A Preaching Style PDF

16 A PREACHING STYLE Style is language usage. Everyone has a style the moment he speaks, whether he is aware of the fact or not. The issue, therefore, is not whether you will have a style; you do—that can’t be avoided—the only question is whether your style is good or bad. The question to ask is...

16 A PREACHING STYLE Style is language usage. Everyone has a style the moment he speaks, whether he is aware of the fact or not. The issue, therefore, is not whether you will have a style; you do—that can’t be avoided—the only question is whether your style is good or bad. The question to ask is whether your style obscures, warps, or otherwise distorts God’s truth, or whether it wings it home to hearts with power and effectiveness. Style helps or hinders; it is never neutral. Which does your style do? Does truth have a hard time flowing through you because of a constrictive style? If so, that is a matter of first importance for you to attend to. The purpose of style is to provide an appropriate and effective medium for communicating content. I have already written about the use of evocative words, the sub-purpose of which is to help listeners enter into, and more fully experience, truth. That was a specific matter of style. Now we must discuss style more generally. What makes one preacher’s language dull, ineffective, and obscure while another’s is gripping, powerful, and limpid? Two distinct styles. One has a good preaching style while the other does not. The first question we must tackle, then, is what is a good preaching style? Many preachers seem to think a preaching style is a thing apart—a style that has little or no relationship to anything else in the known world. Or, at least that’s what one is tempted to conclude when he listens to them. This stilted, so-called “preacher’s style” is pockmarked with King James’s terminology and Elizabethan or pseudo-Elizabethan constructions like, “beloved,” “unto,” “like unto,” “sepulchre” (often mispronounced “sepluchre”), “beseech,” “the person of,” (as in “trust in the person of Christ” when “trust Christ” would do), “babe,” “vale,” “blessed,” etc. “Surely, this all-too-typical style isn’t what you are asking me to develop, is it?” Absolutely not. It is that sort of thing—unknown to the apostles, who spoke an elevated fish-market Greek,1 and to the translators of the Authorized Version who wrote exactly as they talked. This style, one that has turned off so many young people, is a modern travesty totally without previous history or biblical warrant or example. You must thoroughly launder your style of all such “preachy” language. Nor am I advocating the scholastic, technical, super-sophisticated bookish styles that other preachers develop. When they preach, they sound like the latest theological treatise.2 Technical language has its place, but not in the pulpit. The great biblical, theological terms must be used, but not without explanation, nor should they be used in profusion. And if, on the other hand, you think I am promoting the sort of chatty, so- called “conversational style” that majors on using the latest slang and jargon of the day and that lacks all form or order, then you are wrong about that too. A good preaching style is a plain (but not drab), unaffected (but not unstudied) style that gets in there and gets the job done without calling attention to itself. It is clear and appropriate at every point to the message. Content should control this style. When content is relaxed, the style should relax; when it is tense, style must reflect that too. Style is content’s right-hand man, ready to run any errand that content requests of him. He will not dawdle along the roadside, playing with flowers. Nor will he run ahead of his leader when strolling along together. Indeed, his task is to anticipate and assist content’s every intent. The more they work together, the more readily they begin to approximate one another. This good preaching style measures up to the good, standard, accepted speech of the day. Newscasters on TV probably come as close to setting such a standard for us as anyone. The preacher’s style will be a cut or two above the standard because of the greatness of the themes with which he deals. But he will never allow his style to remain, as many—perhaps most—preachers do, at a level lower than that used on TV. Language usage is a complex matter. All of us learn our basic speech and language habits early in our homes, long before we can read; the spoken word comes first. And therefore we learn by imitation. That is why most Southerners pronounce “pin” and “pen” identically, why some Easterners say “Africar,” and why the rest of us do not. As we progress in our ability to understand language and communicate through speech, our teachers and peers also become speech models for us. The average 21-year-old adult is a product that is a conglomerate of the various speech models after which he unconsciously patterned his speech. Modeling has to do not only with pronunciation and regional melody patterns,3 but also to a greater extent with word choice, expressions, and grammar. “I’m fixin’ to do it,” would not be heard in most parts of the U.S., but it is standard fare for both cultivated and uncultivated Southerners, just as “you ’uns” is accepted by most in some parts of western Pennsylvania. “Well, if I’m largely a product of my past, I guess I’m just stuck with my style. Right?” Wrong. Because speech is a learned activity, it is relearnable. Although physiology may develop along with certain speech sounds, making it more difficult later in life to learn others, that problem almost exclusively has to do with learning a second language and, of course, has nothing whatever to do with working vocabulary expansion and grammatical structures. It is certainly an advantage to grow up in a home in which nearly perfect grammar is used, in which its members daily put large, working vocabularies to use, and in which they express themselves precisely, clearly, and interestingly. It is difficult to find out later on in life that one’s speech legacy is inaccurate, pedestrian, and imprecise. Such a style will ill-fit the proclamation of God’s holy Word and must be changed. The person with good speech models from the outset has a distinct advantage over others, while the one who has grown up with poor models is, at first, greatly disadvantaged. And often that is how it continues through life. But, if he only will, the speech disadvantaged person can turn his disadvantage into an asset. The first man’s background serves him more than adequately, so he may see no need to study, develop, and grow in his speaking skills. But in dozens of ways the second man comes hard up against the fact that his grammar and working vocabulary are substandard. If he will only take this problem to heart and do all he can to work to improve his speech, in the end he may find himself out in front of his more advantaged friend. Surely fishermen, such as some of the apostles were, must have spent time working on their speech, to be able to speak and write as effectively as they did. Modifying inadequate speech habits is a long, tedious task, but it is rewarding and well worth the time and effort that must be devoted to it. I know; I have had to do it. It has taken me years. Indeed, I have not yet stopped working at it; every year I work through a couple of books on grammar, style, or some other aspect of language. “What must I do to make the necessary changes, and how do I begin?” Let me offer some practical suggestions. First, visit your local college or university speech and English departments. Explain your problem and ask if they offer any diagnostic courses, designed to help you discover your deficiencies. Your first problem will be to become aware of and to precisely identify every weakness that must be eliminated. What you are looking for is a course that will help you to discover poor grammar and poor word usage. Don’t waste time taking other sorts of courses. If there is no such course available, you will have to develop your own. The advantage of a course is that you will have (1) expert help and (2) disciplined structure. Because it takes about six weeks of daily effort to make a habit change (change is a two-factored process where you put off and put on4), most preachers don’t persist; they are impatient and give up too soon. You must determine to persevere. If you truly want to honor Christ and avoid any distortion of His truth arising from faulty communication patterns, you will be adequately motivated to persist until you get results. The first three-week period is a time of awareness, of learning new ways, of self-conscious and awkward attempts at change; the second three-week period is a time of becoming accustomed to the new pattern, of developing skill and precision in its use, and beginning to feel comfortable with it. By the end of the six-week period, the new pattern should have become automatic and unconscious. Now, put together these two thoughts: 1. I must learn what my deficiencies are; 2. I must replace each deficiency with its proper alternative by daily work over a six-week period. That is the outline for your basic program, however you may care to orchestrate it. But what else do those two thoughts imply? If you have a large number of deficiencies, it is going to take quite a while and a lot of patience, not to speak of the necessary effort you must expend, to overcome them. But, if you approach the problem properly, that conclusion should not deter you. Stop looking at the forest; start working on a few trees. Many forests have been leveled with axes, but none all at once.  Now let’s move ahead. Diagnosis. If you can’t obtain help at a local university speech department, then let’s see what you can do on your own. Here is one way to proceed. 1. Write down every known deficiency in vocabulary usage and in grammar. You are probably aware of some already. Ask you wife and a couple of close friends to make a few suggestions. 2. Then, using a tape recorder, a. record about five sermons (or better still, if you have some already, use these), b. and about the same number of casual conversations in normal, unrehearsed contexts (possibly different problems will emerge in unprepared contexts). c. Together with one or two friendly persons who can help, listen to these tapes and isolate substandard practices in vocabulary usage and in grammar (be careful not to play back any conversations that anyone else should not be allowed to hear). d. Add these substandardisms to your original list. 3. Determine which four (two vocabulary problems and two grammatical) problems you think might be the most serious or most obvious and troublesome to others. Look especially for glaring grammatical blunders such as, “He don’t live there,” and “He don’t have none,” as well as vocabulary limitations, vagaries (“thing,” “stuff”), or over-uses (along with these, note all appendages such as “you know?” or “O.K.?”) that you may have gotten into the habit of affixing to sentences). The wrong use of “don’t” for “doesn’t,” mentioned above, stands out vividly to those who know better, as does the double negative, “don’t... none,” and impossible combinations like “most unique.” These, therefore, would be good grammatical usages to target for change over the next six weeks. Not only do these incorrect forms protrude, but because they are commonly used constructions they constantly call attention to themselves. The habit of using vague terms such as “thing” or “stuff” (“Then he had another thing with which he...,” “There was lots of stuff like that”), instead of the word or words that more precisely describe the object or action about  which one wishes to communicate, is a bit more difficult to work with. Your friends can help some in picking