Preaching Christ
I.
Introduction
I would
like to propose that some group of ministers plan a conference, or some
department of homiletics offer a course, or at least a few hours of a course
which will be devoted to the subject of preaching Christ-centered sermons. The aim would be to provide some incentive
and direction for the servants of God to more clearly preach Christ to their
hearers. The need for such a study has
been impressed upon me by the experience of listening to sincere, earnest and
gifted, God-loving, soul-loving preachers, preaching well-thought out sermons with
one glaring omission. It was voiced in
the 17th century by the Puritan John Owen in criticism of many of
the sermons of his time: “we may say what a learned person did of one of old: ‘There
were in it many things laudable and delectable, sed nomen Jesu non erat ibi.’”
“The name of Jesus was not there.” The
sermons are laudable but Christless. I do not mean that the word “Jesus” is not at
all mentioned in these sermons, but in all too many, even when the ” the name
of “Jesus,” or “Christ” is mentioned several times, the real “name of Jesus” is still not there. What makes me say that? Simply this: there is more to preaching the “name
of Jesus” than repeating the word Jesus many times. It is nothing less than explaining and
expounding the person represented by it.
The 17th century latitudinarian Archbishop Tillotson upon
receiving the complaint that he did not preach Christ replied with “I have
preached what Christ preached,” and many sermons today, likewise, are the
descriptions of something that the preacher believes Christ would preach were
He preaching to 21st century concerns. This
fails to really heed Christ’s message to His own and to every future generation:
the answer to all mankind’s concerns, his ignorance, his estrangement from God,
his guilt and depravity, and captivity to evil, his ruined world, is Christ
Himself, possessed by a personal faith in Him.
Tillotson was wrong about what Christ preached, and so are they.
As
ministers of the Word, we are to do what the Bible does, which is to use a rich
variety of expression (e.g., the Bible uses illustrative “types” and sacraments
as schematic diagrams and models, amazingly vivid poetic images, and scientifically
precise explanations) to cause men and women and little children to come to know
the person, the characteristics, the heart and mind and purposes, the offices, aims
and accomplishments of God Incarnate, to see Him as the divine answer to all
their true and deepest human want, to trust in Him, love Him, long for Him,
hope in Him, rejoice in Him, obey Him, live for Him, celebrate Him, and, when
necessary, to die for Him. Yet in all too many of our contemporary
sermons, as far as the presentation of
Christ is concerned, instead of this Ultra-HD 3-D picture provided by the
Bible, the hearer gets barely more than a few unnumbered dots to connect.
II.
The Necessity of Preaching Christ
I write
to those who already believe in preaching—in its priority, its utility, indeed,
in its necessity because of its ordination by God as the chief of His means of
grace for the salvation of sinners, their sanctification and preservation, and
for the accomplishment of all His purpose for His church in the world. A
scripture study of the topic will certainly demonstrate the importance of
preaching. What I want to emphasize here
is that the preaching that does all these things must be Christ-centered! Why
is this so?
The
main reason is that the entirety of the Christian life consists of some action
that answers to some affection that grows out of some conviction of some divine
revelation. When the word of God is
preached, if God opens my heart I “attend”
to it, meaning I pay attention to it, I receive it as true. However, by the Spirit’s work I am not only
persuaded of its factuality, but I am impressed of its importance to me; it comes to me with Divine
authority, my heart, as it were, hears God’s
voice in it, and so receives it
as good, and right. Furthermore, I am affected by this conviction. That is, I am moved by this truth to some
response—fear or faith, love of good or hatred of evil, joy or sorrow, or hope,
or patience, or compassion, courage, zeal or some other Christian affection
depending on the truth received. Fourth,
as directed by the scriptures, I
answer this affection with some appropriate action, some believing, repenting
act of worship, or service, or perseverance, or other good work. This, of
course will be opposed by “the world, the flesh, and the devil” but the Lord will
overcome them through His Word and Spirit, working through preaching and other
means of grace, encouraging the Christian’s heart to believe and respond to the
truth.
