Think of Application in Terms of Being a Subject in God’s Kingdom.
As you develop your sermon or lesson this week, here are a couple of ways to think about application.
N. T. Wright provides a very broad understanding of biblical application. He believes that we are inviting our listeners into a different world.
That’s a good start. Our preaching and teaching invites them to move from their world to God’s world.
I like to be a bit more specific with respect to the nature of sermon application. I define application as:
“The process by which expository preachers and teachers urge their listeners to inhabit an area of the Kingdom of God.”
One way to assess the meaning of your preaching portion for this Sunday is to ask what particular area of the Kingdom of God is being highlighted.
May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as you put your exegetical skills to good use with the goal of inviting your listeners to inhabit God’s Kingdom.
Even if you were not familiar with the three tools shown above, you could probably figure out what they were intended to do. Just look at their shape. Also, think about what would happen if you tried to make their functionality interchangeable. Imagine using the saw in the middle for a hammer!
Biblical texts–our preaching portions–signal their intention by their shape. Theology is conveyed through literary structure, things like grammar and syntax, and the type of literature. That’s why I live and die by this method:
After I pray Aquinas’s famous prayer, “Grant to me keenness of mind…”, my first study minutes are devoted to tracing the argument of the passage.
Pauline epistles convey their theology through logical argumentation. Old and New Testament narratives communicate through their storyline. Old Testament poetry preaches through parallelism.
That’s all simplistic, I know, but true enough to make the point.
Our search for applications begins with a search for intentionality. Here’s the key question:
What does God intend to do to His readers in this preaching portion?
Answer that and you’ve got the foundation for any form of application from that pericope.
In order to answer that question, you have to know what to look for. The epistles or other didactic genres (types of literature) are easiest, I think. Follow the imperatives and the logical flow. Doctrinal sections intend for readers to affirm them as real, real enough to elicit praise and corresponding lifestyle.
Narratives are the worst. We can talk about that next time, Lord willing.
For now, as you head into another work week, be thinking in your first hours of study what God intends to do to His readers, your congregants so He receives glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).
“And in a word, the Application will be found to be the Best part of the Sermon.” (J.E.)
When you read Edwards’s sermons, you soon realize that sermon application can also be called “Improvement or Use” (p. 38, Kimnach). It took me a while to get use to “improving” on a doctrine, but now I get what Edwards is trying to do.
Kimnach describes the approach:
“Application is concerning with experience and practice.” (p. 39)
Most of us think of sermon application in terms of transformation of attitude or action dictated by the Scriptures. But Kimnach writes,
“But as employed by Edwards, the Application also has a subtler use, as is indicated by his own statement in this transitional passage between Doctrine and Application of Gen. 19:14.
‘The Improvement we shall make of this doctrine shall be to offer some considerations to make future punishment seem real to you.'” (p. 39, emphasis added)
So how does Edwards do that? Here’s an example from the sermon, God’s Excellencies:
APPLICATION.
We are now come to make some improvement of this glorious truth….
How dreadful must his wrath be! If God [is] infinitely great and powerful, how terrible must his wrath and anger be; what a miserable creature–how inexpressibly miserable–must a poor, weak, sinner be in the hands of an angry and enraged God, who can shake the whole earth in pieces in a moment, and can annihilate the whole universe in the twinkling of an eye. (p. 426, emphasis added)
All of this is built off from the doctrine of the excellency of God. The logic is that sin against such an excellent Being must be extremely dreadful.
Edwards improves the doctrine by moving from the truth to an implication of that truth, an implication that his hearers must experience as real.
One more example:
“O what is a worm, to bear the weight of the anger of so great a being?” (p. 427)
May our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as we explain the Doctrine and then spend time on its Improvement, doing our best to help our listeners experience it as real.
Would it matter to your sermon if no one was listening?
One of my mentors, the late, Dr. Haddon Robinson, taught me about the difference between preaching and lecturing. He put it this way:
“We don’t talk to our listeners about the Bible; we talk to them about them from the Bible.”
My wife, Michele, recently had an opportunity to listen to another preacher from a local church. I don’t blame her. To quote my mentor again, she’s heard enough poor sermons in her lifetime–bless her heart–it’s no wonder she’s still a Christian. [I’ve preached over 2,000 sermons and she’s heard most of them!]
So, I asked her the question that ranks second in my order of importance:
“Was the preacher talking to you about the Bible or talking to you about you from the Bible?”
Without hesitation she replied: “The first one.”