out various other flaws, but you yourself will have to learn to be vicious with your own sermons or you will not pick up all your flaws. Some men become so enamored with their own voices on tape that they can hear nothing amiss. Learn instead to be heavily self-critical. Try to discover if you tend to become vague only in certain areas of thought, or whether the habit persists generally. If you can isolate and identify a particular area, then you can work especially to avoid problems when approaching it in the future. Many preachers, for instance, don’t take time to look up specific words that pertain to an area of life with which they have little familiarity; so they become vague when mentioning anything having to do with agriculture, business, or whatever it may be. Simply looking up key words, together with their meanings and usages, can be a great help. What you should be looking for at the end of all this effort is full fluency. That is your goal and the purpose for modifying your present speech habits. Fully fluent speech calls no attention to itself while effectively communicating content to the listener. It enables the congregation to focus attention on the message rather than on the messenger. Fluent speech enables the preacher to get out of the way of the truth; that is the concern we have. A good preaching style, then, is one that serves content well. Good style doesn’t call attention to itself because of its idiosyncrasies or its deficiencies. It moves smoothly ahead, surefootedly making tracks toward its destination without taking the listener down any by-ways and without stumbling. Style is a means of bringing a message to the listener; it must never become an end in itself. At every point, therefore, style should parallel content, sensitively adjusting not only to the more overt changes in the content itself, but also to the more subtle nuances of its modifications in tone and mood. But just what is this “full fluency” of which I have been speaking? Full fluency is the ability to pick the right words (those that are oral, precise, evocative, and appropriate) at high speed, and the ability to combine them into easily understood, gripping speech. Full fluency requires proper vocabulary usage. Most attempts to solve problems of poor word usage offer little help for the preacher. These all suggest the building of larger vocabularies (“It pays to increase your word power”). Of course, regular habits of vocabulary building should continue all through life.5 But, as important as that is, it will never solve the preacher’s problem. The average college student has a recognition vocabulary of over 250,000 words; seminary graduates far excel that number. Yet Shakespeare used only 25,000 words—but what words! What word usage! It is not a larger vocabulary that you need. What you lack is not a recognition vocabulary; it is a vital, everyday, working vocabulary that you lack. You need to learn to use more of the vocabulary that you already have—and to use it more effectively. Some preachers buy books to put on their shelves; others to use. Words in a recognition vocabulary, like the books on the shelves, will do little good until they are used. Accumulation of more and more books and words is not the answer. As lazy sinners, we tend to rely on too few words to accomplish our tasks. We also fall into the sluggardly habit of using cliches and trite phrases (if anything fails to communicate, it is this). We so overwork these words, along with our long-suffering congregations, that they both become weary and sluggish. By failing to recognize that there is a best word or phrase to express every thought, we settle for mediocre and second-rate ways of saying things. We have not taken the time to search for the best. Well, what can be done? Here are four steps you can take to put to better use the vocabulary you already possess: 1. Be concrete. Avoid abstractions wherever you can. Don’t say “car.” Rather, tell us it was a 1981 bronze-colored Toyota Tercel with orange stripes running along the sides. Abstractions force the listener to fill in too much material on his own. But many listeners won’t—and go to sleep. They are too lazy, lack imagination to do so, etc. Others, valiantly trying to stay with you in spite of everything, may fill in all sorts of wrong content that distorts your message and leads to misunderstanding. 2. Be precise. Choose the exact term; do not settle for those living somewhere in its vicinity. To be in the right neighborhood is not enough; you must get the address and find the very house where your word or phrase lives. 3. Be ruthless. Cut from your speech all trite expressions, cliches, vague terms, meaningless repetitions, long, complex sentences, abstractions, and jargon. In each case locate, instead, an acceptable  alternative and use it until it replaces the offending item. Again, develop self-critical habits. Become your own severest critic. But be sure your criticism always, in each instance, results in better practice; there is little value in the sort of self-criticism that merely discourages but never leads to improvement. 4. Be persistent. Practice. Practice until you have mastered whatever you are seeking to learn. Practice until you have replaced all poor patterns with good ones. Stick closely to the six-week, daily practice routine I have explained. Practice using more and more of the rich vocabulary you already possess—until it begins to possess you. Practice in casual situations daily. DO NOT WORK ON LEARNING NEW WORDS. DO NOT PRACTICE WHILE PREACHING. Soon you will preach what you practice. In time, the vocabulary you have introduced into informal situations will find its way over into more formal ways, all by itself, with little or no conscious help from you. But this is work, hard work. There is no easy way to make the change. Remember why you are going to go to all this effort: it is because you want to develop a style that, rather than calling attention to itself, will be so clear, so appropriate, and so accurate that, without distortion, it will convey God’s truth with power to needy listeners. Any preacher who does not find that a compelling purpose to pursue ought either to repent or reexamine his call to the ministry. Do not misunderstand the intent of this chapter. I have no desire to turn you into an orator. I don’t want you to become a preaching Demosthenes. What I am concerned about is a style that will call no attention to itself. The orator calls attention to himself: people go away saying, “What a wonderful speech!” But the preacher with an abominable style also calls attention to himself. People say, “What a terrible sermon!” When they walk away from our sermons, we want them to say neither; let them say only one thing: “What a wonderful Christ!” Class Assignment: Take time to make a list of your stylistic deficiencies as you know them. Be ready to share these in class in a discussion on how best to begin to deal with these problems in the context of this course.  1. Elevated by the message they preached. 2. For more on the use of technical and theological language, see my Pulpit Speech, pp. 47, 48. 3. Such as rising to a higher pitch at the end of a sentence even when not asking a question. 4. Cf. The Christian Counselor’s Manual on the put off/put on dynamic. 5. These are: (1) regular use of the dictionary: look up the meaning of every word you encounter that you do not know precisely; (2) learning the proper pronunciation of each word; (3) using these words, if appropriate, in everyday conversation; (4) learning precise connotations as well as denotations of each term. 17 COUNSELING AND PREACHING I have said something already about the relationship of preaching to counseling. In that place I noted how the regular study of the Scriptures required for any biblical ministry—including counseling ministry—is enhanced by the weekly discipline of exposition and application that is required by preaching. And I observed also that, on the other hand, preaching that has been forged not only in the study but in the counseling room as well tends to be quite different from, and more personal than, preaching that is not. I also implied that a positive response is more likely to be elicited by such personalized preaching than from preaching that knows nothing of the effective use of the preaching portion in counseling. All of this, and much more, is true because God Himself joined preaching and counseling together as two sides of one ministry of His Word.1 What God has joined together let no man put asunder.2 Because preaching and counseling are thus interrelated, not only the content, but the principles and practices common to both when interfaced, inform and strengthen each other. In this chapter, therefore, I shall suggest to you several ways in which an understanding of biblical counseling may be of assistance in your preaching. I must presuppose you are at least familiar with the roots and basic tenets of nouthetic counseling; there is no possibility of establishing these here. If you are not, I must refer you to any or all of my following titles: Competent to Counsel, The Christian Counselor’s Manual, Lectures on Counseling, More than Redemption, Ready to Restore, and The Christian Counselor’s Wordbook. While these volumes by no means exhaust the available offerings, they will serve quite well to acquaint you with all you need to know to understand this chapter.  Problems Counseling uncovers problems in persons that preachers must know about. These problems, unfortunately, do not appear only in the counseling room; they occur in the counselee’s life at work, at home, at leisure, and at church. Because they do, they become barriers to preaching and its intended purposes, so it is not safe to ignore them when preaching. But unless a preacher is alive to people and how they act, he will tend to neglect these problems, to the detriment of his preaching and the injury of his congregation. And, typically, because the existing homiletics textbooks, in a totally one-sided fashion, ignore the other half of the ministry of the Word, they offer virtually no help in analyzing, solving, or relating to preaching the many problems that await the unsuspecting preacher. Because he has been left vulnerable to them by naive writers and/or instructors who ought to know better, but don’t, he unexpectedly runs up against problem after problem in preaching; it is like someone trying to find his way across an unilluminated and totally unfamiliar terrain. It is no wonder, then, that so many preachers stumble around for years trying in vain to perfect their preaching. It is no wonder that they do not know what to do about the ineffectiveness of their public ministry and the minimal results they attain. Indeed, because they see so little change in the lives of their members, they sense that something is wrong, but they never suspect the trouble stems from a faulty understanding of those very members themselves. Instead, they go on buying homiletics textbooks, seeking earnestly to follow the advice they are given, but with little or no perceptible results. Of course, in following that procedure they do not find the help they seek—it simply isn’t there. It is at long last time for a homiletics textbook to turn a floodlight of information toward the terrain on which they find themselves wandering and lost. Once the field has been properly lighted, and the location and nature of the many barriers and obstacles are apparent, something substantive can be done to improve on the current policies that amount to little more than thrashing about in the dark. What are some of the barriers and obstacles to good communication that a preacher will discover when he examines the terrain? I shall note several (not all) suggestively: 1. Excuse Making Excuses are hollow substitutes for reasons. Or, as Vance Havner once put it, “An excuse is the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.” Excuse-making is a way of avoiding responsibility, deflecting blame, and justifying sin. Counselors hear excuses every day: “Well, I would have done it, but you see....” With many persons—very many—excusing one’s self for one or more reasons has become a way of life. Unless you are aware of this tendency of sinful human beings and, at those places where they are likely to sidestep truth or injunction with an excuse, confront excuse makers with the impossibility of making any excuses that are acceptable to God, the impact of your message on them may be completely lost. When preaching, a counseling preacher will know at which points excuse makers tend to bail out of sermons and will be waiting for them at the door. He will not let them leave so easily. Moreover, he will be aware of the sorts of excuses that are likely to be made in response to the thrust of any given preaching portion, and will have a counter plan ready to meet them. For instance, at some point in his sermon such a preacher might be heard explaining, Now, I know some of you might be saying to yourselves, “Well, that’s fine for the young folk, but I’m too old to learn how to do that. