Preaching Christ is the grand work of ministry. As with all great things, it can sometimes be difficult to describe. Nevertheless, there are at least three points worth discussing when thinking about what it means to preach Christ.

Preaching Christ is a hermeneutic.

Read through the apostolic writings, and you’ll discover their hermeneutical key: Jesus Christ. We must learn to read the Bible like Peter and Paul. Pastoral ministry is in a sad state if the apostles wouldn’t recognize the average pastor’s exegesis. Said differently, we’ve got it all wrong if the apostles couldn’t pass the normal hermeneutics course at a seminary. Dennis Johnson has rightly answered the concern of “whether it is legitimate to learn biblical hermeneutics and homiletics from the apostolic exemplars of the New Testament, because their interpretation by the Spirit of God gave them privileged access to revelatory resources not available to ordinary Christians and preachers.”[1]

The answer is, “Yes! The apostles are the master teachers.” The same Spirit working through them works through us to preach the same Christ.

We can—and should—preach Christ from every genre, theme, image, figure, and event in Scripture. Many helpful grids exist on seeing, and thus speaking, Christ from all of Scripture. For example:

• Sinclair Ferguson offers four relations: 1) relate promise and fulfillment, 2) relate type and antitype, 3) relate the covenant and Christ, and 4) relate the proleptic participation in salvation and subsequent realization.
• Sydney Greidanus uses seven ways: 1) the way of redemptive-historical progression, 2) the way of promise and fulfillment, 3) the way of typology, 4) the way of analogy, 5) the way of longitudinal themes, 6) the way of New Testament references, and 7) the way of contrast.
• David Murray teaches ten ways to preach Christ: 1) in creation, 2) in Old Testament characters, 3) in God’s appearances, 4) in God’s law and commands, 5) in Israel’s history, 6) in the prophets, 7) in the types, 8) in the covenants, 9) in the proverbs, and 10) in the Biblical poets.
• Gary Millar lists nine ways to get to Christ: 1) following out a theme through every stage to Jesus, 2) jumping immediately to fulfillment in Christ, 3) exposing a human problem and showing Jesus as the solution, 4) highlighting a divine attribute and showing Jesus as its ultimate embodiment, 5) focusing on the diving saving action in the text and salvation, 6) explaining a theological category and tying it to Christ, 7) pointing out sin’s consequences and finding the only remedy in Christ, 8) describing an aspect of human godliness and goodness and showing Christ as the epitome of it, or 9) seeing a human longing and pointing to Christ as its satisfaction.

Preaching Christ is an instinct.

Reject all formulas for preaching Christ. I’m sure we’ve all heard predictable “Christ-centered” sermons where the Savior pops up at the very end as the solution to a perceived problem in the text. We can, and must, do better.

In an article on “Preaching Christ from The Old Testament Scriptures,” Sinclair Ferguson writes,

Many (perhaps most) outstanding preachers of the Bible (and of Christ in all Scripture) are so instinctively. Ask them what their formula is and you will draw a blank expression. The principles they use have been developed unconsciously, through a combination of native ability, gift and experience as listeners and preachers. Some men might struggle to give a series of lectures on how they go about preaching. Why? Because what they have developed is an instinct; preaching biblically has become their native language. They are able to use the grammar of biblical theology, without reflecting on what part of speech they are using. That is why the best preachers are not necessarily the best instructors in homiletics, although they are, surely, the greatest inspirers of true preaching.[2]

Consider a few ordinary illustrations of this point, beginning with the greatest jazz musicians. They have honed their craft to such a degree that not only is improvisation natural, but such instinctual on-the-spot playing is also their greatest joy. They are experts in scales, patterns, and keys. Therefore, playing their instrument is little more than the overflow of lifelong preparation that has sharpened musical instinct.

Preaching Christ must be the same. We have learned the types and contours of redemptive history to such a degree that we can’t help but pour forth Christ from every sermon.

A second illustration is how reading the Bible is like watching a movie with a startling ending. When you watch the movie the second time, you can’t help but interpret everything in light of your new understanding of the end. Once we realize that all Scripture points to Christ, the Spirit constrains us to preach the Savior from every page. We are not to be like Mary in the garden near Jesus’ tomb. Jesus was in front of her, yet she didn’t notice because she didn’t expect Him to be present. We know the full story: He’s there. So we look for Him in the text.

Preaching Christ is an encounter.

“Him we proclaim,” Paul announces in Colossians 1:28. He doesn’t say, “We explain truths about Christ.” No: we preach Christ.