All
preaching, indeed, all oratory worthy of the name, seeks to inform, motivate,
and direct to some end. The necessity of
preaching Christ arises from this: HE is the divinely designed principal subject
of human knowledge, the principal object of the human affection, and the principal
end of human action, for all men, and especially for them that believe. Hence, it follows that Christian preaching
must display Christ if people are to know what
to believe, if they are to be rightly and duly affected by the truth, and if they
are to rightly act in response to it.
Now, without presuming to be comprehensive, let us consider some ways
these objectives might be accomplished.
III. The Manner of Preaching Christ
A.
Preaching Christ as the Truth.
The subject of our
sermons is Christ. I say this not as a
truism, or a cliché, but as a statement of fact: the proper subject of
Christian discourse is the revelation of God, which He has made through His
Son, Jesus Christ, and the primary subject of that revelation is always Christ
Himself or something directly related to
Jesus Christ.
Why is that? Because
we are called to “preach the word,” and the word, the Bible, is about Christ,
through and through. From the creation
of all things by Him, to the state of the redeemed in the light of His glory in
the eternal city, it is the pleasure of the Father that “in all things Jesus
might have the preeminence,” and, consequently, it is His command that “all the
angels of God worship [the Son],” and that all men should “hear Him,” and honor
Him as they do the Father. This,
consequently, is the summary activity of the Spirit, to take the things of
Christ and “show” them to His disciples, to join them unto Him, and recreate
them into His likeness. It is most
certainly true, that all the scriptures testify of Him, tell of His names and
attributes, His promised redemption, its history and its glorious effects. To this end, of course, it also testifies of
the condition of man, but it does even this to bring him to the reality of his
need of Christ, of His imputed righteousness and the transformation made to the
redeemed humanity in its transformation into the image of Christ. This transformation is the work of the Spirit
as we through the preaching of the gospel, “behold the glory of God in the face
of Jesus.” One cannot duly preach a
biblical text without showing its relevance to the Christ who is speaking in it
and encountered in it. The Reformers,
Luther and Calvin, and the Puritans, like Owen and Flavel, and Isaac Ambrose fully understood and practiced this, and the
correctness of their Christ-centered hermeneutic and preaching has been amply demonstrated
by contemporary authors such as Dennis
E. Johnson, Graeme
Goldsworthy, David
P. Murray, and the late Edmund
P. Clowney.
To this end let me make two suggestions. First, learn to see Christ everywhere in the
Bible. It really is all about Him, so study
to see Him everywhere. This will not require anything artificial, no
excessive allegorical squeezing of “types” for instance, but a New Testament
preacher’s appreciation of the redemptive-historical unfolding of the promise
of the Redeemer and the progressive revelation of the Redeemer through His
ongoing interaction with His people.
Second, immerse yourself deeply in a biblically fortified
Christology. I mean, don’t be content
with a general acquaintance with the forms of systematic Christology, but be
deeply conversant with the biblical basis for it. The better you know this, the better you will
be at preaching it from all the scriptures.
So, steep yourself in the grand, Christ-centered gracious indicatives of this divine
revelation. Is this not the substance of
the gospel? “Him we proclaim.” The great and widespread error of so many
Evangelicals is to think that when they have preached the simplest outline of
the gospel (i.e., “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and
that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the
scriptures”) that they have preached the gospel. Far from it.
Even to the Jews, who had been weaned on instruction concerning sin and
atonement and redemption and the promises of the coming Prophet, the coming
priest “after the order of Melchisedek,” and the coming Son of David, it was
necessary for Peter and Stephen and Paul to imitate their Master’s method on
the Emmaus road and reason with them from the Scriptures, “explaining and
proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the
dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ’” (Ac
17:2–3; cf., 9:22; and 28:23).