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Well, let me tell you, God didn’t write these words to young people only. Remember what He said about change to Abraham as an old man, older than you? Excuse-making sears the conscience. That is a serious matter. By desensitizing God’s early warning system, which is designed to make us feel bad when we disobey, at length you will eliminate a system that is one of your best friends. In the spiritual life, what you are thinking of doing is akin to destroying the pain-sensing nerve endings in your fingers. Without these you would not know to remove your hand from a hot stove until you began to smell meat burning. But that’s too late. Don’t let the excuse that it is too late to learn really make it too late for you.... In Jesus’ powerful sermon at Nazareth, at first “everybody spoke well about Him” and focused only on His manner of speaking: “They were surprised at what gracious words came from His mouth.” They were ignoring His message. His preaching was eliciting no vital response. So Jesus, who knew what was happening, spoke directly to the problem: And He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote this proverb: ‘Physician, heal yourself; do here in your home town the same  things that we have heard you did at Capernaum’ ” (Luke 4:23). That statement anticipates the excuse that they would make: by the use of an old proverb that was designed to deflect responsibility from themselves back to Jesus, they would try to escape the thrust of what He was saying. But in these words and in those that follow, Jesus exposed their dodge and cut them off at the exit. One of the most popular forms of excuse-making, a form that involves and alienates other people, is blame-shifting: “But, you see, if my wife had only done her part, then I...” Shades of the Garden of Eden! How important it is also to expose and counter this all-too-common form of excuse-making which is as old as the human race. The biblical principle of sorting out responsibilities, which I shall explain later on in this chapter, must be emphasized at those points that call for joint, but individual, responsibilities. 2. Lack of Discipline Many persons in your congregation lack discipline. That is to say, they lack order, method, regularity, planning and scheduling ability, perseverance, and/or commitment (all of which are vital ingredients of discipline). A principal problem that stands in the way of edifying members of the congregation, therefore, is their undisciplined ways of attempting to appropriate the biblical truths and to carry out the biblical injunctions about which you preach. As a result, thoughtful counseling preachers know that it is essential to preach often about the various aspects of discipline to which the Bible addresses itself because they recognize that discipline is one of the roads their listeners must travel on the way to godliness: But avoid godless and old-womanish myths, and discipline yourself for godliness,... (I Tim. 4:7). So, in preparing a given message, it will be well to ask yourself such questions as 1. Will it require discipline for my congregation to do this? 2. Should I warn the congregation that this particular task can be accomplished only by a commitment to work at it prayerfully every day until it becomes habitual? 3. What aspects of discipline will my undisciplined members be most likely to stumble over, and how can I help them to avoid  tripping and falling? Preachers who don’t ever grapple with such matters wonder why it is only the faithful few (i.e., the self-disciplined few!) who latch onto the truths that they preach, and why so many others (the undisciplined crowd) fail to do so. One reason is that undisciplined persons, no matter how noble their desires may be—and many such persons are deeply stirred by preaching and truly wish to respond rightly to it3—nevertheless fail in the doing because of their sloppy, sinful, undisciplined patterns and habits. To continue to bewail their failure, to flagellate yourself, or to give them a tongue lashing from the pulpit will not overcome the problem. Neither better exegesis nor more telling illustrations will help; these efforts, together with increased exhortation will lead only to increased frustration all around. The more you convict a person of the need to do something, and the more you build a desire in him to do it, the more you devastate him if he finds he is unable to do it. Undisciplined persons are unable to do many things until they repent and become disciplined. Yet they too may be unaware of the problem. It is possible that much of the seeming deadness and lethargy in your congregation stems directly from this problem or from one that is very similar to it (lack of ability to implement truth; see infra). The only way to solve the discipline problem is to clearly expose it and give instruction in biblical discipline. That instruction will mean more than merely talking about discipline; it will involve help in planning and scheduling, seeking commitments to specific programs and dates, and will require you to help them bring order out of the chaos in their spiritual lives.4 Incidentally, it is not necessarily true that a person who knows how to discipline himself in his business or work will also know how to bring discipline to his spiritual life. But, if you see order and discipline in one or more areas of a person’s life, you can show him (1) that he is capable of discipline, thus arousing hope, and (2) how he may apply many of the same principles and practices to biblical obedience. While it is absolutely necessary for undisciplined persons to become disciplined, the problem is that they find it very difficult to do so without help because they are caught in the discipline dilemma: it takes discipline to become disciplined. That is why, in the Book of Proverbs, the need for outside help in bringing about discipline is so frequently emphasized. Discipline rarely comes easily. What is needed in most cases is heavy structure, with someone riding herd until the habitual side of the behavior begins to take form. Then the structure may be removed and supervision may be relaxed. 3. Presence of Complicating Problems Like the lack of discipline, almost any other unsolved problem may interfere with one’s desire or ability to respond to a given sermon as he ought, thus forming a barrier. When such a problem gets in the way, this sort of barrier is what I call a complicating problem. Complicating problems are not integrally related to the initial problem, but, nevertheless, in some way or another have intruded themselves into it and now block edificational progress. Therefore, complicating problems either must be dealt with first, before even beginning to attempt whatever it is that you are preaching about, or must be included as an aspect, or step in the process, of dealing with the initial problem that your sermon is designed to solve. If, for instance, you wish to speak about strengthening the husband/wife relationship through joint prayer, you will probably be wise to preach first about problems in relationships that destroy communication and joint effort of any sort in the home. Peter recognized the importance of the interrelatedness of such matters when he wrote: Husbands, likewise live with your wives in an understanding way, showing respect for the woman as you would for a fragile vase, and as joint heirs of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be interrupted (I Pet. 3:7). Peter made it perfectly clear that a bad relationship with one’s wife leads to a bad relationship with God; communication problems on the horizontal level result also in problems of communicating with God. Similarly, almost any other problem may get in the way of your achieving what you wish to bring about by your sermon. Therefore, unless you take such problems into account, you will end up spinning your sermon’s wheels. And you will miss the very persons you want most to reach. Now, of course, you cannot anticipate all the complicating problems that might get in the way, nor could you refer to all the complicating problems that might exist in any congregational gathering on a given Sunday. But you can do two things: 1. Mention those that most likely may be tied to the subject, as Peter did;  2. Mention the issue itself from time to time, urging the members of the congregation themselves to discover, identify, and solve complicating problems or, in the event they do not know how to do so, to seek your help. All of which leads us next to the greatest of all complicating problems: 4. Failure to Repent Throughout this discussion, I am assuming that the persons to whom we refer are Christians with various problems. From I Corinthians 2:9-16,5 Romans 8:8,6 etc., it should be obvious that unbelievers will not and, indeed, cannot respond to edificational preaching in a satisfactory manner; it is foolish, therefore to attempt to edify them. They cannot be built up so long as they are unbelievers. You cannot build them up in the faith because they have no faith upon which to build. To build, there must first be a foundation, and that foundation must be Christ. The task with all such persons is to bring them to repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, your preaching becomes legalistic, attempting to get unbelievers to conform outwardly to God’s commandment,. in their own strength, apart from any inner change of heart.7 But the repentance about which I am speaking here is the repentance of sinning believers who, like David, are in misery because they have not yet confessed their sin and sought God’s fatherly forgiveness (cf. Ps. 32:3, 4). Let me describe repentance to you in the words of The Christian Counselor’s Wordbook: Repentance is an inner change of mind... toward one’s self, toward God and toward others, that leads to an outer change of life. It may or may not result in restitution, as required, but, when genuine, always results in the desire and the attempt to abandon old sinful lifestyles and to adopt new, biblical ones. Repentance is a precondition to all biblical change that has to do with overcoming sin (some change in counseling is simply a matter of growth [p. 77]). That repentance truly is “a precondition to all biblical change that has to do with overcoming sin” should be apparent immediately. Not only are “conviction” of sin and its “correction” (i.e., repentance) included as two of the steps of change listed in II Timothy 3:16, but the fact that repentance is necessary is