Tag Archives: sermon application

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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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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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The Critical Move from Meaning to Application

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Okay, maybe not “Good Results,” but, certainly, “Good Intentions.”

Not good results because we can’t guarantee “ears to hear.” We can’t guarantee that our listeners will respond to God. But we can guarantee that each Sunday we will supply God’s intention for the preaching portion.

Tomorrow, as you begin working on your Sunday sermon, be prepared to complete the following sentence:

“This morning, we worship our Lord by _______________________________.”

You and I fill in the blank with God’s intention for the passage of Scripture. This is the foundation for all expressions of application.

So, as you begin to practice your exegetical method this week, include the search for the intention of the passage. You will have to look for clues provided by the biblical author. It’s easiest usually in the epistles; toughest usually in OT narratives.

The main thing is to ask yourself what God intends to do in what He has written. Or, you might ask it this way: “How does God intend for this Scripture to function for the church?”

If done correctly, the way you fill in the blank above will be determined by the big idea of your preaching portion. The meaning and application are organically related through God’s intention.

So, while you can’t guarantee good results (actual worship), you can guarantee you will communicate good intentions, God’s intentions for the passage.

And He will receive glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21).

Randal

P.S. I practice trying to complete the worship response as early as possible in my work week. That way, I do not have to wonder how the exegesis is functioning all week long. I am thinking about application early on in the process. And since God’s intention is the focus, I don’t have to worry about the search for application tainting the exegetical process (kind of an ole school approach!).

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Defining Sermon Application

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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.

Randal

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Thinking of Application in Terms of Intentionality

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The Text Signals It’s Intention By It’s Shape

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).

Randal

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One Goal of Sermon Application: What I’m Learning from Reading Jonathan Edwards’ Earliest Sermons

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“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.

Randal

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Adding an Angle on Application

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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.

Randal