From Cicero to Augustine to our Preaching

Cicero influenced Augustine who, in turn, has influenced all of us!

The last few weeks I’ve been sharing key thoughts from Augustine’s, On Christian Doctrine (translated by Robertson). Because of my emphasis through the years of the intersection of homiletics and hermeneutics, I have read very little on ancient rhetoric. However, Augustine has given me a glimpse of it in this book and another that I began last week (Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal, by Paul R. Kolbet [not Stephen Colbert!].

You might be interested in the following quote from Augustine citing Cicero in the context of your own teaching and preaching work:

“Therefore a certain eloquent man said, and said truly, that he who is eloquent should speak in such a way that he teaches, delights, and moves. Then he added, ‘To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.'” (p. 136).

You and I are not interested in eloquence for eloquence’s sake.

However, we are interested in teaching. I had the privilege this morning again to teach the sacred Scriptures. It was my responsibility to interpret a section in Matthew’s Gospel in such a way that it functioned for my faith-family. We give biblical information and instruction.

We might not think about the second one, “delights.” Maybe because we’re not into entertaining. But what if I changed the angle with a quote from my mentor, Haddon Robinson: “It’s a sin to bore people with the Word of God.” So, if you struggle with the thought of delighting your listeners, you probably don’t struggle with trying to avoid boring your congregants with the Bible.

Finally, the third element, persuasion, is one that I expected to hear, even with my limited reading of ancient rhetoric. And this is one that you and I are extremely interested in. All our efforts to teach serve the goal of persuading our congregants to respond properly to sacred Scripture. Preachers talk about application or persuading listeners to apply their lives to the Bible.

N.B. You may recall from earlier posts that authorized persuasion is organically connected to theological exegesis. This requires skill to identify meaning of a passage that includes what God intends for that passage to do to listeners.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as we begin preparing for victory in our next preaching/teaching assignment.

Randal

How to Apply Part of Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer

How to Locate the Worship Response to Jesus’s Prayer

Happy New Year to you!

Usually, at the start of each year I create a mini-series on some aspect of being a part of a local church. This year I am spending four Sundays on our four core values. Calvary Bible Church is:

  • biblically-shaped (we stand on God’s unchanging Word in an ever-changing world)
  • worshipful (we offer Him all that we are because of all that He is)
  • Disciple-making (we are new creations going to our neighbors and nations)
  • faith-family (we have been adopted by the Father, so we live and love like family)

But, that’s not important right now. What is is that this past Sunday we focused on being biblically-shaped from Jesus’s prayer in John 17:14-19: “Sanctify them in the truth…”

Preaching that text gave me an excellent opportunity to teach our congregants how God intends for them to worship Him through Jesus’s prayer. It is a unique aspect of theological interpretation. How is an ancient prayer of Jesus intended to function for the church?

The answer lies in God’s desire that His people would hear Jesus pray and then ask themselves,

“Am I experiencing a walk with God that Jesus prayed about?”

To use the brief excerpt above, Jesus asks His Father to sanctify His disciples in the truth. By implication our worship response is to make sure by the grace of God that we are being sanctified by the truth of God’s Word. This helps answer one of the most important theological questions about this prayer: does God automatically answer this prayer of Jesus or does it take a response from Jesus’s disciples?

Pretty simple.

You will run into this regularly. There are no imperatives in Jesus’s prayer: He says things to God and asks things of God, all intended for use in church. This approach is necessary for any attempts to worship with texts such as Pauline benedictions or prayers.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as you preach and teach such Scripture that describe experiences intended for all God’s people.

Randal

An Example of Christ-Centered Preaching from Jonathan Edwards’s Letter to Lady Mary Pepperell, 1751

Jonathan Edwards Practiced Cross-Eyed Preaching

In Marsden’s, An Infinite Fountain of Light: Jonathan Edwards for the 21st Century, he records a lengthy paragraph Edwards wrote to Lady Mary Pepperell in 1751. The excerpt provides an example of how Edwards preached Christ. Marsden writes that Pepperell had recently lost her only son and Edwards wrote to console her:

“[Christ suffered, that we might be delivered. His soul was exceedingly sorrowful even unto death, to take away the sting of sorrow and that we might have everlasting consolation. He was oppressed and afflicted, that we might be supported. He was overwhelmed in the darkness of death and hell, that we might have the light of life. He was cast into the furnace of God’s wrath, that we might swim in the rivers of pleasure. His heart was overwhelmed in a flood of sorrow and anguish, that our hearts might be filled and overwhelmed with a flood of eternal joy.” (p. 55)

This pattern, “He was…that we might…,” might help you form your own Christ-centered seconds near the end of your sermons as you move from the wording of the Text to the cross, urge faith, and then urge love and obedience from the Text.

