Could your sermon have been written by Nike? Gospel-driven preaching

So far in this series we’ve considered how preaching needs to be both biblical and gospel-centred. A sermon is biblical if the big idea of the passage being preached is the main application of the text. A sermon is gospel-driven if the preacher shows how the big idea of the passage is fulfilled in Christ and points to him as saviour and Lord. We turn now to consider gospel-driven preaching.

What is gospel-driven preaching?

A gospel-driven sermon is one that not merely shows how the passage is fulfilled in the gospel but then builds further to show how the  gospel enables both our justification and sanctification.  The gospel enables the Christian life from beginning to end and thus drives our lives.

Whether or not we have grasped how the gospel enables our obedience of faith will shape the way we preach. Bryan Chapell has said Ultimately, the issue all preachers must confront is what they believe to be the relationship between people’s conduct and God’s acceptance.

How does gospel-driven preaching work?

1. The goal of gospel-driven sermons is to make real to everyone who hears them, both Christian and non-Christian, that they need Jesus more today than yesterday. In particular the Christian increasingly grasps the sense in which he needs to continually trust in Christ and look to him in order to live the life he wants to live.
2. In application, gospel-driven sermons celebrate that the Christian life from beginning to end is a work of grace and a work of God. Our justification is a free gift of God and our sanctification flows from our justification as the spirit-enabled work of God in our lives.

Typically, as we consider Christ, we ask that by his Spirit he might stir up godly-affections, renew our minds and motivate our wills to live for him.  But importantly we give the necessary time and consideration to ask just how the gospel, rightly appropriated, can enable the life of faith.

Reading through Ephesians 4:17 to 6:9 we see, time and again that Paul uses gospel indicatives to drive gospel imperatives. Perhaps the most developed example in this passage is Paul’s instruction to husbands to love their wives. He gives us gospel reasons and incentives to obey: we love our wives because Christ loves the church.  But through-out the section we find micro-examples eg. don’t get drunk on wine but be filled with the Spirit.

5:1-2 summarises the principle when Paul says Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Good preaching won’t just tell you to do it but will i) move you to obedience and ii) show you what that obedience looks like.
3. Gospel-driven sermon must avoid both legalism and moralism
Tim Keller has helped me, more than any other, to realise that the non-Christian listening to your sermon thinks your message, unless you correct him, is one of legalism.  He thinks that religion amounts to ‘obey to be accepted.’  The gospel of justification is the message of free grace. It says ‘because you are accepted, obey!’ Romans 6, Romans 12:1-2, Titus 2:11-14.
The Christian listening to your sermon thinks the message of the gospel is moralism where Christianity amounts to ‘because Jesus has done this for you, you now do this for him.’ Moralistic preaching has terrible consequences for both the individial believer and the church.
The basic problem, is that even Christians do not ordinarily live as if the gospel is true. We don’t really believe the gospel deep down. We are living as if we save ourselves. – Tim Keller
4. Gospel-driven application works hard to make the connection between

• The message of the text as understood by its original hearers
• How it is fulfilled in Christ
• How it leads to gospel change in the lives of Christians and non-Christians

5. Gospel sermons recreate what Tim Keller calls the gospel-renewal dynamic.

At the heart of gospel-driven preaching is the fundamental conviction that the Christian life we are called to live is one we cannot live but Christ can live in us.

[Gospel] preaching assures God’s people that their relationship with him is secure by virtue of God’s provision [and] nourishes the faith that becomes the motivation and enablement of true holiness. God’s people serve God out of love for him and with confidence of his provision. – Bryan Chapell.

6. The result of all of this is that gospel sermons preach the gospel to Christians and non-Christians at one and the same time.

As Keller has often said we need to preach the gospel to the Christian because she needs it for sanctification and the non-Christian who needs it for sanctification.

Some questions to ask of our sermon:

• How do I know that I have preached a gospel sermon over against a moralistic one?
• Have I just told people to obey, to ‘just do it’?
• Have they left thinking that the life the gospel calls on them to try harder?
• Is the heart of my application that the Christian life is a life we cannot live, that Jesus has lived for us and now in him we can begin to live.