clear on the face of it. How can you urge the establishment of new and better relationships between sinning parties who have been estranged from one another, for instance, without first calling on them to repent of their bitterness and resentment? Reconciliation, or any other “put on” must be preceded by the “put off” of that which it is designed to replace.8 The beginning of the putting off of any sin is repentance. An unrepentant liar cannot become a truth teller; an unrepentant thief cannot become an honest, hard-working, sharing person; and the life of an unrepentant drunkard cannot be filled with the Spirit (cf. Eph. 4:25, 28; 5:18). Your preaching, therefore, must reflect this all-important fact that in such cases repentance must preclude progress. I could continue to mention problem after problem that might become a barrier to successful preaching, but these are considered in depth in various places in my books on counseling. The four problems I have mentioned in this chapter, however, have been discussed not merely because of the frequency of their occurrence and the fact that the failure to bring them under consideration when preparing sermons accounts for so much of the failure in preaching, but also because I wanted to impress upon you the very great importance of taking such matters seriously when preparing and delivering sermons. For further consideration, ask yourself, “How do I preach this message (i.e., whatever sermon you are now in the process of preparing) to persons who are full of self-pity, who are irresponsible, whose lives are dominated by ingrained habits that are antithetical to all I want to accomplish, who will be fearful about obeying, who are under a load of guilt, or who love the world too much? Furthermore, ask yourself, “How do I find out if such problems exist, and if so, which ones?” And furthermore, ask, “How would it be best to expose, counter, and overcome such barriers to edification?” Obviously, if there are all sorts of problems, you can’t tackle them all at once. So you must set up an order of priority based on (1) how seriously a given problem may affect congregational response, (2) how many persons are already involved in it, and (3) which barriers are basic to removing others. One person may be such a bad apple that he is likely to adversely affect the entire congregation with his attitude. In such cases in your preaching it may be essential to erect a preventive fence to ward off any attacks while dealing with him personally. There, it is the seriousness of the threat to the whole that raises matters of priority. Many similar considerations will be a matter of concern to the preacher-counselor who recognizes the great importance of such matters. Principles Not only may a preacher be informed by taking note of problems that arise in counseling and that become barriers to successful preaching, but he may find as well that a knowledge of counseling principles themselves will prove fruitful. By this, I do not mean that he will turn preaching into counseling from the pulpit, or that all the principles of counseling and preaching are interchangeable. If, however, he knows biblical counseling principles and keeps them in mind when preparing and delivering sermons, he will find them to be a great help. How is that so? Again, rather than making an exhaustive or detailed study of counseling principles, I wish only to suggest a number of these. Others can be garnered from the basic counseling texts (but see especially Ready to Restore, pp. 32- 38). Take, for instance, the principle that change is a two-factored process. I have mentioned this already in my comments about putting on as well as putting off in my discussion of repentance. There I showed how it is wrong to preach putting on without, at the same time, preaching the need to put off. Even so, the opposite is just as true: when preaching about sinful patterns, it is wrong to think that lasting change can occur merely by preaching against something, by bringing someone to repentance, or by trying to break a habit. Putting off must be followed by putting on. Sinful patterns can be adequately changed only by replacing them with the biblical alternatives to them (cf. Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:5-14). Earlier in this chapter I mentioned the importance of stressing the principle of sorting out responsibilities. People constantly must be shown that even when others have wronged them, that does not excuse them from assuming their responsibilities. In such situations there are always two responsibilities to be distinguished: 1. The responsibility of the one doing the wrong: he must be held responsible for his sin; 2. The responsibility of the one who is wronged: he must be held  responsible to respond biblically to the wrong (cf. Rom. 12:14-219). It is common for a sinner to try to cover his wrongdoing by saying someone else “made me act as I did.” But regardless of how one person mistreats another, he cannot cause sinful anger, ulcers, worry in the one who is mistreated. Jesus didn’t get an ulcer on the cross; instead, He handled wrongdoing righteously. That is to say, when He prayed for those who were killing Him, He assumed His responsibility in the relationship. And, in every relationship, that is exactly what He calls on us to do. Therefore, in preaching, you must hold all parties to the responsibilities that, separately, devolve upon them. If you keep this principle in mind, you will neither speak carelessly about “cause,”10 nor allow those who are wronged to slide off the hook about their responsibilities—as so many preachers do who, because they have done little biblical counseling, are unaware of the importance of these matters in people’s lives. This is a key principle. Remember, too, the importance of the listener’s agenda. Be sure you make clear to the members of your congregation that when they do whatever it is you are asking them to do in your sermon, they must do it to please God, and not as a gimmick to get something they want. Thus, according to Ephesians 5:25, a husband should give himself to his wife (his time, his interest, his concern, his money and—if need be—his life). Fine; but he must not do it in order to bring himself peace, or to keep her from leaving him. He must do it primarily because God commands him to do so. That means he must continue to show love to his wife by giving himself to her whether this brings peace or not, whether she leaves him or stays. The person who does it as a gimmick, to get what he wants, will quit when he does not get what he wants. Pleasing God must have top priority. All other items on the counselee’s agenda must take second place to it. Any number of counseling principles, as I said, may be plugged into preaching; indeed, probably most biblically valid counseling principles relate to and are useful for preaching. Consider ten: 1. When seeking to bring about change, never attempt to do so in the abstract; people change only in concrete ways.11 2. Always give hope. People will not persevere during the often difficult process of change without hope. 3. Never minimize the severity of problems; instead always  maximize Christ and His power to solve problems. 4. If a person has a life-dominating problem, aim at total restructuring. 5. Always approach seemingly hopeless situations with emphatic disagreement. Empathy alone removes all possibility of help. Disagree when the counselee says “It’s hopeless.” Say, “It is difficult, but not too difficult for God.” 6. Don’t become oriented toward people’s problems, but toward God’s solutions. 7. Gauge how much change is now feasible; too little is boring, too much is discouraging. 8. Don’t let people settle for less than the scriptural solution. 9. Use biblical, or biblically derived, language when analyzing and labeling problems, and when planning solutions to them. 10. Be commandment-oriented rather than feeling-oriented. The list of counseling principles could be extended indefinitely, but surely, if you understand at all what I am getting at, you will grasp immediately the importance of using such principles as guides to the preaching of sermons. Now, finally, let us take a look at counseling. Practices Here, there will be less carry-over because practices conform more closely to the medium of ministry than do the problems encountered or the principles adopted. But there is one practice, so significant to both, that here I wish to discuss it alone, in depth: the use of how to. How to, or the implementation of biblical truth in actual day-by-day living, is just as important in preaching as it is in counseling. In a later chapter, on implementation, I shall have more to say about this all-important matter, but for now I shall confine myself to a discussion of the Sermon on the Mount. Had homileticians adequately examined Christ’s edificational preaching before, they might have saved pastors and their longsuffering congregations a considerable amount of unnecessary grief over the problem of implementation. Consider this:  1. The Sermon on the Mount is filled with how-to instruction; people are not left to flounder, knowing what they are supposed to do but not knowing how to do it. Every command is accompanied by how to. 2. The Sermon is filled also with how not to, warning against the perversions of God’s commands that are so likely to occur among sinners. Each of these elements in this sermon may be seen in the following chart: IMPLEMENTATION IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT Matthew 5:1-20: Introduction Matthew 5:21-7:27: Verse: Matt. 5:21-26 Command: Don’t murder. How not to Don’t merely refrain from the act (21b , 22). obey it: How to obey Refrain from the attitude, as well as its outer expressions; it: a. wrong words (22). b. unreconciled condition (23, 24). c. court trials (25, 26). Verse: vv. 27-31 Command: Don’t commit adultery. How not to Don’t merely refrain from the act (27). obey it: Don’t divorce for sinful reasons supposing that God’s command in Deut. 24 refers only to having divorce proceedings in order. How to obey Refrain from lustful desire and from looking lustfully at it: another (28). Create conditions that make it hard to sin (29, 30). Divorce only on grounds of fornication (32). Verse: vv. 33-37 Command: Don’t swear. How not to Don’t swear by: obey it: a. heaven (34). b. earth (35). c. Jerusalem (35). d. your head (36). Don’t swear at all (33). How to obey Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no (37). it: Verse: vv. 38-42 Command: Do good to all men. How not to Don’t use a civil law to justify personal revenge (38, 39). obey it: How to obey Do good by: it: a. turning cheek (39). b. giving coat too (40). c. going second mile (41). d. giving and lending to those in need (42). Verse: vv. 43-47 Command: Love your enemies. How not to Don’t love neighbors and hate enemies (43). obey it: How to obey Love enemies by: it: a. praying for persecutors (44). b. being like Father, who does good to evildoers (45, 48). Verse: Matt. 6:1-4 Command: Give charity. How not to Don’t give to be seen by others: obey it: a. don’t blow trumpets (2). b. don’t give in synagogue (2). c. don’t give on the street (2). d. don’t watch your own giving (3). How to obey Give secretly (1, 4). it: Verse: vv. 5, 6 Command: Pray.  