If you’ve read some of my earlier posts on Christ-centered preaching, you can see how easy it is to move from statements like Edwards’s above to asking our listeners…

“Do you believe this good news about the Lord Jesus Christ?”

My goal on Sunday is to move from the biblical text/preaching portion to the Gospel from the specific wording of the preaching portion. [Edwards’s excerpt is missing any biblical text.] Then, the announcement of the Gospel leads to a faith-first application. I want to give everyone an opportunity to affirm their faith in the Gospel. Then, after urging faith–at this point non-Christians in attendance overhearing worship could believe–I can move to the primary application in the preaching portion.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as we continue to preach Christ each Sunday.

Randal

P.S. Blessed Christmas and New Year!

Learning About How Meaning Is Made For Biblical Preaching

Discover how meaning is made before asking what the meaning is.

Last week I had the privilege of teaching the Ph.D. course BIB909, Old Testament Hermeneutics and Theology, for LBC|Capital Seminary & Graduate School. One of the concepts we discussed during residency days in Greenbelt, MD was how meaning is made in a pericope.

It is not a familiar topic, especially when worded that way. It comes from the world of literary studies.

In my own practice I always discover how meaning is made in my selected preaching portion before attempting to discover what the meaning is. This allows me to allow the biblical author to show me what he means to say.

In many cases this means beginning with the passage’s structure. In a narrative, for instance, trace the storyline of the text (setting, rising action, climax, and conclusion). This is how theology is communicated. This is how meaning is made. This shows the interrelationship between the many ideas in a narrative. This helps you know what idea is prominent and which are subordinate.

In other cases, such as didactic texts, you are tracing the flow of thought or argument of a paragraph. This provides the logical relationship between sentences and paragraphs. This is how theology is communicated. This is how meaning is made. Again, this shows the interrelationship between the many ideas in the argument. This helps you know what idea is prominent and which are subordinate.

In both case above, you will have to investigate further. You will have to ask how various elements in your preaching portion mean something to your readers. Here’s an example from Matthew 10:1-15, my text for this coming Sunday, Lord willing.

In a text like this, Jesus’s instructions to the Twelve somehow instruct us in how to make disciples.

That’s it.

You’ll have to decide how much of the details transfer to our day, but as far as how meaning is made, you’ve got it. There’s authority, specific instructions on what to do, including how to handle rejection and what that means for those who do that.

It’s your turn. If you’re preaching Sunday and if you didn’t do this already, take a moment and analyze how meaning is made in your preaching portion. And may our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through your Spirit-guided efforts! (Ephesians 3:21)

Randal

Does Your Exegetical Method Help You Do These Two Things?

Make Sure Your Exegesis Allows You To Do Two Things

As I was preparing to preach this past Sunday, I reminded myself again that my job was fairly straightforward. Not necessarily easy, but uncomplicated. If I remember correctly, I even mentioned these two things to our faith-family at the start of the message.

Two things seemed most important if the sermon was going to be a vital part of the worship service. If I could accomplish those two things, then I would have been faithful to my calling as a soul-watcher.

[I realize there’s much more to preaching than these two things, but not less!]

First, it is important for our exegetical method to trace the flow of thought or argument of a preaching portion, regardless of genre (type of literature). Since God decided to write down His revelation to us, He determined to convey theology through literary structure. Tamper with the structure and we may run the risk of tampering with the theology. That’s how His communication works. So, you might consider analyzing the flow of thought or logical structure of a text to be exegesis’s first task. It is always the first thing I do every Monday morning.

Some of my students will recall this being the “A” in ABIT.

Second, it is important for our exegetical method to discover the worship response God is aiming at in His Word. Tracing the flow of thought will reveal how the ideas fit together to form meaning. You and I will have to infer, however, how God intends that meaning to move His listeners to some worship response. You might be more familiar with thinking about the application and that’s fine. I prefer to think of how God intends for the Believer to respond to His revelation as an act of worship. Our exegetical method should allow us to arrive in the pulpit each Sunday ready to announce what God intends for His Word to do to the church.