Third, be deeply conversant with the difference Christology
makes to the Christian life. In this way
you will be better prepared to help your hearers act in faith towards Him in
every situation. Every topic of
theology, all the theological loci, revelation, creation, the divine decree,
the history of redemption, pneumatology, ecclesiology, the Christian life, and
eschatology are all directly related to Christology. It is
our life, our eternal life (!) to know Him, and our duty and joy to labor with
heaven sent energies to make Him known: to proclaim His deity, His humanity,
the angel-amazing glories of His person, His office as Mediator, Prophet,
Priest, King, His names and attributes, His word and works, His condescension
and sufferings, His exultation and glories, His Sonship to the Father, His rich
and multifaceted relationships with His church, His Lordship over all things
and to tell these things so that learning from us, our brothers and sisters
might come to know Him better also, might glorify and enjoy Him, growing into
His likeness, and overcoming His and our enemies.
Many preachers foolishly hurry through any indicative
teaching of a given text to get to the imperatives. Preaching “applicatory” sermons with
appropriate imperatives is necessary, and a sermon without application is no
sermon at all (and we will consider this below). But application is a building upon the
foundation of truth; imperatives, if they are to be biblical, must arise out of
biblical indicatives. Preach the truth
about Christ and, being convicted by the Spirit, people will be crying out, “Brethren,
what shall we do?” On the other hand,
expecting the Holy Spirit to get them to follow your imperatives when you have
not expounded Christ to them is sheer presumption. Such imperatives without indicatives will
only lead them to ask “Why?” B. Preaching Christ as Motive
Jonathan Edwards said and demonstrated that “The Holy
Scriptures do everywhere place religion very much in the affections; such as
fear, hope, love, hatred, desire, joy, sorrow, gratitude, compassion and zeal.”[1] His preaching of Christ greatly illustrates
my next point: biblical preaching has never been about merely informing the
mind, but about moving the heart with the truth. With all the facts that may be employed by
orators in the interest of moving the heart, none can compare with the truth of
Christ. My point here, however, is to argue that if this
is to be the intention of the preacher--to move his hearers to live Christian
lives, he must do so by such a proclamation of Christ which would reasonably
have that effect.
I do not mean that we “play on the emotions,” but that we
aim at moving the heart by preaching heart-moving truth. This means that we will make the case for warm
devotion to Christ and His cause against the lethargy, against the
self-indulgent, self-protective, flesh-loving, fearful, unbelieving inertia of
soul which has the world and the devil as its allies. And we will do this not merely by a simple
minimalist assertions of the gospel and mentioning the name of Jesus on
occasion but by giving our hearers a clear, close and comprehensive view of a
great Christ. Thus we will make it
easier for them to “consider Him,” and “fix our eyes on Jesus,” and set their
affection on Him.
The Puritan preacher Isaac Ambrose wrote a brilliant
exposition of the phrase, “looking unto Jesus.” He said,
1. By looking unto, we mean (as you have heard) an inward
experimental knowing, desiring, hoping, believing, loving, calling on Jesus, and
conforming to Jesus. It is not a bare swimming knowledge of Christ; it is not a
bare thinking of Christ. As Christ hath various excellences in himself, so hath
he formed the soul with a power of divers ways apprehending, that so we might
be capable of enjoying those divers excellencies that are in Christ; even as
the creatures having their several uses; God hath accordingly given us several
senses, that so we might enjoy the delights of them all: what the better had
we been for pleasant odoriferous flowers, or sweet perfumes, if we had not
possessed the sense of smelling? Or what good would language, or music, have
done us, if God had not given us the sense of hearing? Or what delight should
we have found in meats or drinks, or sweetest things, if we had been deprived
of the sense of tasting? So what pleasure should we have had even in the
goodness and perfection of God in Christ, if we had been without the faculty
and power of knowing, desiring, hoping, believing, loving, joying, and
enjoying? As the senses are to the body, so are these spiritual senses, powers,
affections to the soul the very way by which we must receive sweetness and
strength from the Lord Jesus.