Making your sermon not just biblical but gospel centered

In the first extract from my seminar notes on ‘Gospel-centred Biblical preaching’ I focused on the need for preaching to be preaching that does not abuse the text of scripture, nor even use the text of Scripture but serve the text of Scripture. Biblical preaching is preaching in which the Bible sets the agenda for the content of the sermon because the big idea of the passage is the main application of the text.

However, it’s not enough to be biblical (in that sense).  Every sermon needs to be biblical in that it is Christ or gospel-centred. In this post we ask how Jesus is the answer to every question a sermon raises, the fulfilment of every hope put forth and therefore the centre of every text.

1. Every text is there to teach us about Jesus

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:27 NIV)

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (Rom 15:4 NIV)

The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. – Darrin Patrick

2. Every text teaches us of our need for a Saviour

We also need to show in our preaching that, from beginning to end, the Bible teaches us about our need not just for Jesus as an example to follow but for Jesus as a saviour.

A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution. However grand the language it will be merely much-ado-about-nothing if Christ be not there. And I mean by Christ not merely his example and the ethical precepts of his teaching, but his atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made for human sin, and the grand doctrine of ‘believe and live. – C.H. Spurgeon

What does this all look like?

There are a growing number of good books and resources showing how to find Christ and I particularly commend Preaching the whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graham Goldsworthy.

Tim Keller has said 

Once you know that all the lines of all the stories and all the climaxes of the inter-canonical
themes converge on Christ, you simply can’t not see that every text is about Jesus. For example:
+ Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is now imputed
to us (1 Cor. 15).
+ Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood that cries out for our acquittal,
not our condemnation (Heb. 12:24).
+ Jesus is the true and better Abraham, who answered the call of God to leave all that was comfortable and
familiar out of obedience to God.
+ Jesus is the true and better Isaac, who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was in the
end sacrificed for us all. God said to Abraham, “now I know you love me, because you did not withhold
your son, your only son whom you love, from me.” Now we can say to God, “now I know that you love me,
because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love, from me.”
+ Jesus is true and better Jacob, who wrestled with God and took the blow of justice we deserved. Now we,
like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us.
+ Jesus is the true and better Joseph, who sat at the right hand of the king, and used his power to forgive
and save those who betrayed and sold him.
+ Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord, who mediates
a new covenant (Heb. 3).
+ Jesus is the true and better Job —the innocent sufferer who then intercedes for his foolish friends (Job 42).
+ Jesus is the true and better David, whose victory against Goliath was imputed to his people, even though
they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.
+ Jesus is the true and better Esther, who didn’t just risk losing an earthly palace but a heavenly one, and
who didn’t just risk his life but gave it—to save his people.
+ Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so the rest of the ship could be brought
in.

I’ve also been helped to see that when it comes to a specific narrative the ‘hero’ functions in that story in 1 of 3 roles.

• a type of Christ – see Keller’s examples above

• a type of believer trusting in Christ – that could be Abraham being justified by faith Gen. 15, Rom. 4 or David confessing his sin in the psalms eg. Psalms 32, 51.

• a type of unbeliever needing to trust in Christ – for example Abraham in Egypt, Gen. 12.

Let’s take one passage as an example of how New Testament authors quite clearly find Christ in Old Testament narrative – Exodus 2:11-25.

In this passage Moses strikes dead the Egyptian beating one of his own people. How should we find Christ here? When I preached this passage recently I called it God’s rescuer renounces his royal throne to rescue his brother(s). Two very important New Testament texts help us with this passage; Heb 11:24-26 and Acts 7:23-25. In them we find Moses commended for his actions.

Hebrews reminds us that Moses gave up a kingdom to rescue a people because he knew he would inherit a better kingdom

Acts reminds us that the one God raised up to rescue his people rejected him as their rescuer.