How not to Don’t pray to be seen by others like hypocrites: obey it: a. in synagogues (5). b. on street corners (5). How to obey Pray privately: it: a. in your room (6). b. with door shut (6). Verse: vv. 7-15 Command: Pray. How not to Don’t pray repetitiously like heathen; obey it: a. needlessly (7). b. with a lot of words (7). How to obey Pray simply, briefly like the model I give you (9-13). it: Verse: vv. 16-18 Command: Fast. How not to Don’t fast to be seen by others like hypocrites: obey it: a. by looking gloomy (16). b. by disfiguring your face (16). c. by showing your anointing (17). How to obey Fast privately; Anoint face, then wash it (17). it: Verse: vv. 19-24 Command: Store up treasures in heaven How not to Don’t store treasures on earth (19). obey it: Don’t try to serve both God and money (24). How to obey Solve the problem: it: a. it is not in money, b. it is in you—in your eye, not in what it sees (22, 23). Serve God alone (24). Verse: vv. 25-34 Command: Trust God to meet needs. How not to Don’t focus your concerns and efforts on needs like pagans: obey it: a. food (25-32). b. clothing (25-32).  How to obey Focus efforts on: it: a. His kingdom. b. His righteousness. Focus on today’s responsibilities. Verse: Matt. 7:1-6 Command: Judge properly. How not to Don’t judge others obey it: a. when you have a bigger problem yourself (3.4). b. when the other person is an unbeliever who won’t appreciate it (6). How to obey Judge only: it: a. when you judge as you want to be judged (2). b. when your own problem is solved (5). c. when the other is a brother (5, 6). Verse: vv. 7-12 Command: Ask. How not to Don’t hesitate or doubt (implied). obey it: How to obey Ask, seek, knock, knowing God gives as a good Father it: (11). Verse: vv. 13, 14 Command: Enter the way of life. How not to Don’t enter by the wide gate (13). obey it: How to obey Enter by the narrow gate (14). it: Verse: vv. 15-20 Command: Watch out for false prophets. How not to Don’t follow those obey it: a. in sheep’s clothing (15). b. whose fruit is bad (16-20). How to obey Follow those with good fruit. it: Verse: vv. 21-29  Command: Be genuine and enter the kingdom. How not to Enter not by empty profession (21-23). obey it: Not by hearing alone (26, 27). How to obey Enter by hearing, professing, and doing Christ’s will (21, 24, it: 25). Clearly, the Sermon on the Mount possesses an abundance of deliberate how to. Why have homileticians failed to notice this very obvious fact? Possibly because, unlike biblical counselors, they have not been aware of the importance of implementation in change. If you want your preaching to be effective, then, like Christ, be sure to give how-to help.12 While this chapter itself might have been developed into a book, and perhaps some day will be, even what has been shown here demonstrates fully enough the important role that an understanding of biblical counseling can play in preaching theory and practice. Class Assignment: From your reading of at least one of the books on counseling mentioned in this chapter, write a paper indicating at least three ways in which biblical counseling principles or practices may be of help in preaching. 1 “... that I didn’t hold back in declaring anything that was beneficial to you and in teaching you publicly and from house to house” (Acts 20:20). “... Whom we announce, counseling every person and teaching every person as wisely as possible, so that we may present every person mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28). 2. Historically, the divorce between preaching and counseling took place when counseling came to be identified with psychotherapy rather than with the ministry of the Word. A return to a biblical stance on this matter makes the reunion of the two inevitable, thus bringing the possibility of new, helpful insights into preaching through an integration of principles and practices. 3. If one has no such desire, his more basic problem may be laziness. 4. For further information on planning and scheduling, see Shepherding God’s Flock in the appropriate places.  5. “But as it is written: ‘What the eye hasn’t seen and the ear hasn’t heard, and what hasn’t been conceived by the human heart, is what God has prepared for those who love Him.’ To us God revealed it by His Spirit. The Spirit searches into everything, even the deep thoughts of God. Who knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of the person in him; so too no one knows God’s thoughts except God’s Spirit. Now we have not received the world’s spirit but the Spirit Who is from God, so that we may know that which God has freely given to us. And it is these things about which we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom but in those that are taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual teaching with spiritual words. But a natural person doesn’t welcome the teachings of God’s Spirit; they are foolishness to him, and he isn’t able to know about them because they must be investigated spiritually. But the spiritual person is able to investigate everything while (on the other hand) no one has the ability to investigate him. ‘Who has known the Lord’s mind; who will instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (I Cor. 2:9-16). 6. “And those who are in the flesh can’t please God” (Rom. 8:8). 7. Heart in the Scriptures does not mean feelings or emotion, but the inner, hidden life known only to God and one’s self. For a full discussion of heart, see my book, More than Redemption. 8. On the put on/put off dynamic, see The Christian Counselor’s Manual. 9. For an exposition of this section, see my book, How to Overcome Evil. 10. For proper language usage in this, and so many other areas, cf. my book, The Language of Counseling. 11. For the rationale behind this, and the other nine principles, see my counseling books. 12. Incidentally, notice that the Sermon on the Mount concludes powerfully with a story (vv. 24-27). 18 APPLICATION OF TRUTH Preachers and homileticians alike frequently speak about application. Typically, they talk about “applying” biblical truth to their congregations. But application itself is seldom defined and, what is of greater significance, the idea behind it is rarely discussed. Is it a biblical concept or not? And if so, what is its purpose? These are the basic questions to which I wish to draw your attention. The idea of “application” does not quite fit the biblical picture. To speak of the preacher’s obligation to apply the Scriptures to a congregation other than the one for whom it was originally written is not the way the Bible puts it. Listen carefully to Paul’s words: Am I speaking from a human viewpoint, or does the law also say these things? It is written in Moses’ law, “Don’t muzzle an ox when it is threshing.” It isn’t about oxen that God is concerned, is it? Isn’t He really speaking about us? It was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes he should do so in hope of having a share of the crop. Now these events happened as examples for us so that we might not desire evil things as they did.... Now these events happened to them as examples and were recorded as counsel for us who live at this late date in history (I Cor. 9:8-10; 10:6, 11). Notice, Paul says nothing at all about applying a passage from the Old Testament to his readers. Rather, his words indicate that the Scripture was written for those he addresses as well as for its original recipients. He calls Old Testament passages “examples for us...,” says that they were “recorded as counsel for us” and even indicates that what was written had a deeper purpose to serve than those who received it originally might have imagined:  Isn’t He [God] really speaking about us? It was written for us.” To say those words about the Bible—“It was written for us”—is to take a preaching view of scriptural revelation. Paul’s conception of Scripture fits well the here-and-now preaching stance that I have discussed already. The words of the Bible are not merely the writings of Isaiah, John, or Paul; they are the words of the Spirit, who also knew what our situation today would be like. Though the Spirit addressed His Word to an immediate situation, with all of its color and ethos, He also designed that Word for us and for the whole church of all time. We may just as surely say of the New Testament what Paul said of the Old: “It was written for us.” This view of the Scriptures runs throughout the New Testament. Consider Romans 4:23, 24a; The words, “it was counted to him,” weren’t written for his sake alone, but also for our sake. The words, “weren’t written for his [Abraham’s] sake alone,” make it perfectly plain that God wrote for both, not just for the one or the other. “Also” is inclusive of both, and “for our sake” clearly specifies those of Paul’s day as parties to God’s written promise. There is no place for application by Paul to his readers; God Himself addressed His message equally to them. God does the applying. Again, in Romans 15:4, Paul explained, Whatever was written before was written for our instruction. God was teaching us when He taught the Old Testament saints, Paul claimed. Again, application is not in view; rather, a view of the whole Bible (“whatever was written before”) as valid for the church of all time is set forth. When this biblical view of the Bible is adopted, therefore, you will soon find that your preparation for preaching is not so much a matter of finding ways in which you must “apply” passages to your congregation as it is a matter of discovering how God Himself has already applied His Word to it. Again, Paul’s view emphasizes the telic thrust of each preaching portion. It is God’s task to apply the Scriptures, then, not yours. Your task is to discover what that application is and to translate the passage into contemporary forms. To speak of the preacher “applying” the truth of the Scripture to a congregation, therefore, is to miss the mark, if by that is meant you are the one who determines the application. The truth, when given, was already applied to the whole church by God, who Himself determined its application. It is not as though it is necessary for you to find some way to apply it. You must apply truth as God does. What am I saying? My point is simply this: God did not reveal truth in the abstract. Whenever He gave new revelation, He did so within the context of the lives of His people. The truth was revealed into a situation to which it applied. Just as we have no right using a preaching portion for purposes other than that which God intended it to serve, neither do we have the option to “apply” it, as many do, to any and all circumstances that we may choose. Therefore, to preach the Bible faithfully in our time, we must find the equivalent to the original circumstance or situation to which God then (and now) applied the warning, the promise, the principle, or the command. All of this is to say that because, as I Corinthians 10:11, 13 proves, basically people and their problems (as well as God’s solutions to them) remain the same in all generations, there is a circumstance today that corresponds to the original one, to which God also directed His Word. When God delivered His message then, He did not direct it only toward the people to whom it was given originally but toward the church in all ages to follow. At bottom, scraping off all the superficial, local, and time-bound features of the past and of the present circumstance or the situation, in one way or another you will find persons struggling with issues and practices having to do with love to God and love to their neighbors. The first and fundamental point to be made, then, is that God Himself has determined the application of His Word to your church. If you come to believe and understand this, you will want to convince your congregation, as Paul sought to convince the Romans and the Corinthians, that God’s Word was written to and applies to them, not only to others long ago and far away. He tells the Corinthians that basically they experience nothing different from what the Israelites experienced so many years before: Now these events happened to them as examples and were recorded as counsel for us who live at this late date in history.... No trial has taken hold of you except that which other people have experienced; but God is faithful Who will not allow you to be tried beyond what you are able to bear, but rather, will provide together with the trial the way out so that you may be able to endure it (I Cor. 10:11,13).  