Then, through nearly 700 small print pages Ambrose surveyed
the entire history of redemption providing the scriptural substance for “an
inward experimental knowing” of Jesus, thus providing the motives for “desiring,
hoping, believing, loving, enjoying, calling on Jesus, and conforming to Jesus.”
Let us dissect this a bit.
If I want my hearers to love Jesus I do not simply tell them they should
love Jesus, I do not simply say that he is “altogether lovely,” but like the
woman in the Song of Solomon (5:9) in my preaching I will aim at answering the
question, “What is your beloved more than another beloved, that you thus adjure
us?” by describing those things that render Him incomparably to be desired by
all creatures and sinners in particular.
I will dwell on those things, elaborating on them. When the queen of Sheba and spent some time
with Solomon she said,
The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words
and of your wisdom, 7 but
I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And
behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report
that I heard. 8 Happy
are your men! Happy are your servants, who continually stand before you and
hear your wisdom! 9 Blessed
be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of
Israel! Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you
may execute justice and righteousness.” 10[2]
No matter how well we do it, through their own experiencing
the Lord through faith in His word, our hearers will likewise be able to say
“the half was not told me.” But it is
our calling to report to them His words and wisdom, “the house that he had
built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance
of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that
he offered at the house of the LORD,” i.e., to declare the glories of the Lord.
The same may be said
if I want to inspire hope, or perseverance under trial, or in the long and
painful practice of the mortification of sin.
Observe the method of the author of Hebrews, and how he lays argument
upon argument to move the hearts of his readers with faith and hope to motivate
them to run with diligence the race set before them and go to Him outside the
camp. He does not merely tell them to “consider
Him,” and “look unto Jesus.” No, he
takes them by the hand and conducts them step by step through the process. He expounds Christ, the ultimate revealer and
reconciler, the Lord over creation, the Lord over God’s house, the true man,
our infirmity-knowing priest, our ever-living priest, our promised priest of a
superior covenant offering a perfect sacrifice, ever-living to make a perfect
never failing intercession, whose blood speaks better things than the blood of
Able, the Law giver who speaks from Heaven, etc., IN ONE SERMON! I’m not
suggesting we pack that much Christology into each and every sermon, but that
we learn from this that we should furnish the hearts of our hearers with great facts
of Christ which provide Christ-centered motives.
Consider this partial list of characteristics of Jesus, God Incarnate
to be our Saving Mediator. He is--
·
God the Son, possessing all the attributes of
God, “a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom,
power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth,” transcendent, immanent the
Logos is the universe’s creator, sustainer, controller, Lord and judge of all,
the source of wisdom, rationale for rationality, basis for judgment and
morality, center of the divine counsels for the redemption of the fallen world.
·
As the Mediator, carrying on the “Covenant of
Redemption,” that arrangement, made before the world began, with the Father and
the Spirit for our salvation, we especially see His willingness to undertake
everything required for our salvation, committing Himself to us in love, committed
to us in time in a covenant of grace. So
He carries out this role as Redeemer demonstrating His multifaceted grace,
ordering all things by His wisdom, His skill, His strength, tenderness, gentleness,
pity, kindness, forbearance, compassion, patience, condescension to their human
limitations and infirmities, faithfulness, zeal, treating His people as His
children, His spouse, His friends, His kingdom, leading, maintaining,
sustaining, chastening, cherishing, delivering, correcting, healing, blessing, making
Himself to be their God and them His people, grieved by them, delighting in
them, rejoicing over them, so associating with them and so identifying with
them that even before His incarnation “in their [His people’s] affliction, He
was afflicted.”