The first scenario, the lecturer’s stance, does not require listeners. Take a look at last week’s sermon or what you have developed so far this week and ask yourself whether or not the way it sounds requires listeners.
Michele followed that up with this insight:
“But if you believe your assignment is to teach the people [insert a book of the Bible or theological concept], then it makes sense to preach like that.”
But if our responsibility is to watch over souls (Hebrews 13:17), then we approach the sermon differently. We talk to them about them from the Bible because we are shepherding them in the moment, urging them to worship our Lord during the teaching.
As you continue to prepare for this weekend’s assignment, as yourself whether you are taking the lecturer’s stance or the preacher’s.
While I am convinced our Lord can receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) either way, I am also convinced you and I are being more responsible soul-watchers to the degree that we continue to talk to them about them from the Bible.
Randal
P.S. By the way, in case you’re interested, the first question of importance is, “Did the preacher preach with accuracy, faithfully saying what God is saying?”
Thanks to Dr. John Soden’s kind offer, for the past year or so we’ve been working together on Kregel Publishing’s soon to be released, KeruxCommentary series, designed especially for preachers. Kerux features a tag-team approach to writing that links an Old or New Testament biblical scholar with a homiletician (preaching scholar/practitioner).
John is a fine Old Testament professor at Lancaster Bible College|Capital Seminary & Graduate School. He has the lion’s share of the work: presenting his exegesis and theological findings for each section. I contribute the Homiletical Author section that helps preachers navigate the journey from text to sermon.
A couple of months ago while writing my HA section it hit me:
I am struggling to move from John’s excellent analysis to the homiletical material because he’s done the spade-work, not me.
I realized that this was the first time in my life I was using someone’s else’s material to prepare a sermon.
To his credit, John is one of those rare exegetes that consistently moves from exegetical findings to theological expressions that are preacher-friendly. That means that he has made my job very easy.
Except for one thing…
In my shepherding ministry in the local church, the Lord has given me the responsibility of doing original study in the text and presenting my findings to my listeners. It’s not that I don’t use commentaries and other sources; it’s just that those supplement my own exegesis and theological and homiletical thinking.
God has gifted me and you to do this.
God intends to guide our exegetical/theological/homiletical process.
God holds us accountable for preaching and teaching truth.
And maybe most important…
God wants to speak to you and me directly during the whole process so we respond in the study before we ask others to do so in the sermon.
May you be encouraged tomorrow (or Tuesday?) as you begin your own original sermon preparation. Lord willing, in the foreseeable future I will write about my Monday morning routine. In the meantime, may our Lord receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as work your own method.
Replacing an emphasis on what is true with what is real.
In Kimnach’s introduction to Edwards’s sermon, The Nakedness Of Job, he explains one of Edwards’s most pressing preaching issues. Kimnach puts it this way:
“the problem for men is not one of coming to terms with truth, but rather with reality” (p. 400).
Edwards put it like this:
“All the world knows the truth of this doctrine perfectly well, but though they know, yet it don’t seem at all real to them…” (pp. 400, 406)
Kimnach keenly summarizes Edwards’s goal:
“Calling attention to the reality with accepted truths, or discovering a rhetoric that would make truth real to his audience, was to become the central mission for Edwards as a preacher” (p. 400).
Edwards knew that knowing something is true is not necessarily the same as knowing something is real.
This is something for me to keep thinking about as I study each week:
(1) What is the reality that accompanies the accepted truth?
(2) How can I preach and teach in such a way that can help my listeners sense the reality in the truth they know?
It’s an interesting look at what causes a person to implement Scripture as an act of worship. If it’s real to them, it moves them. Emotions alone can do it too, but Edwards, the author of Religious Affections, would have none of that.
I hope this angle helps you in your mission so God continues to receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).
“…we are not made for an earthly happiness” (J. Edwards) Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash
I am reading Jonathan Edwards’s earliest sermons so I can hear someone else preach to me. He is also the consummate pastor-theologian so he’s a great role model for me in that area. He has the God-given ability to analyze Scripture to death while still remaining intensely practical for his 18th century New England congregants.
There. That should be enough rationale for why I choose to read Edwards.
The quote underneath the picture is from Edwards’s sermon, Nakedness of Job. His application falls under the heading, Improvement. I. Use of Infor….Second.
“Hence we learn that we are not made for an earthly happiness. God certainly never made man for that sort of happiness which he cannot hold; he was never made for that happiness which, almost as soon as enjoyed, flies from us and leaves us disappointed.”
