“A sermon that mentions Jesus but still has you driving the verbs is still about you, not Jesus. The Gospel is all about what Jesus does for you. A sermon about what you do for Jesus isn’t the Gospel. For the Gospel to be preached, Jesus must be driving the verbs.”
-Todd Wilken
The indicative of scripture always drives the imperative of scripture. Doctrine drives application. Gospel drives obedience. We should hold truth about God before the people... not pull out life-application from scripture and feed it to the people. That becomes law-driven - which is what a majority of churches do today. Modern day phariseeism: All "how-to, do do do". Instead be gospel driven: "We can't. He did. Behold - Him."
Typical preaching only distills “Biblical Principles” which do not see the text in its redemptive-historical context. Thus it is only natural that the application part of such a sermon will tend to merely exhort people to conform to the principles.
-Tim Keller
3 comments:
Wow! That's exactly what I hammered home to our church this morning.
Todd Wilken is great. Although I don't agree with everything in his Lutheranism, he still rocks with his Christ-centered cross-focused view.
Joey way to throw it down this has helped me tremendously with the stuff I am preparing to speak on to the High schoolers at the retreat I am speaking at.
Or as Piper says it: "The gospel is not about what you do its about what Christ has done." And I could tack on to that it is about what Christ has done, is doing, and will do.
Josh. I wish I could have been there for it. I will never cease to praise God for using you to preach the gospel to me. My regeneration was the result.
Andrew. Thanks for the encouragement. I will be praying for your time with the high schoolers.
I was watching/listening to a couple of Piper sermons today - Romans 12:3 "Assessing ourselves with our God-assigned measure of faith." He defined faith as "seeing and savoring Christ". So good. I'm planning on memorizing Romans with you and Alyssa. I'm looking forward to Romans class with you both.
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