·
O, but as INCARNATE
we see all these things “up close and personal.” Here we see the most amazing of all miracles,
greater than the original creation itself, undertaken “for us and for our
salvation,” as “the High and Holy One who inhabits eternity” takes our human
nature to be His own nature forever, born under the Law. Infinite condescension, for the sake of total
identification! So, for them He suffers humiliation,
deprivation, weariness, temptation, misunderstanding, insult, betrayal, “the
contradiction of sinners against Himself,” beating, crucifixion and death. Nevertheless, “Holy, harmless, undefiled” He,
the Lord over the Sabbath, the temple, nature, disease, demonic powers, with
the authority to forgive sins, goes about doing good, seeking, touching,
grieved at their refusal of His grace, weeping over their destruction, “lusting”
to have communion with those rebellious creatures of dust for whom He is dying
to make His spotless bride. Again, gracious, compassionate, kind,
pitying, faithful, zealous, undaunted, determined—here is a Savior to inspire
faith, love, joy, hope, faithfulness, zeal, patience, diligence, sorrow over
sin, reverent fear, and every holy human emotion.
·
But that is not all. The humbled one is EXALTED, bearing the same human nature, the same affection for His
own, the same sympathy for them in their ordeal here below. He is in heaven as the wound-bearing Lamb,
the One who has done all required of Him to secure His people’s salvation. Thus, as never dying High Priest, He
intercedes for them that they might be given “all things;” i.e., every help of
the Holy Spirit, every ministration of God’s servants (creation, providence,
good men, evil men, angels, even the devils themselves) all under His dominion
as King. Thus, all His attributes and
acts are engaged for the sake of bringing them to the ultimate good--conformity
to Himself to the glory of God.
The same may be said for every objective of every sermon:
there is a Christ-centered motive for every Christ-directed action. Let us take a few minutes to consider those.
C.
Preaching Christ as Exemplar
Preaching
Christ as an example to follow is often opposed by three arguments. The imitation of Christ as the way of obtaining justifying righteousness has rightly been
opposed by preachers of justification by grace through faith alone. Secondly, Christ does some things which are
not to be done by Christians because they are Old Covenant religious practices. Third, some of his activities are unique for
Him as the Messiah. The answer to the
first objection is that it holds true for everything commanded by God for the
Christian life: none of them can merit justification; all of them are to be
done. The imitation of Christ is to be
done. The answer to the second objection
is that His obedience to the ceremonial law has its own purpose which is to be
duly expounded. Though not in its
details, it may be imitated in its corresponding New Testament application,
along with the imitation of the faith and zeal with which He performed it. The third objection is both fallacious and
unnecessary. The assertion of a few
inimitable activities is no argument against many others. Those things which were unique to the
Messiah’s calling are just that, unique, but even in those, the human virtues which were employed and
demonstrated in them are held up to us in scripture as virtues for
imitation. For example, his suffering as
the Lamb of God was unique, but in His submission to God in accepting it, His
behavior under it to His enemies and to His God, in “submitting Himself to a
faithful creator,” are all presented for our imitation. His cleansing of the temple, often set out as something not to be imitated
because it is an exercise of His Lordship, is explained as motivated by
consuming zeal for God’s house, a suitable passion for all the Lord’s servants
to be exercised according to office and calling.
Why should we preach the role of Christ as
example? First, because Christ directs
his followers to do so:
12 So after he had washed their feet, and had
taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I
have done to you? 13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say
well; for so I am. 14 If
I then, your Lord and Master, have
washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For
I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. 16 Verily,
verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he
that is sent greater than he that sent him. 17 If ye know these
things, happy are ye if ye do them. (John 13:12-17).
12 This is my commandment, That ye love one
another, as I have loved you (John 15:12).
Second, The apostles directed believers to follow the
example of Christ.
21 For even hereunto were ye called: because
Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his
steps: 22Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: 23Who,
when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not;
but committed himself to him that
judgeth righteously (1 Pe 2:21–23; cf. 4:1).[3]
Even without these specific examples, we know that Jesus is
the great example for all mankind.
