You don’t have to look too hard for the application!

This is part two of a mini-series of articles on preaching application. In part one, I talked about the twin dangers of not applying a passage at all and over applying with a scatter gun approach, shooting off lots and lots of things for people to know, believer, repent of, start doing, stop doing etc.  I want to suggest that both danger, although the look different and appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum arise from the same root error.

The root error is to miss the point that Scripture already applies itself.  The writers of Scripture, whether narrative, law, poetry or instruction were writing with a purpose, in order to help God’s people know how to live in his presence, trusting him and enjoying his grace. They were already applying God’s word to people’s lives.

This is important because we can sometimes think of preaching as a multi-step process where we work out what the Bible passage says, understand its meaning, mine out the doctrinal truths and then from there we work out what the application is.  This hinders our process because we leave application right to the end.  We postpone both to the end of our preparation and of our actual preaching, the important job of hearing and repeating what God is saying to us.

What this also means is that when someone fails to apply Scripture at all that things are worse than they first seem.  The person has not just failed to add something that would be helpful but they have in effect subtracted, removed something that was already there.  This means that if they see preaching as explaining God’s Word faithfully that I’m not sure they have really even done that.

I think it means that the person who adds on a lot of different applications has missed the point though because those applications often feel like that -the add-ons.  It can feel as though Scripture is technical, doctrinal and dry. It can feel like the application is advice that comes from the preacher’s own wisdom and experience. 

So, I would encourage preachers to be asking right from the start “What is this Bible passage saying? What is its big message?  And therefore, what response does it ask from us?”  This also means incidentally that the response may not always be something to do. Sometimes, the response invited is that we simply enjoy God’s goodness and hold more tightly onto Christ.  Sometimes that’s the best application.