Paul Tripp blogs on the Bible as a theologically annotated story, which helps make sense of the story of our lives:

Your Bible is not a collection of religious stories. No, it is one story, the grand story of redemption. The Bible has one central character; God himself, specifically in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. From cover to cover the Bible is a narrative of the wondrous works of a God. Perhaps the four most important words in all of Scripture are the first four words; “In the beginning God…” You simply cannot understand yourself, your world, and the meaning and purpose of life unless you view them from the vantage point of the existence, character, and plan of God.

Tripp then explains five things that this story gives us. Read the whole post.

An article by Lee Eclov:

A third way we fog God’s glory is by not showing how he stands behind texts that are not explicitly about him. When I see a play I like, I’m invariably curious about the playwright. What of her is written into this story? What prompted him to give such a powerful speech to that character? Many Bible passages don’t have explicit statements about the attributes of God, but there is no text that doesn’t reveal something wondrous of God. We don’t do the text justice if we don’t help people see God standing in the wings.

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This is written about Christian fiction, but it applies to preaching as well. L.B. Graham writes:

Christianity is not about moralism, and Christian fiction shouldn’t be either. Christianity revolves, not around good behavior, but around God’s mercy shown to man in the death and resurrection of Christ. However, even though we know this to be theologically true, I think we struggle to remember this as we go about our daily lives…

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John H. Walton, who teaches Old Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School, describes five common hermeneutical mistakes of children's curriculum. They are equally applicable to preaching, including this common mistake:

Focus on people rather than God: The Bible is God’s revelation of himself and its message and teaching is largely based on what it tells us about God. This is particularly true of narrative (stories). While we are drawn to observe the people in the stories, we cannot forget that the stories are intended to teach us about God more than about people. If in the end, the final point is “We should/shouldn’t be like X (= some biblical character)” there is probably a problem unless the “X” is Jesus or God. Better is “we can learn through X’s story that God . . .”

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The sad fact is that many of us are simply not biblical in the way we use the Bible! Being biblical does not mean merely quoting words from within its pages. Being truly biblical means that my counsel reflects what the entire Bible is about. The Bible is a narrative, a story of redemption, and its chief character is Jesus Christ. (Paul David Tripp, Instruments In The Redeemer's Hands, p. 27)

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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

The two presuppositions we looked at last week lead to two practices.

The first practice is exegetical. Exegesis involves studying the text: examining the context and structure, and examining the passage using literary, grammatical, and historic-cultural interpretation. In exegesis, we try to understand the meaning of the text, and the author's intent in writing it.

As we prepare God-centered sermons, our exegesis must ask two questions of the text. First, "What is the vision of God in this passage?" What does it reveal about God's character, acts, grace, and will? God is present in every text, even if the text does not explicitly mention him.

Second, what "aspect of our fallen condition [in the text]…requires and displays God's provision?" Haddon Robinson writes:

This human factor is the condition that men and women have in common with the characters in the Bible. The human factor may show up in sins such as rebellion, unbelief, adultery, greed, laziness, selfishness, or gossip. It may also show up in people puzzling about the human condition as a result of sickness, grief, anxiety, doubt, trials, or the sense that God has misplaced their names and addresses. It is this human factor that usually prompted the prophets and apostles to speak or write what they did.

If we are to preach a biblical message that is both God-centered and relevant, then we must answer these two questions at the exegesis stage of preparation. The preacher must discover the God-centered message and its application during exegesis.

Tomorrow: a second practice

The Meeting House, a large church outside of Toronto that calls themselves "a church for people who aren't into church," is going through a series on how to enter Scripture as God's story.
The first week outlines the story of God in six acts (MP3 audio | PDF sermon notes).
The second week is on basic hermeneutics (MP3 audio | PDF sermon notes). It includes a section on three exegetical mistakes that lead to anthropocentric interpretation: over moralizing (turning narrative into moral example without regard for context), over symbolizing (turning history into allegory), and over personalizing (making everything about ME first, Jesus second).
Next week's sermon is on Christocentric interpretation.
This series is a good example of teaching basic Biblical interpretation to an entire congregation.

How do we preach Christ from all of Scripture? Dennis E. Johnson, author of Him We Proclaim, suggests that we follow the example of the apostles:

One major theme, to which this book will return repeatedly…is the unity of the Old Testament and the New in the person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ and consequently, also, in the community composed of believing Jews and Gentiles that his Spirit is now assembling. This unity, I am persuaded, unlocks the whole of the Scriptures to the twenty-first century preacher and his hearers…
The title, Him We Proclaim, is drawn from Colossians 1:28, in which the apostle Paul sums up the message he preaches as, simply, Christ. Between the resurrection and his ascension to God's right hand, the Lord Jesus taught the original apostles that the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms all predicted the Messiah's suffering, rejection, death, resurrection, outpouring of the Spirit, and worldwide reign through the servants of his Word. The fruit of this intensive forty-day hermeneutics course is heard in the apostolic sermons preserved in the book of Acts, as well as in the Gospels themselves and the other New Testament books.

We'll return to this book again in exploring how to preach Christ from all of Scripture.

Last week I promised to return to the theme of preaching Christ from all of Scripture. I've learned a lot from the ministry of Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. His preaching lectures from Gordon-Conwell are extremely helpful. Here's how Keller preaches Christ from all of Scripture:

The following may actually be four points in a presentation, or they may be treated very quickly as the last point of a sermon. But more generally, this is a foundational outline for the basic moral reasoning and argument that lies at the heart of the application.
The Plot winds up: WHAT YOU MUST DO.
"This is what you have to do! Here is what the text/narrative tells us that we must do or what we must be." The Plot thickens: WHY YOU CAN'T DO IT.
"But you can't do it! Here are all the reasons that you will never become like this just by trying very hard." The Plot resolves: HOW HE DID IT.
"But there's One who did. Perfectly. Wholly. Jesus the—. He has done this for us, in our place." The Plot winds down: HOW, THROUGH HIM, YOU CAN DO IT.
"Our failure to do it is due to our functional rejection of what he did. Remembering him frees our heart so we can change like this…"

This isn't the only way to preach Christ, but the beauty of this approach is that it steps around some of the hermeneutical traps. For more information, you can order Keller's lectures from Gordon-Conwell.
Update: Resurgence has reposted the entire article that is the source of the above quote.