So in my sermon I argued that

Jesus is the greater Moses because he saw the suffering of his people and decided to get involved in our world. He is the greater Moses because didn’t forsake a human throne to come to the aid of his brothers he left his throne in heaven to save us. He is the greater Moses because he chose to suffer with his people not just in experiencing loss of status and reputation but choosing to suffer to the extent that he gave his life to death on a cross He is the true Moses because he delivers his people not just from slavery to Pharaoh but from sin and death itself through his own resurrection. Jesus is the true and better Moses because he too was prepared by God to deliver his people through suffering…

3. Every sermon must centre on Jesus

Biblical preaching is gospel-centred preaching. It shows us Christ as our only hope but does so not by

a. assuming the gospel (but not stating it). So in the sermon we learn about faith and life through David, Joshua, etc. but Christ is not mentioned.

b. bolting on the gospel in a way that eases our conscience but is not from the text. We hear valuable gospel truths but cannot relate them to the passage preached.

Instead it shows us Christ as saviour and Lord from a careful application of the passage demonstrating how it always pointed us to Christ.

In the next post we will look at what it means for preaching to be not just gospel-centred but gospel-driven.

Gospel-Centred Biblical Preaching

Over this past week I’ve taken part in this year’s City to City Europe conference in Prague. Over 200 church-planters from over 60 cities throughout Europe attended and I was asked to speak at a break-out session on the theme of gospel-driven, biblical preaching.

Here are the first part of my notes on what makes for biblical preaching.

A. Biblical Preaching

1. What is biblical preaching?
Biblical preaching is not preaching that beings with a passage being read. As Hadden Robinson has said the Bible doesn’t function like the national anthem before an international sports match. We don’t use it to introduce the fact that a sermon is on the way but then close the bible for the duration of the sermon.
Biblical preaching is not preaching that uses the Bible. Many sermons mention the passage but that does not make a sermon biblical.
Biblical preaching is preaching where the meaning of the passage is the main application of the sermon.

2. Why biblical preaching?
The preacher does not decide what the church needs to hear. Our authority is in the text and our commission is to preach the word.
A faithful preacher should serve the text – Bryan Chapell.

3. Paul’s warning and instruction to Timothy

• There will be those in the church who preach false gospels. Superficially attractive, but without power – 2 Timothy. 3:1-6
• Our role as gospel ministers is to preach the word – 2 Timothy 4:1-5
• Our role is to be a workman who correctly handles the word of God – 2 Timothy 2:15

4. Why might planters be resistant to biblical preaching?
a. To invest considerable time and energy each week in preparing and the preaching Biblical sermons is costly. Time spent doing other things may have to be sacrificed.
b. To put our confidence in a ministry that appears weak, foolish and ineffective is a battle for planters who are seeking quick results.
• Modern trends in preaching deny the authority of the Word in the name of intellectual sophistication – Chappell
• We could add to that a desire for contemporary relevance
• We could add to that a quest for popularity
c. We find it easier to try and do the work of God in our own way
When our goal is to grow a church our temptation is to find easier ways.

For our preaching, the sermon takes on even greater importance as you must be well prepared every week. In general, our experience at Redeemer is that writing sermons takes twice as long as other places. This is because of the need to be clear, concise, logical, winsome, intellectually challenging and personable – all while being accurate. – Tim Keller

5. A definition of biblical preaching
Biblical preaching expounds (explains) the text and applies it.
a. An expository sermon may be defined as a message
i) whose structure and thought are derived from a biblical text,
ii) that covers the scope of the text,
iii) and that explains the features and context of the text
iv) in order to disclose the enduring principles of faithful thinking. Bryan Chapell in Christ-centered biblical preaching
b. Expository preaching points preachers to the biblical text with the instruction begin here…the text itself is the source of the truths we ultimately present. Chapell.
c. Expository preaching sticks closely to the text through-out the sermon showing the hearer why and how we have arrived at a conclusion.

B. Consecutive Biblical preaching

1. A strong case can be made for expository preaching that works through books of the Bible rather than individual passages.
a. The Bible was written in books and the big idea of the book is developed through a series of sermons.
• Sometimes the idea of the book is explicitly stated eg. 1 John 5:13, 1 Peter 5:12,
• Sometimes the idea of the book is there waiting to be discovered eg Col. 2:6-7,

b. Consecutive preaching models how we sit under the Bible as a congregation. Not picking our favourite verses or passages but working through the whole Bible.
c. Consecutive preaching exposes our blind-spots as we preach through passages and explore ideas that we might wish weren’t there but that the text sets before us.
2. Expository preaching, once practised, liberates us from the fear of running out of ideas. We no longer have to think ‘what shall I preach on this week’ because the passage set before us determines our big ideas.
3. Consecutive expository preaching requires even more work (!). For example not just showing the relationship between ideas in the passage for an individual sermon but by having to demonstrate the flow of themes and ideas through a book.

