When John Stott was asked what he thought of the current state of preaching, he answered with one word. “Miserable.” I’m afraid his indictment sticks all too well in our day. I cannot visit the average conservative Anabaptist church on a Sunday morning and expect to hear a Bible-based, Gospel-centered, Christ-exalting sermon. More often I hear a moralistic talk, an interesting story, a philosophical lecture, or a cultural commentary.
Preachers don’t know how to preach! There are glorious exceptions to this. If you are a preacher, I hope you are one of them. On the main, however, our preaching fails to match the biblical standard.
As we analyze this, it could be beneficial to think together about why preaching matters. Reasons include: preaching is the God-ordained means of spreading the gospel; preaching is the lifeblood of the church; preaching is necessary for spiritual growth. But we aren’t going to do that here.
It would also be good for us to think about what causes poor preaching, including: lack of good Anabaptist materials which teach preachers how to preach; poor exegetical skills; relatively few examples of real preaching; a general disinterest in reading and deep thinking (an absolute must if we are to preach the written Scriptures); ignorance regarding the primacy of preaching; a general lack of interest in good preaching from church members. But we aren’t going to do that here either.
Rather, I am going to outline twelve failures of modern preaching. Some of these may sting a bit. You may feel I’m being dogmatic, critical, and uncharitable. I assure you that I intend to strengthen the church, not to tear it down. But since much of the moral and theological chaos we are currently facing can be traced back to a failure to actually preach the word, something needs to change. We need a clear framework which we can use to assess the actual state of our preaching.
All of us can learn from this list. Regardless how experienced we are, we can always mature a little bit more. Actually, a down-to-earth understanding of progressive sanctification leads us to assume this. Just as we always need to grow in Christlikeness (“press toward the goal” – Phil. 3:14), we always need to grow as preachers.
#1 – Preaching a topic instead of a text
This should go without saying, but it needs to be said. Paul instructs Timothy that the primary task of the preacher is to “Preach the Word!” (2 Tim. 4:2). People don’t need to hear more current philosophy and psychology, or more of the preacher’s own thoughts and opinions. They need to hear the Lord, and He is known only as the Bible is proclaimed.
I recently witnessed a sermon where the preacher said that Scripture needs to be our ultimate authority. Then he built the rest of his sermon on practical advice, experience, and secular studies. Inasmuch as these latter things are used to support the main point of the text, they are fine. But they must not supplant the text. In this case, they did. The ultimate authority in the sermon was not what the Lord says but rather what secular research and experience teach us.
Often the reason the preacher doesn’t use the Bible is that he isn’t convinced in his heart of hearts that it is actually sufficient and relevant. This is not because he has exhausted Scripture and found it lacking. Actually, he doesn’t know his Bible well enough to realize its power. He has not drilled to the core to find the gold-mine. Rather, he has given up because, after turning a few shovels of dirt, he found nothing but pebbles and worms. If a preacher is gripped by the realities of God, Christ, and the cross, he will realize that no other source can actually provide what his hearers need.
#2 – Using Scripture to prop up manmade arguments
What’s worse than ignoring Scripture altogether? Twisting it to support something it doesn’t say. A preacher may feel very strongly about his idea and believe with all his heart that it is true. In order to validate his idea and sprinkle it with holy water, he may borrow a text which seems to agree with him. This lends credence and allows him to proclaim it as if it is the word of God, even if it doesn’t arise from Scripture. In actual fact it is a truth of his own making. He hijacks the authority of Scripture, presenting his ideas with the impression that they come from the Bible.
The point here is not the validity of his conclusion. He may be right, but it is dangerous to strip a verse from its context (or misinterpret it) to prop up his idea. If the text doesn’t say something, he dare not cite it as if it did. In hermeneutics, this is called eisegesis—reading one’s own ideas into the text. In the end, the interpreter is the epistemological authority, not the word of God.
#3 – Starting in Scripture but not preaching the text
This is the most common failure. The preacher reads the text and makes a few remarks regarding the history, context, and content. Then he proceeds into various considerations which have little to do with the actual content of the text. Sometimes he thinks he is making an application or making the text relevant. But he has actually set it aside. The quality of preaching will never be enhanced when we dismiss Scripture. Without it, the preacher has nothing to say. A foray into “practical” issues (while the main points of the text are ignored) does not make for powerful preaching. Once the actual content of the text is jettisoned, nothing said after that has any eternal worth.
