Homiletical & Theological Book Reviews

— Book/Theses/Dissertation Reviews —

Comprehensive summaries of noteworthy homiletical & theological works:

Langley, Kenneth J.  How to Preach the Psalms.  Dallas, TX: Fontes Press, 2021.

         The message of the book is a call for preachers to present the Biblical text of the Psalms in not merely an analytical fashion, but to faithfully convey it in a manner that winsomely champions and captures the emotional tone of the message it was inspired by God to convey. Langley aptly presents his challenge to let a contemporary audience emotionally experience the Psalms as they were emotionally experienced by their ancient recipients—a duty that goes unattended by far too many contemporary preachers when it comes to these masterful works of poetry. Essentially, Langley is calling contemporary preachers to respect not only the words of the text, but their inspired emotional gravitas as well. He argues that if we treat these works as if they were epistles, apocalyptic literature, or historical narratives, we violate their very authorial intent, and therefore present an inaccurate and unfaithful portrayal of what the Biblical authors intended to evoke and achieve by choosing poetry as the vehicle of their revelation. Poetry is a language of the heart, and Langley powerfully argues for putting that heart back into the preaching of these works. He writes, “In our attempt to be biblical preachers, we have so emphasized the analytical that we’ve forgotten the poetic. We see the trees waving their branches, but we hold the branches still, examine them scientifically, leaf and twig, and all the while fail to hear the trees clapping their hands to the glory of God.”[1]

            The strong points of the book were his ability to successfully advocate for poetry’s justified means as a God-given and needed form of revelation. I liked when he wrote that poetry is “…the shortest emotional distance between two points—the writer and the reader.”[2] This captures well both the practical, theological, and emotional need for his book. This is important because at times it would seem that preachers, in the name of efficiency or pragmatism, jettison trying to recapture such emotion in their delivery of a message from the Psalms—deeming it a frivolous embellishment compared to the real task of ‘exegeting the text.’ When in fact, they are losing sight of the very means by which God intended for His message to be experienced, understood, and received. Langley is arguing for a ‘wholeness’ in the preaching endeavor that is not neatly tucked away from emotion in the name of logical objectivity. Rather, he asserts quite convincingly that to truly be a faithful communicator of God’s Word from the Psalms, a preacher must embrace the full emotional scope of the Psalter and embody it for his congregation to do the text justice.

            I did not find any point of the work notably weak. It was clear, practical, and a refreshingly needed correction to what can only be described as homiletical neglect or unfounded dismissal of what comprises roughly 11% of the inspired Canon.[3]

            I learned that “…pulpit exposition… that discarded [poetry’s] imaginative appeal and moved directly into prosaic theologizing would betray the poem and the Spirit who inspired it as poetry.”[4] I had never heard it put that way before and it made me think. This is a crucial concept to understand and highlight because for a certain percentage of ministers the temptation to dismiss a poetic presentation of the Scripture seems to be a pragmatic one. Namely, that there are more ‘efficient’ ways to communicate the Truth. But, as this quote so eloquently captures, oftentimes those more comfortable or normative ways of communicating fail to bridge the emotional distance a minister’s listeners need to cross to actually embrace those very truths. We may address an issue unpoetically, thinking we are helping people, but if the emotional undercurrents of that truth go unaddressed, we’ve failed to bring people along the spiritual journey God uses to transform them. We fail to help them ‘buy’ the truth emotionally if we jettison the seemingly ‘inefficient’ medium of poetry for personal comfort or expediency of format as expositors. 

            My view was confirmed when he wrote, “Ministers who artfully craft their sermons on poetic texts are not prettying up their preaching; they are honoring these texts and enabling the kind of aesthetic/ethical/doxological response those texts were intended to evoke.”[5] Although I had not quite held such a sharp view of the issue before reading this book, Langley helped crystalize my thoughts on this matter and was a great encouragement to me in this approach. I have taken ‘flack’ over the years for trying to ‘improve upon’ the Bible by doing the very thing he describes. Ironically, I think pastors as well as ministers are a bit uncomfortable with the artistic and emotional aspects of the Psalms and try to excise the ‘meaning’ of the Text from the emotional experience the Text is inviting the reader/hearer into. What a refreshing perspective to be encouraged to honor not only the words of the Text, but the very medium and artistic format in which it was always intended to be delivered.