In I Corinthians 10:11, Paul insists that even though the Corinthians were living at a much later date in history, nonetheless, what was written long before was written as counsel for them. In verses 6-10 there is an example of just how Paul discovered and used God’s present application of His Word to the Corinthians: Now these events happened as examples for us so that we might not desire evil things as they did. Don’t become idolaters as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to drink and they stood up to revel.” We must not commit sexual sins as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. Neither should we test the Lord as some of them did and were destroyed by snakes. Nor should you grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. Note the similarity of the circumstances that Paul saw as it is indicated in the recurring words, “as some of them.” Again and again this emphasis appears. Consider Galatians 3:29, for example: And if you are of Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs in keeping with the promise. Notice how Paul maintains that the promise made to Abraham is a promise the benefits of which his readers (and with him, we must also say Christian congregations today) may enter into by faith in Christ. Peter also treats the promises made to Israel as promises to the New Testament church: But you have become a chosen race, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a people who belong to Someone, so that you may declare the virtues of the One Who called you out of darkness into His amazing light (I Pet. 2:9). And the writer of Hebrews sketched the same continuity of God’s promised blessings when he wrote: And these all received good testimony because of their faith; yet they didn’t receive what was promised because God had something better in sight for us. So then they couldn’t be made perfect without us (Heb. 11:39, 40). And this same writer affirmed God’s love to the suffering church to which he was writing by declaring that a passage in the Book of Proverbs was written to them:... in your struggle against sin you haven’t yet had to resist to the point of shedding your blood. Now, have you forgotten the encouragement that reasons with you as sons?—“My son, don’t think lightly of the Lord’s discipline, and don’t give up when He corrects you. The Lord disciplines those whom He loves, and whips every son that He receives (Heb. 12:4- 6). In the preface to the quotation notice his words, “... the encouragement that reasons with you as sons...” (5a).1 Christ also treated the Scriptures in this way: And He said to them, “Isaiah properly prophesied about you hypocrites! As it is written: ‘These people honor Me with the lips but their hearts are far away from Me. They worship me in vain, teaching human commandments as their teachings.’ You let go of God’s commandments and hold on to human traditions!” (Mark 7:6-8). Don’t miss His words, “Isaiah properly prophesied about you...” (6a).2 Manifestly, these passages demonstrate the point that I have been making: the New Testament writers considered the Old Testament to have been written to the whole church of all time; they knew, therefore, that God Himself was applying His Word. It was their task to uncover, explain, and impress this application upon their congregations. They must apply the truth as God Himself has. Paul summarized it well when he wrote: Whatever was written before was written for our instruction, that by the endurance and the encouragement that the Scriptures give us we may have hope (Rom. 15:4). I do wish only to add one consideration: while God already has applied His message, the circumstance in the original form into which God spoke His Word will have to be dissected carefully to separate the basic and ongoing factors from those which are temporary and incidental. This constitutes the “translation” of which I am speaking. Here is precisely where many preachers go wrong. Discovering similarities is not enough; the similarities that count are those which are basic, not those which are secondary. To find a correlation between superficial factors is to allow one’s self to be deflected from the telic thrust of a preaching portion to something that was not intended at all. What, then, is constant? In Hebrews 4:11, the writer speaks of “the same pattern of disobedience.” The similarity had to do with lack of “faith” and refusal to “obey” the truth (vv. 2, 6), not with any secondary factors in the circumstance. Again, in I Corinthians 10:6, 11 we read of the “pattern” or “example”: “idolatry” (v. 7), “sexual sin” (v. 8), “testing the Lord” (v. 9), and “grumbling” (v. 10). It is not the manner of idolatry that is of importance, nor the circumstances connected with the sexual sin, nor the way in which the Lord was tested, nor the matters about which the people grumbled that were of significance, but the idolatry, sexual sin, testing, and the grumbling in these situations that were the constant factors to which the biblical accounts speak in all ages. So, too, Paul observes that the principle in I Corinthians 9:9, 10 is broader, greater, and more universal than the original statement of it in the particular case in which it was applied to oxen. The task, then, is to find the constant, or the basic thrust in each circumstance to which God’s authoritative Word speaks. Because this is so important a matter, an entire book must be devoted to it sometime in the future. But for now, let us turn to the vital matter of implementation of biblical truth. Class Assignment: Demonstrate from five preaching portions not mentioned in this chapter how God applies His message today. 1. Cf. also Heb. 6:13-18 (esp. v. 18) and Heb. 13:5. 2. Cf. Matt. 15:7-9; John 12:40, 41. 19 THE PURPOSE OF IMPLEMENTATION In a previous chapter I demonstrated the importance of the implementation of biblical truth in edificational preaching from the Sermon on the Mount. In that sermon Jesus implemented every command by explicit how to (and how not to) instructions. It would be wise not only to follow His lead but also to discuss how that may be done. Typically, Bible-believing preachers have implemented neither positively nor negatively, by how or how not to. They have been good at telling congregations what to do, but notoriously poor at telling them how to do it. A preacher will get up in the pulpit and say, “Don’t just read your Bible; study it!” So far, so good. But what happens when John Greene goes home and tries to do so? He is full of enthusiastic conviction—but totally void of any new ways and means to do so. So, he turns to Genesis 1:1 and with great intensity starts to... read! He can do nothing different; he doesn’t know how. By the time he arrives at the so-and-so-begat-so-and-so passages on Wednesday, he realizes he is doing nothing but what he has been doing all along—and quits, discouraged. This is the umpteenth time he has attempted to “really study the Bible.” Each time he meant it; he always began with enthusiasm, but each time he ended poorly—in discouragement! This time, as he closes the Book, he says to himself, “Well, I guess Paul could do it, but I’m not Paul!” What has been going wrong? John needs how to. If his pastor had recognized this fact and if, when he shouted “Don’t just read your Bible; study it!” he had continued, saying, “... and if you don’t know how to study your Bible, be here tonight one hour before the evening service for the first of 12 lessons on “How to Study the Bible,” John would have been O.K. But as it is, he has good intentions—even tries again, but to no avail. This is the last attempt; finally John has given up for good. Another preaching casualty has bit the dust! John will join the ranks of that great band of church goers who, because they have given up, become deadwood in the pews, there to remain until some preacher—if any ever does—comes to resurrect him from among the dead by preaching how to. It was while doing counseling that I discovered the need for and importance of how to. When I began to help people lay plans to do whatever the Scriptures said they must do, and began to suggest ways and means for doing it, I noticed that many of them came alive. So, I began to preach with how to and again noticed that the same phenomenon occurred. I knew I was onto something then. But it wasn’t until I made a study of the Sermon on the Mount that it became crystal clear that providing direction is a part of good biblical preaching. What happens to all the John Greenes is this: they try and fail; then they try and fail again; then, once more—the same thing happens. This goes on and on until they finally give up for good. They shouldn’t, it is true. They should persevere until they succeed. They should knock on their pastors’ doors until they can persuade their pastors to teach them how to do whatever it is they are failing to do; but as sinners they don’t persevere. That is why you, as a preacher, must do something yourself to help them. You must provide the how to that will enable them to implement the thrust of your sermon. In doing so, it is important to distinguish plainly between (1) biblical commands, principles, practices, and biblically directed how to1 on the one hand and (2) suggested, biblically derived how to devised by the preacher. When the Scriptures do not spell out the how-to, as they sometimes do, they leave us on our own to devise ways and means of implementing the principles and general practices that they require. Counselors always must distinguish between the inspired principle and the suggested, but uninspired, implementation of it. There may be more than one way of implementing the same principle. The principle must be insisted upon; the specific way of implementation may only be suggested. All methods for implementing biblical principles should grow out of those (and other biblical) principles and be appropriate to them at every point. That is to say, even the suggestions that a preacher makes must be able to be justified as derived from biblical principles and totally in accord with them. While I cannot go into details about how to do how to in this chapter, I would refer you to the discussion of the subject in my book, Insight and Creativity in Christian Counseling. A certain amount of creativity is required to devise adequate implementation for biblical directives. In that book I have set forth a method (i.e., some pertinent how to) for developing and employing creative how to (what I have said there about how to in counseling is equally useful for preaching). However, in this chapter I wish to discuss more fundamental issues about implementation in relation to preaching. Let us say you are about to preach the last of a series of four sermons on the four steps of biblically caused change listed in II Timothy 3:16: 1. teaching, 2. conviction, 3. correction, 4. and disciplined training in righteousness. You are preparing a message on step 4. As you study the passage, among other things you ask, “What is the responsibility of the person in the pew to use the Bible for disciplined training in righteousness?” Your concern is not how you may use it to help bring about discipline—that you know. Rather, at this point in your preparation your concern is 1. What is my member’s role in this process, and 2. how do I teach him to implement his role? First, you see immediately that there is no direct answer to either question in the context. You will have to determine the best response to the first question from a comparison of the phrase with other biblical teaching on discipline and what it is designed to produce: righteousness (i.e., godly life patterns). Let us say