Again, students may remember this as the “I” in ABIT.

Is this really that important? Sermons on Luke 15 that primarily call all prodigals to come home have missed the flow of thought arising out of vv. 1-2. Missing the argument automatically skews the intention. Tracing the argument leads to a sermon that primarily calls all Pharisee-like listeners to come home.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as you use your exegetical method each weekend.

Randal

Why It’s Important to Preach the Implications of Your Text (part 2)

I am attempting to put some finishing touches on this Sunday’s message on Hebrews 10:19-27. The summer series is, Hard-Working Faith.

Hebrews 10:23 reads,

23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

The first implication in this verse can be asked this way (I teach students to formulate these implications in the form of a question to help their listeners come along with them during the sermon):

What is it about “the confession of our hope” that is worth holding onto?

Don’t assume that every congregant is aware of the inestimable worth of the Gospel and faith in Christ. Better to take a moment and remind them of what this confession means and why it is linked to biblical hope (desire and expectancy).

The same goes for the second implication in v. 23 which is connected to the first one. The only reason why any of this matter is because God promises something you and I really care about. And we’re going to help them care about it.

This illustration may help. If my wife, Michele, said to me, “I promise we’ll have lots of vegetables for lunch today,” I wouldn’t be too excited. I am not a huge fan of vegetables, except for corn, but being diabetic squashes that appetite! But, if she said, “I promise we’ll have lots of ice cream for lunch (notice I didn’t say, “with lunch”) today.” Then, because I love ice cream and because I know Michele keeps her word, I am going to believe her and be at the table at lunchtime [Yes, i realize I am being very inconsistent about being diabetic!].

So, whenever you can, search for meaning at the level of implications from the text. Usually those implications will make your sermon more robust theologically as you show how the text penetrates the heart of a listener.

And may our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through your careful exposition of Sacred Scripture (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

Our Dual Role as Exegetes and Theologians

Preachers function in the dual role as exegetes and theologians.

Recently, I gained the privilege of teaching a Ph.D. class this fall for Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary & Graduate School. The course is BIB 909 Old Testament Hermeneutics and Theology.

One of the many stages of preparing to teach includes selecting major textbooks. One of my choices is Bruce Waltke’s, An Old Testament Theology: an exegetical, canonical, and thematic approach.

[If you plan on preaching from the OT, then this is an excellent resource to have on your shelf. I can’t say enough about the quality of Waltke’s scholarship. Despite being only 100 pages into the book, I am glad I purchased it!]

Near the end of chapter 3, The Method of Biblical Theology (Part 1), section 3 is, “Abstract Themes, Ideas, and Messages.” The last paragraph reads,

“After the exegete has interpreted the text and mined its message, the theologian through critical reflection interprets that message from its old horizon to the new horizons of the canon and then of both to the contemporary church. In other words, the theologian builds his or her interpretation that unites the ancient message with the contemporary world after the exegete has done his or her interpretive work….In this way godly theologians inform the conscience of the church.” (p. 92)

Notice, pastors have a dual role as exegete and theologian for the faith-families they serve.

It is true, then, that interpretation doesn’t end with our exegesis. It extends to our ability to locate the message that functions for the church.

You’ve stopped short of that dual role if you cannot articulate what God intends for your preaching portion to do to the church, to your listeners (“the contemporary world”).

Remember, the meaning of your text for this coming Sunday should combine content (exegesis) + intent (theological interpretation). When meaning combines content and intent, you are functioning in your dual role as exegete and theologian.

And our Lord will continue to receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

P.S. Waltke basis this understanding of our roles on the nature of the Bible. He writes, “The Bible is more than concepts about God….It is God’s address to his people and his encounter with them. His ‘ideas’ and ‘principles’ are true and call for a personal response to obey and participate in the truth, the divine reality.” (p. 91).

Preaching the Implications of Scripture: You Can Always Ask “Why?”

Sometimes “meaning” can mean “implication.”

This past Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching on Colossians 1:28–2:8 for our summer series, Hard-Working Faith. The Apostle Paul writes about the extreme effort he put into his preaching and teaching.

Colossians 1:29 reads, “For this I toil [the act of preaching Christ by warning and teaching as described in v. 28], struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

One of the many things we preachers and teachers do is provide the meaning of a text. It is always important for us to make sure we know what we mean by “meaning.” This is one of my favorite subjects to explore with my students.

Sometimes, when we say a text or portion of a text “means something,” we’re talking about the realm known as implication.