True preaching is a personal encounter with a personal Savior. The truth is a person (John 14:6). An especially instructive text on this point is Ephesians 2:17: “And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.” The “he” is Jesus Christ. We must ask, “When did Christ come and preach to the Ephesians?” Various interpretations exist. But the right view is that Christ came to Ephesus through apostolic preaching. Christ still comes through faithful preaching.

The Second Helvetic Confession knows that preaching God’s word is an encounter with the living Word. Chapter 1 has a section titled, “THE PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD IS THE WORD OF GOD.” The first sentence confesses, “Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful.” The Genevan Confession of 1537 says something similar: “As we receive the true ministers of the Word of God as messengers and ambassadors of God, it is necessary to listen to them as to him himself.”

Encountering Christ through the faithful preaching of his word is not a mere experience of the Savior: it’s a confrontation. Hear Paul’s word on this from 2 Corinthians 2:15–17, “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.” There is no such thing as a neutral encounter with Christ. You are for Him, or you are against Him. You are in the light or the dark. You are receiving Him or rejecting Him. There is no neutral ground with Christ. Mere sympathy towards Christ has never saved a person. Detachment from Christ has never delivered anyone from sin and Satan.

Stick around for “Part 2,” which thinks about four other points on preaching Christ.

[1] Johnson, Him We Proclaim, 2.

[2] Ferguson, Some Pastors and Teachers, 672.

One of my goals for 2017 is to write three hundred words a day on Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s theology and ministry. If I can do that, I’ll have the first draft of my dissertation for The Institution done by November. Every morning I wake up early and, while the house is silent, I find M’Cheyne speaking. He never ceases to stir and shake my ministerial soul.

His Early Joy

This morning I worked on M’Cheyne’s first pastoral post as assistant to John Bonar in Larbert and Dunipace. Larbert was more industrialized, while Dunipace remained somewhat agricultural. The two parishes had more than seven hundred homes, and the spiritual concerns were common to the day. Most shepherding dealt with illness and impending death.

John Bonar was an earnest minister of Christ. He’d regularly visit upwards of thirty homes a day, pressing his people to think of Christ. After visiting Robert, M’Cheyne’s sister said of Bonar, “He seems a very active pushing man—very peculiar, very zealous—quite wrapped up in himself and his parish.” While God honored the preaching Larbert and Dunipace, what’s clear is how the pastor’s visitation work was unusually blessed. Faith became strong; comfort was felt in the last hours of life. The ministers shepherded so well that M’Cheyne told his mother, “There is not a Carroner’s wife takes pain in her head or foot but she has a minister at her door weekly till she gets well.”

I typically assume that preaching God’s word is what most excites every young pastor. After sensing God’s call, and (likely) going through years of training in Bible and theology, every young minister is bursting to herald the gospel. Nothing else energizes a young pastor as ascending to the sacred desk. But M’Cheyne was different. He told his parents he enjoyed the work of visitation more than any other aspect of ministerial life in Larbert and Dunipace.

So much so that he wanted nothing more than to excel at the work.

On the Job Training

M’Cheyne assessed his demeanor during the visits, analyzing how he could have more effortlessly turned the conversation to spiritual matters. One example of such evaluation from his notebook is: “Not simple enough—and yet may some words be carried home” and “spoke plain but not with power.” He even tried different conversational techniques to see which on most ordinarily led to spiritual benefit. Not surprisingly, he found no conversational/spiritual silver bullet.

After several months visiting the people, M’Cheyne wished “the church commissioners would make a trial of a day’s visiting and see how they cast a burden of so many souls on one set of shoulders.”

That wish got my attention.

Examination for Ministry

My theological transition means I’ve given a lot of thought to examinations for ordination. I’m thankful for churches that make ordination mean something. Every pastor should be examined on his knowledge of Bible, theology, church history, sacraments, polity, etc. How else are you to know if he can rightly handle God’s word (2 Tim. 2:15)? Many good brothers have asked me the last few weeks, “What does it matter if you can’t outline the book of Jeremiah? My answer always is, “Why wouldn’t every pastor want to know Jeremiah well enough to outline it on the spot?” Skill with the Word means skill with every part.

I’m also more aware than ever at how insufficient such examination is to test out the full ability needed for faithful ministry. The brightest theological mind may have an astonishing lack of pastoral sensibility. The most skilled exegete may care little for lost souls.

This is where M’Cheyne’s wish comes into play. Is there a better way to assess a potential pastor’s wisdom, compassion, and humility than seeing him in the work of visitation?