you conclude from Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, Philippians 4:9, etc., that it will take regular practice in obedience to biblical principles in order to come to the place where your listener can be said to “walk in the truth,” as John puts it, or to have “disciplined himself toward godliness,” as Paul says elsewhere. Since the preaching portion itself says nothing about “putting on,” “disciplining one’s self toward,” or “walking” in any particular practice, but speaks only generally of “righteousness,” you conclude that it is the process itself on which the Holy Spirit has focused His attention. Moreover, the passage is not addressed to the members of the flock, but to the shepherd, who must guide them into the disciplined paths of righteousness for Christ’s Name sake. The purpose of the passage is to urge the shepherd to make full use of the all-sufficient Scriptures to effect change in the lives of his sheep, one crucial aspect of which is to train them in righteous biblical patterns of living. Once the shepherd has “taught” them God’s standards, once he has brought them to “conviction” of their failure to measure up to those standards, and once he has helped them to “correct” their sinful ways through confession of sin and forgiveness in repentance—all by the Word—then he is to train them, in a disciplined way, in the biblical alternatives to their former sinful patterns. Presuming that the sheep have been progressing well through the first three steps, what does he do about the fourth? Clearly, the sheep are to understand and accept the biblical “teaching” unfolded and impressed upon them through the shepherd’s preaching and counseling. The shepherd cannot understand or accept for them—in their place. His task is to explain the teaching to them. Moreover, the sheep have to sense the guilt of conviction and repent of their sin; again, the shepherd’s task is to use the Word effectively, in the power of the Spirit, to bring this about. But he cannot repent for them; he can help them to implement the truth. Though he cannot “practice” ways of righteousness for them, he can help them in their training in God’s righteous ways. So, in preaching from this passage, the shepherd can set forth the training dynamic for his flock, he can explain his role and theirs, he can call on them to avail themselves of his shepherdly direction, guidance, and supervision while in training. He can run through the process in terms of some specific cases (a liar becoming a truth teller, a sluggard becoming an industrious person, a vengeful person becoming one who does good to those who wrong him) and in each case demonstrate what part he can play, by the proper use of the Scriptures, in bringing about their new lifestyles. But all of that seems so general. How does he implement it? He may suggest something like this: Now, if, after attempting to put the new ways into effect on your own, you discover that you seem not to be succeeding, please call me immediately. At that point I shall gladly sit down with you and go over the whole terrain to see if there are any flaws in what you are doing that might be corrected. On the other hand, if the problem is discipline itself, and you need help in this, I shall either supervise you myself or help you to work out a plan to get the supervision  you require. Either way, don’t go on struggling, stumbling about and failing when God has provided me as a Timothy for you to help you bring the Bible to bear on your life with power and effectiveness. Don’t say, “Oh, I don’t want to bother the preacher.” That kind of phone call is no bother! This is what I should be doing, what I want to be doing. Call today, if necessary. Don’t put it off; call just as soon as you recognize your need. What you have just been reading has double impact: it is an offer of assistance in devising implementation that, itself, spells out a way of implementation for obtaining it. Now, let us suppose the suggested implementation (“Call me today”) gets results: Mildred calls. An appointment is made, and a problem is identified. Counseling will result, in which, ultimately, a plan is developed and put into effect. Perhaps it is quite successful; Mildred is grateful. Then, later, the preacher phones Mildred and says: “Mildred, during those six weeks that we counseled together you came a long way and learned much. Did you find the program we followed helpful?” “Oh yes, pastor.” “Well, I’m glad. But I suspect that the training plan that you have found helpful in solving your temper problem might also be useful to a number of other persons in the congregation. I am sure you aren’t the only one who has had difficulty with her temper. I want you to know that I intend to preach soon about this aspect of anger, and I shall be suggesting that others use a program similar to the one you used. Now, I want you to feel perfectly at ease when I do. Though you will hear some things that are quite familiar to you, I don’t intend to mention you or anything about your situation. But you will recognize the problem and parts of the plan, so I thought I should let you know ahead of time, so you would be ready for it.” “Well, I appreciate your telling me so. I might have had an initial shock otherwise, wondering whether what you were going to say would involve me!” “Have no fear. But certainly, if God blessed you so much through what was done, it would be important to share the same basic information with others, don’t you think?” “I sure do. In fact, I wouldn’t mind at all if you did mention what happened in my case, so long as you don’t identify me.”  “Thanks. With your permission I might do so.”2 “Thank you. I’ll really be waiting for that sermon.”3 Now, in conclusion, let us examine what we have discovered about implementation by asking, “What is the purpose of implementation?” In reply, let me confess that, like many other chapters in this book, this is an unusual one. Homileticians write about application (usually wrongly), but they do not even write about implementation. So why did I? Because I have found that Jesus firmly affixed enabling directions to His commands. He did so for a purpose; Jesus does nothing aimlessly. His purpose emerges at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the empire from the heavens, but only the one who does the will of My Father Who is in the heavens.... So then, whoever hears these words of Mine and does them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock” (Matt. 7:21, 24). It is evident from these two verses that Jesus expected His disciples not merely to hear His words, nor even to hear them with approval, but also to obey them (cf. also Luke 6:47). He ends on that note. And remember, it is in the conclusion that you will find the purpose of a sermon if it is well constructed. The final story of the two houses (a good example of a story conclusion) makes the point most vividly. He aimed at action: “do them,” He said. He preached for results. And there would be no one who heard that message who could have the slightest excuse for not doing as He said. The double implementation, with both its how to and its how not to, precluded that. But of greater importance, all who desired to obey would know how; they would not be frustrated by their own ineptness or confusion. Not only were the commands clear, but how to obey them was spelled out just as clearly. For the same purposes, you too must learn to use implementation in your sermons. Class Assignments: 1. Discover three sermons that contain implementation. 2. If you cannot find that many, add your own implementation to those you find. Write out your final work and be ready to present it in class.  1. This is how to that is spelled out in the Bible itself. 2. If he does, of course, (1) he will be careful to say nothing that might betray who it was he is mentioning, and (2) he will make it clear that what he does say is only by permission. 3. Incidentally, notice how the preacher solved the problem of using cases in preaching by using case programs and case procedures. And, note well, his consideration in calling Mildred led to permission to use even more. 20 PREACHING CHRIST It is easy to become moralistic when preaching. While there is nothing wrong with preaching morality, in contrast, moralism is legalistic, ignores the grace of God, and replaces the work of Christ with self-help. In The Christian Counselor’s Wordbook, I wrote, Legalists assume that one can obey God’s commandments (1) without salvation and/or (2) in his own strength. Both ideas are false and can be very detrimental in counseling. Prayerful action... in the power of the Spirit is required for change to be biblical; all change that pleases God is the fruit (result of the work) of the Spirit. There is no merit in keeping God’s commandments (Luke 17:10), nor does He accept outward conformity alone. Rather, He demands inner change of the heart... as the source and power behind any outer change. Counselees often come with legalistic ideas about how to get out of their dilemmas and will attempt to follow biblical principles as a gimmick. Counselors must warn them against such ideas, call them to repentance where it is required, and make it plain that above all else is the necessity of doing what must be done to please God. One’s relationship to God is basic to all else that is attempted in counseling.1 What applies to counseling applies equally to preaching. If you preach a sermon that would be acceptable to the members of a Jewish synagogue or to a Unitarian congregation, there is something radically wrong with it. Preaching, when truly Christian, is distinctive. And what makes it distinctive is the all-pervading presence of a saving and sanctifying Christ. Jesus Christ must be at the heart of every sermon you preach. That is just as true of edificational preaching as it is of evangelistic preaching. But, while edificational preaching always must be evangelical, it must not become simply evangelistic. An evangelistic sermon is a sermon in which the major thrust is to proclaim the gospel with the intent of calling unbelievers to faith in Christ. That is a worthy purpose and has its place, but my concern here is to discuss the place of Christ in edificational preaching. Edificational preaching is no longer edificational in purpose if the purpose of the sermon becomes evangelistic instead. However, edificational preaching always must be evangelical; that is what makes it moral rather than moralistic, and what causes it to be unacceptable in a synagogue, in a mosque, or to a Unitarian congregation. By evangelical, I mean that the import of Christ’s death and resurrection—His substitutionary, penal death and bodily resurrection—on the subject under consideration is made clear in the sermon. You must not exhort your congregation to do whatever the Bible requires of them as though they could fulfil those requirements on their own, but only as a consequence of the saving power of the cross and the indwelling, sanctifying power and presence of Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit. All edificational preaching, to be Christian, must fully take into consideration God’s grace in salvation and in sanctification. Today, one of the greatest threats to evangelical preaching comes from the invasion of the church by the Adler-Maslow, etc., self-image, self-worth dogmas. Passage after passage in the Bible has been distorted in order to conform to these teachings, with the result that you end up preaching man and his supposed worth rather than Christ. Sometimes that “worth” has been seen as intrinsic, sometimes it has been considered to be the result of salvation. Certainly the message of the entire Book of Ecclesiastes is that there is no intrinsic worth in man; there is nothing but emptiness, worthlessness. All that makes sense, in the end (“the conclusion of the whole matter,” Eccles. 