Whose fault is it anyway? JC Ryle and God’s offer of salvation

JC Ryle  asks ‘Who is responsible when people refuse God’s offer in the gospel?’

There is nothing wanting on God’s part for the salvation of sinners’ souls: no one will ever be able to say at last that it was God’s fault, if he is not saved. The Father is ready to love and receive; the Son is ready to pardon and cleanse guilt away; the Spirit is ready to sanctify and renew; angels are ready to rejoice over the returning sinner; grace is ready to assist him; the Bible is ready to instruct him; heaven is ready to be his everlasting home. One thing only is needful, and that is – the sinner must be ready and willing himself. Let this also never be forgotten: let us not quibble and split hairs upon this point. God will be found clear of the blood of all lost souls.

Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of Matthew – The Wedding Banquet, Matthew 22:1-14

Is Wright wrong about women bishops?

So NT Wright (formerly Bishop of Durham and now Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary’s College, St Andrews) has declared in the Times newspaper (£) that the argument for women Bishops is to be found in the Bible.

We applaud his rejection of the cries of both media and politicians that the Church must ‘move with the times’ and modernise. CS Lewis was right to reject the myth of moral progress which he described as ‘chronological snobbery’.

So far so good. However Wright’s defence of women Bishops from the text of the Bible is quite something to behold.  He writes ‘The other lie to nail is that people who “believe in the Bible” or who “take it literally” will oppose women’s ordination. Rubbish.’

Nathaniel Dimock in his work on the Atonement argues that three tests can be applied to assess the validity of an interpretation of the Bible. A doctrine should be regarded as orthodox if it can be demonstrated from the Scriptures, but further, interpretations should also be weighed against the church’s teaching across the centuries. Dimock as a good evangelical believed in Sola Scriptura and tradition is in no way a final authority but nevertheless we are right to ask whether a view of the Bible is biblical if it is also not also primitive and catholic.

By Biblical we mean it must find clear support in the Bible itself. By primitive Dimock means we should look to see whether such an interpretation has been accepted from the earliest times of the church and catholic meaning it should have widespread support across the ages of the church. Clearly doctrines (such as penal substitutionary atonement which Dimock defends) are not taught with the same frequency and clarity across all ages but Dimock ably demonstrates a form of the doctrine present in the church from the earliest times to the present day. If a doctrine is clearly taught in the Bible, so much so that it should be regarded as the correct interpretation over other views, we should expect to find the church affirming it to some degree at points throughout history.

So what should we think of Wright’s approach, maintaining as he does, that a doctrine held nowhere in the church for the first 2000 of its existence should be accepted as Biblical? Further a doctrine still rejected by the vast majority of Christians across the world? I hope he can at least understand the  scepticism of many when his judgement is questioned.

Should we not also be a bit apprehensive when it comes to embracing a novel 21^st century interpretation that just so happens fits exactly the mood of our own times. It makes me, at least, think there might be some attempt to make an idea ‘fit’ the text at all costs.

We shouldn’t say that Wright is simply wrong it’s rather that his arguments need to be a great deal more substantial than they are if he wishes to persuade that Christians have failed, for 2000 years, to understand and interpret the text of the Bible correctly.

‘It seems that we simply do not need each other as once we did…’

Every time I’ve heard Peter Jensen he’s been thought-provoking and always insightful. In his closing presidential address to the Anglican Synod in Sydney he spoke on The challenge of the gospel against the cult of the self. Lots of challenge on how we speak to our culture and live & serve in our churches.

What’s the difference between the New Testament gospels and all the others?