This method is deceptive because the preacher thinks he is preaching the Bible, because he read from it and has it open in front of him. He believes that he is in fact proclaiming the truth of God. All the while, the truth of God remains masked in the text he fails to proclaim.
#4 – Not preaching the main thrust of the text
Similarly, some preaching majors on the minor issues of the text and never gets around to preaching the main point of the text. In contrast to #3, this failure does stay within the bounds of the text, but it does not preach the main point of the text. It is taken up with side issues, nuances, terms, events, and controversies, but never talks about the main thrust.
Let’s take Hebrews 12:14-16 as an example. “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully…lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.” It could be beneficial to recount Esau’s failure from the account in Genesis, to talk about his trading his rights and privileges as Isaac’s firstborn son for a bowl of soup, and how the events played out. But if that is the full extent of the sermon, then the text has not been preached. The main point of the text is not Esau, but us. The text includes a command (“pursue peace and holiness”) and a warning. The force of the warning is in the phrase “looking carefully.” Esau’s character and life stand as an example of one who did not look carefully, but this text isn’t about Esau’s story. It is a warning to believers to not disregard their spiritual inheritance as Esau did. Do not trade the eternal treasure of Christ for the passing pleasure of sin! A sermon which ignores this warning has failed to preach the text.
#5 – Preaching the wrong sermon
This is similar to #3 and #4. I’m belaboring these points because I think our sermons so often fail in these areas. This failure turns a text on its head, negating the point rather than proclaiming it. For example, 1 Peter 1:15 (“as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.”) commands believers to pursue experiential holiness. This is an imperative. We are to “be holy.” God in grace does not just pardon our sins so we can continue living the same way we always did without Christ. Rather, we are to live differently as a result of God’s grace in us. There are other texts which promise God’s help to those who are pursuing holiness, but those qualifications aren’t given here. A sermon which preaches this text correctly will urge believers to be more godly.
But I have heard sermons which turn this upside down. “Be holy, but since you can’t be holy, you need to trust Christ’s righteousness.” Rather than preaching this as the God-ordained means of pushing us toward holiness (progressive sanctification), the preacher made the text about justification (the righteousness of Christ imputed to us). Now, is justification biblical? Absolutely! If you’ve been reading this column you’ve seen multiple articles on justification by faith. But is that what this text says? No! Rather, it is a command to “be holy.” Or in the language of Hebrews 12, “Pursue…holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.”
Let’s go to Hebrews 10:26-27 for another example. “If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.” Some sermons spend so much time assuring believers that they cannot lose their salvation that they nullify the force of this text. Whether or not you can lose your salvation is not the point. Calvinists and Arminians both fail on this point when they make the entire sermon about eternal security. That’s not why this text is here. The point is, if you choose to return to sin after identifying with Christ and sharing in His blessings, Christ’s atonement will not cover your sin. If this sermon is preached in such a way that the warning is ignored, it has not been preached correctly.
#6 – Not setting the text within biblical theology
Another way we can fail to preach Scripture correctly is when we preach from one text something that other texts contradict. We may have our heads so deep in one text that we forget other qualifying or balancing texts, or we may be ignorant of primary biblical themes and not know how to fit our given text into a broader theological framework. Many errors in preaching result from a simple unfamiliarity with Scripture. We think we are proclaiming the gospel truth when in fact we are preaching against what the Bible teaches in other areas.
I’m going to take our example for this one from Philippians 2. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.” Some translations say Christ “emptied Himself” instead of “made Himself of no reputation”, and that is in fact a closer translation of what the word means. Some people have taken this to mean that Christ divested Himself of His deity such that, as a man, He was no longer God as He had been prior to His incarnation. This is sometimes called the Kenosis Controversy after the Greek word kenosis which is translated “emptied Himself.” If we pigeon-hole ourselves in this text, we may conclude that Jesus emptied Himself of His deity in such a way that His divine nature changed when He became human.
But other texts mitigate against this interpretation. Jesus says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Thomas confesses in John 20 that Jesus is his “Lord” and his “God.” John opens his gospel by declaring “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” More could be said to substantiate Jesus’ divinity, but that’s not my point here. Scripture affirms the true deity of the incarnate Christ. It is incorrect to preach Philippians 2 in a way that is inharmonious with the rest of Scripture. And the principle stands for any other doctrine. We must keep the whole Bible in view when we interpret any individual text.
Seldom do you see truth this clear!!