And I would add, “…or grieving.”
Think about your preaching and teaching and look at how often such insight comes into play. Think about all the times when we are urging our listeners to love God supremely on the one hand, or warning them about certain temptations on the other hand. In either case the reminder that God did not make us for earthly happiness alone, apart from being happy in Him, can be extremely helpful.
As we move through Scripture, we and our listeners need constant reminders that the things that make us happy on earth are not ultimate things. Exceptions might be serving and worshiping God including all kinds of disciple-making.
This is great incentive for me not to hold too tightly to the things that bring me great joy on earth.
As you share this kind of practical theology with your listeners, may God receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),
If your spouse said this to you, what would they “mean”?
I am in the privileged position to be about 100 pages into my Ph.D. dissertation, writing on a topic that I am extremely interested in:
exploring whether or not an aspect of speech act theory, illocutionary action, provides a welcomed link between meaning and application.
If you’ve been preaching or teaching Scripture for any length of time, you are probably aware of how difficult it is at times–apart from the practical sections of most NT epistles–to move from meaning to application. We were taught detailed methods for doing exegesis; we were not given much help, if any, for doing theological exegesis that highlights Scripture’s function for the church.
Enter pragmatics, speech act theory, and, especially, this thing called illocution.
Using the image above, illocution, analyzes what the person means when they say to someone else, “The dog needs to go out.”
If Michele said that to me and I responded with, “That’s a nice fact, Dear,” she would quickly say, “What I meant was, please take the dog out.”
This morning I had the privilege of preaching Matthew 5:1-12, commonly known as the Beatitudes.
There are two prominent illocutionary acts in these verses. The easiest one to locate is in v. 12. The verse contains the command: “Rejoice and be glad…” The command itself equals the illocutionary intent of Matthew.
The tougher illocutionary act/intent is not so easy, but you will encounter it over and over again in both Testaments. All of vv. 3-11 begin with, “Blessed are…”
Jesus teaches His listeners a statement of reality: these kinds of people are blessed. In order for anyone to put v. 12 into practice, they must first believe that Jesus’s stated reality is true of their situation. The stated reality is intended to elicit an act of faith.
Watch for various statements of reality in either Testament God will receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21) as you encourage your listeners to respond in the way God intended.
What obeying God’s commands feels like unless we consider…
It still surprises me that Edwards’s first recorded sermon might be, Christian Happiness. That’s the last thing I expected out of such a serious Puritan!
What I now do expect from Edwards is rigorous theological thinking that urges me to love God supremely for all the right reasons.
Since God says in Isaiah 3:10 that it shall be well with the righteous person Edwards reasons, “They certainly are the wisest men that do those things that make most for their happiness.”
Makes perfect sense. When temptation strikes and I feel the pull toward unrighteousness, I am headed for unhappiness. Obedience to God–righteousness–seems very difficult. Edwards’s fourth inference is:
“Hence learn the great goodness of God in joining so great happiness to our duty” (p. 303, emphasis added).
It’s one thing to be motivated to right living by eternal happiness or it’s opposite, eternal torment. But Edwards says God has motivated us in a number of ways pertaining to this life now including…
“…but the thing required of us shall not only be easy but a pleasure and delight, even in the very doing of it. How much the goodness of God shines forth even in his commands!” (p. 304)
And, finally…
“All that he desires of us is that we would not be miserable, that we would [not] follow those courses which of themselves would end in misery, and that we would be happy” (p. 304).
Edwards has helped me see the importance of following God’s example of motivating obedience from the angle of our own happiness. And may our Lord use our efforts so He receives glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),
The picture above from tumblr.com is a fitting reminder of the temptation we face to copy the actions of Jesus in the Gospels. Luke 4:1-13 records the devil tempting Jesus to sin. First, notice the link between Luke 3:38 (“the son of God”) and Luke 4:3, 9. Luke is showing us how the Son of God handled temptation, not primarily how we should handle it. Luke shows us a Savior who defeated Satan in Luke 4 and would ultimately defeat him at the end of the Story on the cross. It is because we have such a Savior that we have any hope of defeating temptation, too. We don’t defeat temptation because we can quote appropriate verses from Deuteronomy (just think how helpless a brand new Christian is until they build up enough Scripture memory to tackle a variety of temptations!). No, first, we defeat temptation when we trust our Savior to do what we cannot do. Then, we can copy Jesus by living out the Scripture we know to be truer than temptations’ lies.
