Marks of Good Preaching - You Are Not the Main Character
To the Reader: If you have not already done so, please read the introduction to this series, ”Thoughts on Sermon Criticism”, before reading this article.
This is a follow up to “Stable and Learned”.
There is one point of all preaching — to connect the people of God with the mind of God.
There is one point of all preaching — to connect the people of God with the mind of God.
We must demonstrate from every passage how God himself thinks. He is the main subject. Believers should know the Lord so well that in any circumstance, they would know exactly what God would think about the situation. They should be so in tune with the thinking of God that their own thinking is synchronous with His. I know my wife so well, that I can predict what she would say and how she would respond in nearly anything. And likewise, that's how well she knows me. Knowing God this way is the point of preaching. And it is what effectuates leading the listeners to “Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name” (Psalm 29:2) so that He receives “glory in the church” (Ephesians 3:21).
These things are often not accomplished in the church because preaching focuses instead on what the people need for the day or the week. That is absolutely the wrong focus. That sort of preaching often lends itself to frou-frou sounding encouragement, lots of do's and don'ts, topics, and current event preaching. What the people need is to know intimately how God thinks and this will fill what they need for all of life. You may not feel it meets their need today, but that is small-think. God knows what their needs will be. Stop thinking so small.
Every page of Scripture, no matter the topics you think you see in them, give us some insight into how God reasons. This is the element that must be drawn from the page by the preacher. Not "What does God think about my topic?", but primarily "What is God's actual thinking like?" The fundamental question the preacher must answer in his preparation is, "What does this passage tell me about my God?", not primarily "What change does this passage inspire in the people?" The latter is man-centered. We must be centered around the doctrinal preaching that reveals God himself. J.I. Packer said this sort of preaching “...bores the hypocrites; but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ’s sheep.” (J.I Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1990), 284-85).
This approach may seem backwards to some. Some won't see the point of preaching if it doesn't tell people what to do. But man is not the main character of any single page of Scripture — God is. Even in the genealogies, we can find things to say about how our God thinks and what He is like. But you will likely never find a direct application for man in those passages. To the application-seeking preacher, whole swathes of the Bible like that come up meaningless. In contrast, to the preacher who seeks to understand God and relate that understanding to the people, every single passage comes to life!
A good example of this is the main character of the book of Esther. It is NOT Esther! The main character is not even mentioned in the book. It is God and the overwhelming demonstration of His sovereign rule in the affairs of people. Any application about Esther's courage, Mordecai's wisdom, or Haaman's wickedness are all secondary and somewhat shallower applications. A decent story book could give you those. But only an inspired revelation of God can give you real events with real people and show how God orchestrated the whole thing for His own glory and for His people. Good preaching is "big-God-little-man" and not "big-man-little-God". Any preacher that insists otherwise does not trust the word of God to do what it it supposed to do, nor does he trust the Holy Spirit.
This is why application should not be our primary focus in preaching. It simply is a secondary focus. Because we will simply not know what to do with many passages of the Bible when our primary focus is application. We will be left "straining at gnats" to find some application to give. Instead, make understanding the mind and character of God your main focus. The applications then will often take care of themselves, often effortlessly. Good preaching will demand something of the listener, eventually. But that isn't where the preaching begins. This approach will ensure that those applications are honest and as straight-lined as possible.
The preacher must seek the original intent, keep his applications as straight-lined as possible, and expose the mind of God from the page to the people. Trust the process and take no shortcuts. This is biblical preaching.