I’m not convinced that presbyteries and denominations should add visitation to their examinations. But why wouldn’t every pastoral internship (which should be a prerequisite) aim for regular visitation of members? Think of everything a young man would learn as he observes healthy visitation and engages in it: how to turn conversations to Christ, speak to the hurting, evangelize the lost, exhort the weary, and help the dying. These are the skills of ordinary ministry; these are the skills of love.

Almost every pastor I know would say it’s easier to preach God’s word to hundreds than minister God’s word to one family. But is not the latter what most of our ministry looks like throughout the week?¹ So should not our examination process place more emphasis on what is ordinarily the majority of our ministry? Would not our congregations be well served?

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I confess that I’m rarely satisfied with contemporary books on pastoral ministry. I usually find them lacking in the gravitas our calling requires. Sure, they may have sagacity; but as gravity before God is disappearing in our time, it’s not surprising many modern treatments of the sacred office are literary cotton candy—light and hardly filling.

For substance, then, I turn to the men of old. Men like Charles Bridges or Thomas Boston. Or I come to a contemporary author who has laid out a ministerial feast by collating the best from a particular pastor of yesteryear. Yesterday I finished such a feast, Jim Garretson’s Princeton and Preaching: Archibald Alexander and the Christian Ministry.

The Savor of Glad Gravity

The best books on prayer are those that lead you to put down the book to scuff up your knees in the work of prayer. The best books on preaching are those that lead you to fresh zeal to ascend to the sacred desk. The best books on ministry, I’m increasingly convinced, are those that fill the soul with fearful delight regarding shepherding the flock.

The adjective of fearful is appropriate because we must daily resist the devil’s temptation merely to play at pastoring. As James said, “Not many of you should become teachers, for you will be judged all the more severely.” So, we need more fear towards the ministry than we currently have. But we also need more delight in the ministry than we currently have. To hear Christ’s call to the work of man-fishing is one of the sweetest sounds this side of heaven. It means service in the word of God and shepherding the people of God. Christ’s oxen earn their wage by preaching, praying, and pastoring. It’s as though God says, “Here, let me provide for your by commanding you to labor in joy, joy, joy.” Astonishing!

The ministry is one of fearful delight. And Garretson’s book will surely ignite every pastor’s ministry with glad gravity.

[Maybe] The Most Edifying Book I’ve Read This Year

After providing a brief biography of the first professor ever hired by Princeton Theological Seminary, Garretson proceeds to ransack Alexander’s writings for the choicest selections regarding the essentials of pastoral ministry. The great value of Alexander’s teaching is his continual emphasis on “genuine and eminent piety.” Alexander said,

Let every candidate for the ministry, then, as well as everyone that has entered it, aim at high attainments in evangelical piety. Nothing so much as this will be a pledge of eminent usefulness. Nothing else is so fruitful in expedients for doing good, or so efficient in sustaining the spirit amidst the toils of self-denying and arduous vocation, or so sure to bring down upon our labours that blessing which maketh rich.

The chapter titled, “The Preparation of the Preacher’s Heart,” is the finest I’ve every read on the subject. I found it so compelling and convicting that I’ve resolved to read it afresh each week.

I could go on, but let me just leave you with the Table of Contents to whet your appetite for this feast. If you get Christmas money this week, set some aside to purchase a copy of Princeton and Preaching; it may just save your ministerial life.

Today the other elders at IDC and an elder candidate head out to Washington D.C. for a Weekender at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. What is a Weekender?

The company line says,

Three times a year, 9Marks and Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. host around one hundred pastors, seminarians, and church leaders from Thursday night to Monday morning for a full-on immersion in the life and inner workings of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, a church committed to living and ministering biblically.

You’ll have box seats for a new members’ class. You’ll be front and center for lectures from Mark Dever on expositional preaching and implementing change. You’ll even go behind closed doors to observe an elders’ meeting. And all that’s just the first half of the weekend.

From leadership to worship to body life and more, it’s all on the table. So bring your questions, and don’t forget to stash some cash for the CHBC bookstall.

In other words, it’s a boot camp on healthy, congregational polity.

Back in the Day

In May of 2012 I went to a Weekender and it was there innumerable ecclesiological convictions clicked into place. At that point in my ministerial life I had no shortage of theoretical convictions about church life and polity, but I’d seen precious few fleshed out ordinary practice. The Weekender at CHBC provided the picture that a lovingly faithful congregational life enjoys painting.

It was oh so timely as I was just about to being gathering a core group for a church plant. Looking back on it now I can’t believe I was walking into planting without many of those convictions having tangible experience attached to them. Yet God, in His kindness, put me into an experiential grinder at the Weekender and I’ve never been the same.

If you are a pastor or church leader, consider going to a Weekender.

