Richard Coekin has a new book out on Preaching called “Applying the Word.” I’ve not picked up a copy yet but from early reviews it sounds like this could be a useful book for those wanting to improve their preaching.
I understand that at the heart of Coekin’s thesis is that we as conservative evangelicals might be good at the exegesis but we struggle with application.
Now, he may well be on to something. The problem is that pretty much every conservative Evangelical book, article or podcast on preaching over the past 20 years or more has been making that same argument. The question then is as to why we still seem to be struggling with it.
It’s first worth recognising that if we are not applying God’s Word to people’s hearts then we haven’t just done a poor job, half the job if you like, we have actually failed to preach full stop.
However, I think the challenge to all of us goes deeper. I wonder if the problem isn’t so much that we exegete well but struggle with application. That can betray a belief that the Bible isn’t already relevant and practical to our lives. Indeed, combined with the emphasis on “explaining what the text means”, we can give the impression that Scripture is mysterious and mystical so our job is to make it understandable and relevant. The reality is rather that God’s Word is both clear and relevant. It’s packed full of application.
Consider for example the preacher working through Exodus. He gets to Exodus 16-18 and is greeted with a hungry and thirsty people who fail to trust God and grumble against him. Then in Exodus 19-24, God gives his law. The people are told to worship God alone, keep Sabbath rest, honour their parents and not to steal, murder, be unfaithful, slander or covert. We should recognise immediately the direct application to us.
Indeed, if we are still struggling after Exodus 20 to know how to apply the Ten Commandments, God through Moses helps us. In Exodus 21 we discover that kidnapping and trafficking are equivalent to taking a life. When we control, abuse, enslave others we act like murderers. We discover too that a failure to control livestock, beasts of burden makes you as liable for death and injury caused if you do it yourself. It’s not too hard to draw connections with careless or reckless driving is it? Oh and even before the Sermon on the Mount, we discover that cursing your parents makes you no better than if you killed them. We take life with our words.
So, why do we struggle to get the application? Isn’t it at least in part because we focus narrowly on making sure we hit a few key doctrines. We want to say that God is sovereign and so Jesus is King, that Scripture has authority and is without error and we want to preach Christ from every page of Scripture and so emphasise penal substitution.
Now each of those doctrines is true and important. However, sometimes I wonder whether we operate as though these are the only things Scripture has to say? Dare I say it, we end up little better off than Marcion with our own shrunken version of Luke and a few of Paul’s letters but missing much of Scripture.
What would happen if we allowed ourselves to follow the text and let it take us where it is headed? I wonder if we might manage to keep those big ticket doctrines but also discover a depth and richness of application for spiritually sick, hungry and thirsty people today?
Faithroots 