Category Archives: relevance

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How Jonathan Edwards Helps Me With Applying Scripture

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Helping our Listeners Know What Influences Their Life Choices

Most mornings I continue to read Jonathan Edwards’s sermons as part of my devotional life. Along the journey through his preaching–currently in the Yale volume covering 1730-1733–I read for homiletical insights with the goal of being a more effective exegete/theologian/preacher.

Almost every sermon helps me learn how to apply Scripture. Edwards was meticulous in his application.

In his sermon, The Duty of Self-Examination, from Haggai 1:5 (“Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.”), Edwards tells his listeners:

“We ought to consider which has the greatest influence upon us: our carnal appetites, or the promises and threatenings of God’s Word” (p. 486, vol. 10, Kimnach).

You’ll certainly want to explain “carnal appetites.” After you do, you have one half of an equation that affects our daily choices. The other half features two elements of sacred Scripture: promises and warnings.

Then, Edwards describes every moment of temptation:

“When there is set before us a self-denying, mortifying duty and a pleasant sin, for us to take our choice, the sinful pleasure and delight allures and entices on one side, and the favor of God and heaven invites on the other. Which do we choose, which has the greatest influence upon us…” (p. 486).

Your Scripture for this coming Sunday could have either direct or indirect reference to our “carnal appetites” or to “the promises and threatenings of God’s Word.” If so, then it’s a matter of identifying some specifics.

For instance, which element influences our thought life? What about the words we speak to each other?

And then, with typical Edward-like seriousness he states:

“Every man is in the way to heaven or the way to hell, and the way that we are now in, if pursued, will certainly bring us to one or the other of these” (p. 488).

And all that before the Application section of the sermon!

I hope that these excerpts from Edwards’s applicational angles helps you help your congregants put God’s Word into practice so that God continues to receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

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How to Apply Part of Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer

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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

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Learning 21st Century Characteristics From 18th Century, Jonathan Edwards?!? Who Knew?!?

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A Look at What’s in the Heart of all of Us

Over my recent vacation I was able to order a few new books and finished George Marsden’s, An Infinite Fountain of Light: Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-First Century. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you know how much I love reading Edwards. Marsden’s book offers something unique: a look at the abiding influence of Edwards because of how similar today’s mindset is to Edwards’s. I didn’t expect that. I certainly didn’t expect that the similarity is due to the influence of Ben Franklin’s thinking.

I read this kind of material to continue learning about the kinds of listeners I preach to (and the kind of man I am). When we preach God’s Word, what kinds of influences affect the way we fight for faith and righteousness?

How about this list?

  • ever-increasing technology
  • aggressive market capitalism
  • celebration of self
  • trying to balance liberty and equality
  • materialism
  • permissive sensuality
  • nationalism

Sound familiar?

If you enjoy history, you’ll appreciate Marsden’s work on Edwards and Franklin. If you enjoy thinking about preaching to your listeners, you’ll benefit from keeping these cultural characteristics in mind. They influence all of us; they’re in the air we breathe. And Marsden suggests that all of this 18th century “semi-Christian or cultural Protestant” outlook continues today.

If he’s correct, this means that many of our listeners each Sunday believe in God but are most concerned with their own personal flourishing.

And if you have teenagers in your church, here’s their “most typical religious outlook…even those who had been reared in traditionalist Christian churches… ‘moralistic therapeutic deism.’ They tended to believe that there was a benevolent , mostly distant God who wanted people to be good and who might be called on in times of sickness or crisis for help and comfort. At the same time they believed in developing one’s now self-identity.” (p. 26, Marsden quoting Christian Smith’s, Soul Searching: The Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers)

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as you and I continue to exegete our listeners while expositing sacred Scripture.

Randal

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Does Your Exegetical Method Help You Do These Two Things?

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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

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Our Dual Role as Exegetes and Theologians

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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).

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

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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

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What I Am Learning About the Status of Expository Preaching from International Students

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Such a privilege to spend time in God’s Word with these colleagues

from all over the world!

I have enjoyed the privilege of teaching students from all over the world in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry program. One of the great things about being with them is to hear their perspective on the status of preaching.