Take Much and Leave Little

Any elder or staff member at CHBC will tell you their church is far from perfect. So don’t go to a Weekender to see the perfect church. Go instead to see a rigorous adherence to letting God’s word shape God’s people. Go to see how elders at a very large church manage to spiritually shepherd by knowing all the sheep. Go for the congregational devotion to prayer. Go for the soul-stirring singing on Sunday morning. Go for the thoughtful interactions and lectures on polity, preaching, and missions.

Go to see biblical polity in action.

Find out more information on upcoming Weekenders here.

“Reading makes a full man; conversation a ready man, and writing an exact man.” – Lord Chancellor Bacon

Over at the Boundless blog Dave Kraft marshals his four decades of ministry experience to provide six ways church members can care for their pastors.

1. Pray for your pastor.

Undoubtedly, the most important thing you can do to help your pastor be fruitful and effective in his role is to pray for him. You can use passages such as Ephesians 1:15-23, Ephesians 3:14-20 and Colossians 1:9-12 to pray for your pastor(s) and other leaders.

• Pray for him daily.
• Pray the Lord will give him wisdom in his various responsibilities in the church he serves.
• Pray for his role as both husband and father (if he is married and has children).
• Pray the Lord will protect him in the area of sexual purity.
• Pray he will experience courage and anointing in his preaching/teaching.
• Pray he would be able to strike a good balance between his ministry, family and personal life.

2. Encourage your pastor.

3. Submit to your pastor’s leadership.

4. Get to know your pastor.

5. Ask how you can serve your pastor/your church.

6. Talk honestly to, not about your pastor.

Read the rest here.

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” – Mark 1:1

One of the unique blessings of preaching through a New Testament gospel is having an excuse to read JC Ryle’s Expository Thoughts. The great Anglican bishop writes with an experiential warmth few can match in our day. Consider the following comments on Mark 1:1:

Let us observe, in these verses, what a full declaration we have of the dignity of our Lord Jesus Christ’s person. The very first sentence speaks of Him as “the Son of God.”

These words, “the Son of God,” conveyed far more to Jewish minds than they do to ours. They were nothing less than an assertion of our Lord’s divinity. They were a declaration that Jesus was Himself very God, and “equal with God.” (John 5:18.)

There is a beautiful fitness in placing this truth in the very beginning of a Gospel. The divinity of Christ is the citadel and keep of Christianity. Here lies the infinite value of the atoning sacrifice He made upon the cross. Here lies the peculiar merit of His atoning death for sinners. That death was not the death of a mere man, like ourselves, but of one who is “over all, God blessed forever.” (Rom. 9:5.) We need not wonder that the sufferings of one person were a sufficient propitiation for the sin of a world, when we remember that He who suffered was the “Son of God.”

Let believers cling to this doctrine with jealous watchfulness. With it, they stand upon a rock. Without it, they have nothing solid beneath their feet. Our hearts are weak. Our sins are many. We need a Redeemer who is able to save to the uttermost, and deliver from the wrath to come. We have such a Redeemer in Jesus Christ. He is “the mighty God.” (Isaiah 9:6.)

This is Christ-centered preaching.

In Biblical Preaching Haddon Robinson seeks to provide a manual for developing and delivering expository sermons. He believes “the type of preaching that best carries the force of divine authority is expository preaching” (20).

He understands that attempting to define expository preaching can be “sticky business,” but necessary business nevertheless, so he writes, “Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept, derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, then through the preacher, applies to the hearers” (21).

With his definition in place Robinson spends the majority of his work articulating ten stages in the development of expository messages: 1) Selecting the Passage, 2) Studying the Passage, 3) Discovering the Exegetical Idea, 4) Analyzing the Exegetical Idea, 5) Formulating the Homiletical Idea, 6) Determining the Sermon’s Purpose, 7) Deciding How to Accomplish This Purpose, 8) Outlining the Sermon, 9) Filling in the Sermon Outline, and 10) Preparing the Introduction and Conclusion. He concludes with two chapters urging preachers to clarity in their personal style of development and delivery.

TWO WEAKNESSES

Preachers looking for a theological and biblical defense of expository preaching will need to look to other sources than Biblical Preaching for such articulation. One pages nineteen through twenty-one Robinson offers “The Case for Preaching” and “The Need for Preaching,” but the section does not actually develop a well-thought out argument for expository preaching. Robinson’s thoughts can be summarized as, “Because God speaks through the Bible you must preach the Bible.” Surely there are worse convictions on which to rest your preaching! However, the author knows it would be wrong “to assume that everyone agrees” with his conviction that expository preaching is the “type of preaching that best carries the force of divine authority” (20) and still does not try to convince his readers why expository preaching is the best kind of preaching. In fairness to the author, Biblical Preaching is not intended to be a defense of expository preaching as much as it is supposed to be a manual for how to do expository preaching.  Yet, the book’s value would be increased if it contained a thought out, biblical defense of expository preaching’s necessity.