Simon Gathercole is a New Testament scholar at Cambridge University who is also a leading expert on other so-called gospels. He has  written books on the gospel of Judas and the gospel of Thomas. In this lecture Dr. Gathercole takes a look at the sensationalist claims of the media about other gospels not found in the Bible and offers an expert opinion on what we can really know about Jesus.

Did Jesus have a wife? A Cambridge scholar sheds light on new claims

Reading some of the media output of the last 24 hours and you’d be forgiven for thinking a new ‘gospel’ had been discovered shedding light on the life of Jesus and challenging our traditional understanding of him. Let me assure you that no such document has been found.

Quite simply the only ‘gospels’ in existence that tell us anything about the real Jesus come from those very early gospels of the New Testament that were all written within the lifetime of the eye-witnesses of the events of his life. True, many other gospels were penned from the 2nd century onwards all by those who never knew Jesus.  These gospels don’t tell us anything about Jesus although they are useful in the study of the development of  ’chrisitan’ groups and the development in particular of a christian gnosticism.

Bart Ehrmann (no friend of evangelical Christians) writes:

The oldest and best sources we have for knowing about the life of Jesus – are the four gospels of the New Testament.  This is not simply the view of Christian historians; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hardcore atheists.  This view is not, in other words, a biased perspective of only a few naïve wishful thinkers; it is the conclusion that has been reached by every one of the hundreds (thousands, even) of scholars who work on the problem of establishing what really happened in the life of the historical Jesus.

Ehrman concludes:

We may wish there were other, more reliable sources, but ultimately it is the sources within the cannon (that is the four gospels in the Bible) that provide us with the most and the best, information.

Simon Gathercole,a leading expert at Cambridge University, has written this compelling response to those who wish to find a whole lot more than really exists in this new discovery.

What books are essential to a preacher’s library?

Jake Eggertsen has put together a great post having collected wisdom from a number of ministers on the books they read and believe all preachers should read.

Here are my answers to his three questions (at least my answers for today):

1/ Apart from God’s Word, what books would you recommend first to a young preacher?

38,000 spoons, 18,000 tiles, 355 coffee pots, and even 100 bibles

Philip Ryken in his excellent commentary on Exodus includes the following list of items stolen from a single hotel in its first year of opening; 38,000 spoons. 18,000 tiles, 355 coffee pots, and even 100 bibles.

As we continue our series on the 10 commandments at City Church so this week we arrive at the 8th command.

Why the 8th commandment?

‘You shall not lie’ looks very much like a command that belongs under the heading ‘love your neighbour’ but, as with the other commands 5-10, this one too depends upon first ‘loving the Lord our God’. All of the commandments flow from God’s character – he is a generous God who gives without finding fault and so we too should be generous –  and from commandment 1 through to 10 we express our worship of him as he do his will. Stealing from someone else, is first and foremost a sin against God

How is stealing a sin against God?

1. Everything comes from God

David writes in 1 Chronicles 29 ‘everything in heaven and earth is yours…everything comes from you’. Believing that, changes everything and set’s the Christian apart. Consumerism tells me I own what I possess the Bible tells me everything belongs to God.

J. John writes ‘ Everything we have comes from God. I no more own my house, my car & my bank balance than I own my library books.’  How does that change things?

Two things flow

2. ‘Every theft is a failure to trust God for his provision’ (Ryken)

Why would I steal? I steal because I want more and if I can’t have more by honest means then maybe I can simply take it by other means. But what I’m really doing, or the sin behind the sin, is saying to God ‘you haven’t given me enough!’  Stealing is failing to thank God for what he’s given me and it’s failing to trust God that what he’s given me is enough. More than that it’s saying to God ‘I know what I need more than you do.’ and more than that not only is everything I have from God but everything I have from God I have been given for God and for others. Ownership means stewardship. What I have is what has been given and what I have been given I have been given for others.

Paul in Ephesians 4:28 writes: He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.

3. Every theft is a theft of what God has intended for others

When I sin against God by taking that which he has not given to me I also break the commandment that calls on me to love my neighbour. When I steal I’m thinking about what would be good for me, regardless of its impact on others. So that too ends up being a sin against God. When I steal I am stealing from what God has given to others. I taking what he has decided to provide for someone else.

So next post..how do I break the 8th commandment?