How? The
apostolic preachers preached Jesus,
the Incarnate one who had come “to save His people from their sins.” To many in the pew, and apparently to many
preachers, this salvation was only by
His coming to “die for my sins,” but if that is all that is said about the work
of Christ, it is to create a grave ignorance of Him as the object of our
faith. His death was only the
culmination of His saving work, not the totality of it. Jesus saves not only by suffering, but by
doing, i.e., not only by His “passive obedience” but by His “active
obedience.” He saves not only as the
“Lamb of God,” but He is the Lamb who
saves because He has been, from the
beginning, the obedient Servant of the Lord and Second Adam. He was and had to be the archetype, the perfect
human, the man we were all meant to be, the perfect expression of a man who is
truly and perfectly righteous before the heart-weighing Holy One. As the Last Adam, the archetypal man, he must
be the very personification of righteousness and godliness. The archetypal man is necessarily the
arch-exemplar of the divine standard of human virtue. So, whenever we are directing the sinner to
behold the righteousness required of him by the Law of God, or describing the
mind and private and public character of the “Spirit-filled Christian,” whether
we are preaching from Exodus 20 (the 10 commandments), the Book of Proverbs,
the Sermon on the Mount, First Corinthians 13, or First Peter, the best illustrations
and examples are all provided by Christ.
What
difference will this make in our preaching?
Let me begin (and it’s just a beginning) by offering this very
practicable suggestion: make Christ the focus of your preaching of
righteousness. Let me illustrate what I
mean by this by making use of the concept of the “three-fold use of the law.” According to this concept, the preaching of
the “Moral Law” of God serves the purpose of God in three ways. First, it declares to the world the righteousness
that God requires of all men everywhere.
It is the basis for morality and ethics; the true standard for the
uncorrupted conscience. This Law not
only serves to provide a restraint to the world’s ungodliness, but also exposes
them to the truth about themselves. This
brings about its second use, which is to serve as an instrument in the hand of
the Holy Spirit to drive men to seek salvation in Christ. To those who have found justifying
righteousness through faith in Christ, the law serves a third function: to show
them how God would have them glorify and enjoy Him by walking with Him in
righteousness as His image-bearing children.
Now, here is my point—
The very best way of preaching the righteousness of
God expressed in His holy law, the righteousness which is His requirement and
pleasure for all mankind, is to preach it as it was expressed, demonstrated,
illustrated, and exemplified in the person and life of His Incarnate Son.
Why? There is no clearer, more vivid or powerful
expression of the law of God than the character and actions of the Lord Jesus. From the incarnational “I come to do thy
will, O God,” when He voluntarily came under the whole law as a man, through a
life of perfect obedience to it, to the final humanity-crushing drinking of the
cup of substitutionary damnation for its violators, Jesus demonstrates the
meaning of “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy
soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,” and “Thou shalt love they
neighbor as thyself.” He “went about
doing good,” none of His enemies could make an accusation against Him, with Him
the Father was “well pleased,” and when His earthly life was drawing to its
triumphant conclusion He was able to pray, “I have done everything you wanted
me to do.” Take any one of the 10
commandments and it will be best expounded by Christ’s words and by His life. Every principle and precept is in some sense,
exemplified, clarified or emphasized by Christ.
A great illustration of what I am arguing for here is the collection of
sermons published as Charity and its
Fruits, Jonathan Edwards’ exposition of First Corinthians thirteen. Here is an exposition of true spirituality, the fruit of the Spirit in that love which “is
the fulfillment of the law,” i.e., agape. And how does Edwards elucidate the love
which, “is patient and kind, does not envy or boast, is not arrogant, or rude, does
not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice at
wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things, and never fails”? In each case, under each phrase, he directs
the hearer to behold that true virtue in its most clearest and most brilliant
expression—Christ!
Okay,
now to consider the three-fold application comparable to the three-fold usage
of the law. First, the life of Christ,
since He is the archetypal man, is like a lighted magnifying glass, making us
to clearly and inescapably see just what the law of God requires. What does it mean when God says, “Love thy
neighbor?” In Jesus’ teaching it means “Bless
them that curse you. Do good to them
that despitefully use you. In His
practice it meant that while we were enemies, He died for our reconciliation,
prayed for His crucifiers, sent His gospel first to those “Jerusalem Sinners.” A true exposition of the life of Christ would
so thoroughly demonstrate the nature and quality of true virtue that no man
would be able to think he could so “imitate Christ” as to escape condemnation. There is no argument against this
virtue. It is good. It is right.