A second area of weakness is that Robinson fails to emphasize why and how biblical preaching must and can center on Christ. He acknowledges, “At some time or other, you will have to respond to the question, ‘How does the centrality of Jesus Christ affect the way I handle the biblical texts?’” But instead of weaving the centrality of Christ through his work he defers the reader to other texts to answer the question. ¹  It would have been better for Robinson to show preachers the various and glorious ways that expository preaching should exalt Christ. Maybe this neglect comes from the his emphasis on a grammatical-historical hermeneutic, instead of a redemptive-historical hermeneutic.

Although it fails as a theological and Christological defense of expository preaching, the work more than succeeds as a resource for helping preachers develop and deliver expository sermons.

THREE STRENGTHS

The overriding value of this book can be captured in one word, clarity. Robinson’s prose is imminently clear and he correctly urges for preachers to cherish clarity in their preaching. He laments how many messages are too muddied for people in the pew, writing, “Sermons seldom fail because they have too many ideas; more often they fail because they deal with too many unrelated ideas” (35). Memorably he says, “Sermons should be a bullet, not buckshot” (35). To correct the aimlessness dominating much preaching today, Robinson introduces his concept of “The Big Idea”, or the sermon’s “single, all-encompassing concept” (36). Two questions are offered to help the preacher discover “The Big Idea”: first he should ask, “What am I talking about?” and second, “What exactly am I saying about what I’m talking about?” Robinson then proceeds to spend six chapters detailing the development of Big Idea preaching. ² These chapters will be acutely helpful for seminary students considering how to prepare sermons, and they also will refresh a seasoned preacher’s practice of preparation.

Chapter nine represents a second area of strength in Robinson’s work as he advocates the use of manuscripts to aid clarity. He states, “The discipline of preparing a manuscript improves preaching. Writing scrapes the fungus off our thought, arranges our ideas in order, and underlines the important ideas” (183). Robinson is not immune to the many protests that surely arise from such encouragement. “’But language is not my gift.’ That is the protest of one-talented servant in the process of burying his ministry. Gift or not, we must use words, and the only question is whether we will use them poorly or well” (185). Preachers labor in language and Robinson is spot-on to demand that preachers become practitioners of words, phrases, and sentence. One may not be Lewis, Muggeridge, or O’Conner, yet he can strive for the ideal of clarity with language. To aid preachers in this area he tells them to do three things: 1) pay attention to your own use of language, 2) study how others use language, and 3) read aloud. The final encouragement is increasingly lost on our visually dominated culture, but it will help develop clear patterns of speech and creative simplicity in style.

A final strength to be mentioned is how Robinson appropriately balances the auditory perspective on preaching with the visual perspective. In chapter ten, “How to Preach So People Will Listen,” he calls preachers to study nonverbal language as much as verbal language. Preaching is after all a visual event, therefore preachers are to use gesture, movement, and appearance as tools to aid clarity. Robinson is particularly helpful in calling preachers to honest self-examination of their pulpit mannerisms. Natural mannerisms that aid delivery should be fine-tuned and those that hurt exposition must be lanced, and one can only do this if he is diligent in ruthless self-examination. The book’s discussion on gestures is rewarding in every way as Robinson says, “God designed the human body to move. If your congregation wants to look at a statue, they can go to a museum” (207).

IT SHOULD BE ON YOUR STUDY’S SHELF

Biblical Preaching is a book eminently worthy of consideration. Preachers looking for a theological defense of expository preaching will have to turn to Peter Adam or John Stott. Yet, the lack of substantive theological meat does not mean that a feast cannot still be had. There is undoubtedly a place for extended rumination on the practice of preaching; it’s development and delivery. Robinson’s work is indeed a landmark contribution to this field. His emphasis on clarity in exposition is a timely and timeless concentration. It was the apostle himself who asked the Colossians to pray that he would make clear the mystery of the gospel, for that “is how I ought to speak” (Col. 4:4). Young preachers and old preachers alike need to be consistently confronted with the imperative of clarity in preaching, and this book will challenge and encourage unto that end.

Book Details

• Author: Haddon Robinson
• Title: Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages
• Publisher: Baker
• Paperback: 256 pages
• Score: 7 out of 10