he has done to make you absolutely right with God. And Jesus Christ is saying, “Unless you can read the Bible right, unless you can understand salvation by grace, you’ll never have a sure and certain hope. But once you understand it’s all about me, Jesus Christ, then you can know that you have peace. You can know that you have this future guaranteed, and you can face anything.”

The first practice of God-centered preaching is exegetical. The second practice is homiletical. Once we identify the meaning and purpose of the text, and identify the vision of God and how that vision meets our need as fallen creatures, we must structure the sermon to reveal the need exposed in the passage, encountered in the people before us, and how it is met in God. This takes pastoral sensitivity and a commitment to accurately communicate Scripture to real people.

Since Scripture reveals God’s saving acts, culminating in Christ’s accomplishments at the cross, we are essentially applying the gospel to every need. Every sermon becomes an exposition of the gospel. However, we do not apply the gospel in a rote manner. The vision of God, and the human factor raised in the text, provide fresh avenues to communicate the gospel to a variety of human situations faced by the people before us.

A quote at Of First Importance:

“Don’t ever degenerate into giving good advice unconnected with the good news of Jesus crucified, alive, present, at work, and returning.” (David Powlison, Seeing With New Eyes)

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Tim Keller comments on Luke 24:27: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

If you think the Bible is all about you - about what you must do and how you must live and how you have to do everything in order to get the blessing - then of course you don’t need a Messiah who dies for you. All you need is the rules.

But there are two ways and only two ways to read the Bible. You can read the Bible as if it is all about you and what you must do, and what you have to run around doing in order to get the blessing. Or you can read every part of the Bible as all about Him and what He has done for you. Is it all about you or is it all about Him?

The sermon, Literalism: Isn’t the Bible historically unreliable and regressive? (MP3), is available as a free download.