Coming short of it is the very definition of a sinner. There is no excuse for coming short of
it. God deserves it of you. God prizes it. God demands it, without spot or blemish! Not as good as the man Jesus? Then you have no hope of acquittal in the Day
of Judgment. You are “condemned
already.” What is a sinner to do to become as good as Jesus? Here is good news! “God has made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin
for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The point is that true teaching of the example of Christ, a full and accurate exposition of it, will never, apart from
depraved self-deception, leave a man with the self-righteous delusion of saving
himself by his imitation of Christ, but there is great utility in preaching
it.
This is
for the same reason that there is great utility in preaching the moral law to
believers. By it they learn how they are
to live as God’s beloved children. This
Christian life is a process of their being conformed to the image of His Son,
and who better to learn that from than our Elder Brother. This will mean not only following His example
not only in those particular respects explicitly enjoined in the scriptures
referred to above, but in all respects. Even in those actions which were utterly
unique to His Messiahship, He is still an example for His followers in His
attitudes, His character, His faith in and submission to His Father’s word and
providence, in prayer and in zeal for His Father’s house and glory which may be
imitated in our pursuit of God’s glory in His calling for us.
Just
one note of caution here, which is not a contradiction to what I have been
arguing: even in the great texts of Christ’s exemplary actions, don’t forget
that their greatest value to us is not in being our example, but in His being
our surety. We are justified by what He
has done, not by our doing it in imitation of Him. I think here of preaching a text like the
temptation narratives. Sure, they have
much to teach us about dealing with temptation, but their primary value is in
describing the victory of the Second Adam, secondarily in encouraging us to
trust in our tempted and sympathetic High Priest, and thirdly to learn how this
second Adam, this “Son of God” did it so we sons of God can be like Him.
IV.
Concluding Summary of Practical Suggestions
I have thus far made only three
general suggestion for your meditations to bring more of Christ into your sermons,
whatever the chosen text may be. Let me
now just make a couple brief suggestions for bringing more of Christ into your
meditations.
First, study more of
Christ, fill your heart with meditations of Him so that you can honestly echo
the expression of the Psalmist, “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I
address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe”
(Psalm 45:1). “For out of the abundance
of the heart the mouth speaks.” If our
hearts are full of Christ, our sermons should be. In addition to your regular scripture
reading, read the best, most Christ-filled books, theology texts, and sermons
that will help you know the Bible’s teaching more correctly and
expansively. Based on the truths
presented there your heart will be moved, but in order to catalyze this, take
up and read those books which, like telescopes, help the “eyes of your heart” focus
more clearly on the excellences of Christ.
You will find more of Christ on one page of Samuel Rutherford’s Letters than many contemporary
sermons.
Second, read those preachers who preach Christ-centered
sermons. Whereas as I just suggested
that you read books including sermons to teach you more about Christ, now I am
suggesting that you read sermons which model Christ-centered preaching. Soon I will post some of the titles which
have been most significant to me. Read
them not to copy them, but to be affected by them yourselves, and when your
heart is full of great thoughts of Christ, labor to communicate those great
thoughts to hearts that need Him. And all hearts need Him.
One last thing. I say
all this not as an expert in doing it, only as one who has experienced it, and
experienced the lack of it. So, I say to all my brethren in the ministry,
“Sirs, we would see
Jesus.”
[1]
Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections,
ed. John E. Smith and Harry S. Stout, Revised edition., vol. 2, The Works of
Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 102.
[2]
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), 1 Ki 10:3–10.
[3] See
also Romans 15:2,7; 1 Cor. 11:1; 2 Cor. 8:8-9; 10:1; Eph. 4:32; 5:2, 25, 29;
Phil. 2:4-5; 1 Tim. 6:13.
posted by Dr Rick Daniels at 8:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home