12:14) is that unless one “fears God” (is justified) and “keeps His commandments” (grows in sanctification), all is vanity. Indeed, man is as empty and worthless as a shadow or a moth (Ps. 39:6, 11); he is utterly empty (Ps. 39:5, 11)—of absolutely no weight (Ps. 62:9) apart from Christ. Intrinsically, then, man has no self-worth. Whatever self-worth he pretends to discover in himself is only illusory and, in the end, as Ecclesiastes says, vanishes. Anything worthwhile arises from salvation (fearing God) and sanctification (keeping His commandments). So, the idea of intrinsic self-worth must be dismissed. Most Christians, instead, have developed the idea of a self-worth in Christ that should be the basis for every believer having a good self-image. The notion is that without a good self-image we will accomplish little for Christ. Because in Christ we are (rightly) considered to be all that He is, this fact is supposed to provide for us a good self-image—simply by recognizing the fact, or by telling ourselves so often enough. This unbiblical nonsense has been accepted even by theologians, who ought to know better (cf. A. A. Hoekema’s, A Christian Looks At Himself). With a naivete that is culpable, we are led to believe that what Christ has done for us should give us a good self-image. Of course, it does nothing of the sort. First of all, the Bible says nothing about the need for a good self-image. It certainly doesn’t condition our ability to obey God on a sense of self-worth! And nowhere are we even commanded to improve our self-image. None of this is scriptural. “But what of the passages that speak about ‘considering’ yourself ‘dead to sin’ and ‘alive to God,’ etc.?” you may ask. I am glad you brought up Romans 6. You could add Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3 as well. But in none of these passages is there the slightest hint that we are told that in Christ we have “put on” the “new person,” or that we are “raised together” and seated in the heavenlies with Him in order to give us a sense of self-worth or a good self-image. To represent (misrepresent) them as teaching such things about self-worth is not only to miss the telic thrust of these passages, it is to import pagan psychological ideas into the Bible. What do these passages teach? Every such passage, without exception, is a passage stressing one’s potential in Christ. The positional factor (i.e., what we are in Christ) is mentioned only as an argument to encourage us to become what we should. Listen to Colossians 3:1: “If you were raised together with Christ [the positional truth] seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at God’s right hand [the unrealized potential to be attained].” Throughout that chapter and the parallel passages in Ephesians 4, the same argument is pressed: Become in your daily living (since you are not) what you already are (positionally) in Christ. Live up to your potential in Christ. In Romans 6 the very same case is true—we are to count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God (positionally) in Christ, so that we may live no longer in sin but in righteousness day by day. Because of what Christ has done for us we are counted righteous by God, and we now have the potential to become in everyday living what we already are counted to be, so realize your potential. That is the argument. There isn’t a whisper of anything about developing a good self-image in any of these passages. It is not because these passages teach the pursuit of self-worth that they have been used for that purpose. Reading them, no one would ever imagine that they did (indeed, prior to the self-image craze in psychology, no one ever did). But, because a psychological view has been accepted, Christians who bought it have been searching for biblical support. These passages have been seized upon to lend that support when, in fact, they do no such thing. Actually, the more one recognizes how high his position is in Christ, and the great potential that regeneration has afforded him to grow toward that position, the worse his self-image is likely to be if he is not actually moving toward it as he should. The more he recognizes the enormous disparity that exists between his realized position in Christ and his largely unrealized potential in daily living, the more he should repent. In fact, as has often been observed, throughout his ministry Paul himself seemed to grow in recognition of his own sin. In contrast to all that psychologizers of the Bible teach, the truth is that the Scriptures tell us not to pursue self: Then He said to all of them, “If anybody wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. This is true because whoever wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. What does it profit a person if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes with His glory and with the glory of the Father and of the holy angels...” (Luke 9:23-26). The self is to be “denied” and “lost.” In that way alone—not by the pursuit of a good self-image—will the self ultimately be found. A good self-image, like happiness, peace, and joy, is not to be found by seeking it. All these things are by-products that cannot be obtained directly. They come when something else is realized. In this case, the self is saved when it is lost for Christ and for the sake of His gospel (cf. Mark 8:35). A person cannot expect to have a good self-image until he becomes a good self. Pumping up a self-image doesn’t work. Now, what has all this to do with preaching Christ, and preaching evangelically? Just this: it is a prime example of how the Bible is misused today to exalt humanity rather than Christ. To preach the passages that I have mentioned as they were intended to be preached, Christ must be exalted as the One who not only has effected our justification (the declaration by God that in Him we are counted perfect), but also has made sanctification possible by sending His Spirit to enable us to understand God’s revealed will and to empower us to do it. What Christ has done is put quite forcefully by Peter in a passage whose import is similar to that in Romans 6: Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with that thought, because whoever has suffered in the flesh has come to a parting of the ways with sin. As a result, it is now possible to live the remainder of your time in the flesh no longer following human desires, but following the will of God (I Pet. 4:1,2). When we get the proper view of our justification as a “parting of ways with sin” (in Christ), we may also see clearly that it is “now possible to live the remainder of our lives in the flesh no longer following human desires, but following the will of God.” Again, justification leads to the possibilities of sanctification. But if we don’t grow, if we “continue in sin,” if we fail to “seek those things that are above,” how can we expect to have a good self- image? A good self-image comes not merely from acknowledging what we are in Christ, as the psychologizers suppose, but also from closing the gap between what we are in Christ and what we should become in our daily living. That is to say, it comes not only from justification, but also as a by-product of progress in sanctification. And sanctification, as we have seen, is the work of Christ, the Spirit, in us. So, in preaching Christ we must preach Him as the One who made our acceptance with God a reality by His death on the cross and as the One whose continued work in us conforms us more and more to the standards of the Word. In short, to preach Christ is to preach both what He has done and what He is doing. That is the way that the New Testament writers preached: they found Him in all the Scriptures. We must do the same. That is what He, Himself, taught us to do when he “opened” the Scriptures to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and beginning with Moses, He went through all the prophets and explained to them in all the Scriptures the things that concerned Himself (Luke 24:27). Christ is in “all the Scriptures,” and you must find Him there. He is there, making all possible by His saving and sanctifying power. Everything must be preached that way. When it is, members of the congregation will be heard to echo the disciples’ words: “Didn’t our hearts burn within us... as He opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32). So, when you preach about giving, preach it in the light of Christ’s matchless gift as Paul did (II Cor. 9:15). When you preach about a husband’s love for his wife, preach it in the light of the love of the cross (Eph. 5:25). When you preach about work, preach it as service to Christ (Col. 3). All you say and do in preaching must be related to Him; it must be related to His saving and His sanctifying work. When you do this, legalism will vanish, hypocritical, outward conformity to biblical standards used as a gimmick will be countered, and the pursuit of human self-worth will be scrapped in favor of a desire to please Him. Obedience will not be mere duty; it will have about it a doxological ring. So, then, preach Christ. Preach Him plainly and gratefully, and you will not be tempted to preach about man and his pretended powers and dignity. Preach Christ in all the Scriptures: He is the subject matter of the whole Bible. He is there. Until you have found Him in your preaching portion, you are not ready to preach. Search Him out; preach Him—and hearts will burn. Class Assignment: Choose three preaching portions not directly mentioning Jesus Christ and determine how Christ might be preached from them. Discuss this in a three-page paper. 1. Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor’s Wordbook (Phillipsburg, N.J.), pp. 60-61. 21 DELIVERY AND PURPOSE In this book I have attempted not to replicate that which may be found already in my book, Pulpit Speech. There I have discussed delivery—the use of voice and body—in great depth. There is little to add. So, it is not because I believe delivery is unimportant that I include so little about it here; no. Quite the contrary. Because I knew it was so important, I have already written extensively on the subject in the previously published volume. What more can be said here? First, I should mention the sad failure of many Bible-believing men to take the trouble to think about and work on delivery. Because of this failure, much truth, in turn, has failed to have its impact. There are four principal factors that converge as joint carriers of the preacher’s message: language, order, voice, and body. Delivery—the use of voice and body—comprises fully one half of these. Therefore delivery ought not to be given the short shrift that so many conservative preachers give it. Great content, set forth in the most logical order and with the exact words appropriate to it, can be grossly distorted, or even totally destroyed, by careless, lackluster, inappropriate, or conflicting delivery. There is matter in manner. Like it or not, your attitude (or an attitude presumed by the congregation to be yours) toward the biblical content that you proclaim is also proclaimed— most fully by your voice and body. Your words may declare that the truth you are expounding is of great importance, but your manner may say otherwise. Tragically, often when you really do think something is vitally important, etc., your frozen, wooden—perhaps fearful—delivery unintentionally (and probably unknowingly) may say just the opposite. Many otherwise potentially excellent messages have been ruined by poor delivery. So, what you must work on is:  1. Not allowing personal practices, habits, patterns, mannerisms, and fear in the use of voice and body to get in the way of the message; 2. Developing a flexibility in the use of voice and body broad