In the case of my preaching portion in Colossians 1:28–2:8, one strong implication is that preaching Christ in a pastoral or soul-watching context requires tremendous energy and effort.

So, there is great value in making sure we move meaning to the level of this implication. One question you can ask the text and then your listener/learners is: Why is preaching Christ in church so difficult? Or, you might ask, “What is it about the nature of preaching Christ that requires such effort?”

In this case, our text does provide at least a partial answer in vv. 4 and 8. Preaching Christ in the context of being a soul-watcher requires great effort because of the threat that false teaching poses to our congregants.

There are times when your selected preaching portion does not answer such a question as we raised above. In those cases, you must look to other Scripture to provide the answer(s) so that you can present the strong implicational meaning.

You will find that your theological depth will increase as you practice identifying implicational meaning and, of course, our Lord’s reputation will increase in the church and world in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),

Randal

P.S. If you want to explore implicational meaning further, search for a Bib Sac article written by Ramesh Richards.

Moving From Stated Reality to Application: What I’m Learning From Reading Jonathan Edwards’s Early Sermons

Edwards never let his listeners forget the goal of the sermon!

One of the things I’ve benefited from by reading Edwards’s early sermons is his emphasis on application. If you read his sermons you’ll see a balanced presentation of deep theology and practical exhortation.

In his sermon, The Way of Holiness, on Isaiah 35:8 (“And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it.”), Edwards concludes with an application section containing three elements. Here are the first two:

  1. By inference, Edwards reasons, “how many poor creatures are there that think they are in the way to heaven who are not?” (p. 476). I will never forget hearing veteran pastor, Chuck Swindoll, announce that the longer he pastored his church, the more he felt that less of his parishioners were saved.
  2. If this verse is true, then it is critical that his listeners “examine [them]selves by this doctrine to see whereabouts [they] are, and see whether or no [they] are in the way to heaven…” (p. 477). Under this point, Edwards exhorted: “Meditate on the holiness of God, and see if you cannot see a conformity, a likeness in your mind….It is not supposed that ever any copy comes near to this original, nor ever will; but yet they may perceive whether the same spirit, the same temper and disposition, in a lesser degree be in them, that was manifested by the life and conversation of Jesus Christ.” (p. 477)

Notice that Isaiah only presents stated reality. Edwards teaches by example that our job is to move from stated reality to the application inferred by that reality.

If you read this before tomorrow (Sunday), or early next week, see if your Scripture contains a stated reality that requires the same hermeneutical/homiletical move as Edwards.

And our Lord will receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),

Randal

How Do You Know What A Preaching Portion Means?

Adding a Meaning Element from Speech Act Theory

Yesterday I had the privilege of joining Dr. Mark Meyer, Hebrew specialist at LBC|Capital, at their D.C. location (Greenbelt, MD) for a workshop, Unpacking Sacred Scripture. We worked together in Psalms 1 and 2, the introduction to the Psalter, to show the combined exegetical and homiletical process. Our goal was to help close the gap between finding meaning and application.

One of my responsibilities was to introduce the participants to a new kind of meaning summary. You can see that in this slide:

Consider this kind of meaning to be your goal as you begin sermon or lesson preparation this week.

I call our target meaning, illocutionary intent-infused meaning (II-M). I’ll spare you the boring details and only say that this fancy language originates from Speech Act Theory and their concept of illocution. Illocution describes what a person is doing by what they are saying.

My favorite illustration of the illocutionary element of communication is my wife, Michele, saying, “Ran, the dog needs to go out.” If I respond with, “That’s nice, Dear,” and go back to my very important job of writing a blog post, then I missed what she meant. In saying, “The dog needs to go out,” she’s really asking me to take the dog out. That’s what she was doing in what she was saying.

As you can see from the slide, II-M is the combination of biblical content and biblical intent. The intent part is critical because this contains the seeds of valid application derived from the meaning of the text.

So, before Sunday, see if you can detect your pericope’s intent. Answer this question from your text:

What does God intend for this Scripture to do to the listener?

If you can add intention to your meaning summaries, you will always keep primary application tied directly to meaning. And, I am suggesting that we really do not know what a Scripture means until we have identified how God intends for it to function for the church.

So, as you begin to identify the meaning of your upcoming Text, complete the meaning summary by adding: “____________ with the intent of_________”

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as we communicate both content and intent.

Randal