This morning, a student from Jakarta, Indonesia said to us that some pastors tell him that he should not preach expository sermons from the Bible. Instead, the people will listen better if he tells stories from his own experience.

I knew such attitudes existed, but had never heard it put quite so clearly!

The other thing I hear over and over again is that preachers will often announce their Scripture for the morning, but then preach a sermon that is different from that Scripture.

What we talked about is how sad it is that, in the first example, the listeners rule the method of preaching. In the second example, listeners don’t see anything wrong with a sermon not being anchored in the Biblical text.

And, if you’re quickly judging those pastors and listeners, please remember that the steady diet in American preaching is still topical preaching. The reason is because that’s what listeners are interested in (some interesting topic). And preachers know they need to have a relevant word on Sunday.

Anyway, I’m always so grateful to the Lord to spend time with students at this level talking about the power of the Gospel to change lives and how expository preaching fits into that equation.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as you unleash the power of the Gospel in your unique preaching and teaching setting.

Randal

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How Do You Know What A Preaching Portion Means?

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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

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We Practice Theological Interpretation When We Preach (whether we know it or not)

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For the past several years, because of my preaching and teaching duties, I have been enamored with theological interpretation (TI). My recent Ph.D. studies at LBC|Capital created even more time to investigate this as part of my dissertation.

Is it important? Yes, it is.

Because while TI might be more than showing how Scripture functions for the church, it can’t be less than that according to all my research to date. This means that TI forms a foundation for any attempts to apply Scripture.

So, if you asked me, “What kind of book on TI should I read first?” I would answer:

Scripture As Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church by Hans Boersma.

The reason is because pre-modern interpreters–and Boersma–understand Christ to be the key to interpreting Scripture for the church.

If you’re interested in preaching or teaching from the Old Testament, you should note Boersma’s argument:

“that the church fathers were deeply invested in reading the Old Testament Scriptures as a sacrament, whose historical basis or surface level participates in the mystery of the New Testament reality of the Christ event.” (p. xiii)

Some of the primary material is tough to read through, but the book is so helpful for those of us who feed flocks on Sunday from the Old Testament. And, if you’ve studied preaching with me then you will appreciate another look at a hermeneutic that arrives at application “by moving from the Old Testament, via Christ, to the situation of today” (p. xiv).

Well, anyway. When you read, Scripture As Real Presence, you will encounter hermeneutical/homiletical concepts such as:

“sacramental hermeneutic” (pp. 12-13)

“christological/ecclesial allegorizing” (p. 91) [which is important because most of our exposure to the allegorical method is from a “what’s wrong with it” perspective.

“‘christo-ecclesiological’ form of exegesis (p. 148)

“the doctrine of totus Christus–the ‘whole Christ'” (p. 152)

All these concepts will help you think about the relationship between meaning and application, something that you and I engage in every week.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as you communicate the results of theological interpretation.

Randal

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How What Evangelicals Currently Believe Affects Our Preaching

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The current State of Theology helps us know the doctrines in danger.

In preparing for some new disciple-making initiatives in the coming year, a colleague of mine at church and I have been collecting some data on what Evangelicals believe. In the process of skimming some of the findings, I realized how important this data can be for our preaching.

[For years, I have watched the survey results reveal a slow, but steady movement away from orthodox beliefs. This has caused me to see at least part of my preaching ministry as an attempt to keep my listeners from losing important aspects of the Christian faith.]

If you’re interested, I suggest you look at what Ligonier and Lifeway present about the State of Theology (thestateoftheology.com).

What you will find is that Evangelicals are moving away from traditional beliefs about Christology, including things as foundational as whether or not Jesus was created by God.

When I presented some the findings to our Wednesday night crowd, two folks quickly replied: “Well, I wonder how the survey defined ‘Evangelical’?” That’s a very common Fundamentalist reaction. My reply was that it doesn’t matter. Even if the word wasn’t defined as tightly as some of us might want, the stats still show that some of our parishioners might be experiencing a similar shift.

If you’ve used such info before, then you know that the survey answers help us know what doctrines we need to highlight in our preaching. For instance, in one recent survey I saw, three of the five questions/answers involved the Person and work of Christ.

May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as we accurately preach Christ as God portrays Him in His Word.

Randal