            I’ve changed in that I feel emboldened and charged with honoring the Text by respecting its poetic elements as crucial components to understanding them beyond the ‘data’ they convey to also delivering the godly emotion they portray while inviting the worshiper into the full emotional scope of the Psalm.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Langley’s book is give mindful planning to recapturing, in a modern context, ways to let my hearers reexperience the Text emotionally rather than merely intellectually/conceptually.

            I will implement these changes by being mindful to pay attention to (as Langley encourages) “Phrasing, pitch, articulation, pace (along with blocking)… [to] …carry the meaning of the text...”[7] I think that I would do this while reading and rereading my manuscript to familiarize myself with the natural rhythms and transitions that would flow from this kind of presentation. But then, once I’d ‘studied’ in this fashion, I would leave my notes at home and walk into the ‘test’ of the pulpit, trusting the Spirit to energize my memory to recall all I’d mindfully prepared, and deliver the Message ‘fully present’ emotionally as well as theologically.

Preaching Prophetic Literature:

Carlson, Robert A.  Preaching like the Prophets; The Hebrew Prophets as Examples for the Practice of Pastoral Preaching.  Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017

         Carlson frames the purpose of his book as, “… to identify the essential ministry, message, means, and rhetorical methods of the prophets, and discuss how these same essentials can and should strengthen a pastor’s prophetic preaching today. It is my hope that you will not only recognize that the prophets can be a model for pastoral preaching, but that you will also become convinced that the preaching prophets are examples that we must refer to for powerful and persuasive preaching today. The one thing I hope you gain from this work is that preachers can and must learn from the prophets’ work.”[8]

            I believe that Carlson accomplishes well what he has aimed to do. He shows in a convincing manner that the message and methods the OT prophets employed can actually be translated into a contemporary setting with enough relevance, effectiveness, and resonance to be appreciated or understood by today’s congregations. He demonstrates that there are compelling reasons to employ their approach in spite of the potential drawbacks or risks in doing so. He also takes pains to make it clear what the primary differences are between an OT prophet and a contemporary preacher communicating to a congregation. Through all of these (analogy, entrapment, emotion, & rhetoric), Carlson makes a convincing case for engaging a contemporary congregation with the messages, methods, and rhetorical persuasion the prophets employed.

            A strength of the book is that he fully acknowledges the serious blessing and burden it is to accurately communicate God’s Word as faithfully as the prophets. He quotes Abraham Heschel as saying; “To be a prophet is both a distinction and an affliction.” While pastors/preachers are not prophets in the same manner as in the OT, they do incur some of the same emotional fallout and challenges that the OT prophets faced due to telling the people of God not merely what they enjoy hearing, but also what they need to hear, whether or not they desire or enjoy hearing it. This a touchpoint on which Carlson is quite aware and revisits at various points throughout the book, especially reiterating it towards his conclusion.

            Another strong point of the book is that he spends a significant portion of time establishing the real and meaningful difference between modern-day preachers and OT prophets when he writes, “… we do not need to believe that preachers are prophets in order to recognize that the prophets were preachers. This distinction sets aside the troublesome issues that comes with equating pastors to prophets, such as infallibility and predictive authority while focusing on the practice of preaching that both prophets and pastors share.”[9] This is a helpful distinction in that it not only deals with potential confusion on approaching the pulpit ‘like the OT prophets,’ but it also makes it clear that what he’s emphasizing for a modern pulpit ministry are the methods and manner the modern preacher utilizes in retelling what the Bible already says, rather than suggesting the preacher give new revelation previously unknown to his congregation.

            I liked when he advocates for adopting the rhetorical methods of the OT prophets when he quotes Ted Koppel as saying, “Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions; they are commandments.”[10] This captures well the dilemma that the contemporary preacher finds himself in. The challenge of being compelling, and carrying the zeal of a prophet, while also balancing the ongoing ‘care ministry’ to his local congregation. Balancing zeal and compassion is a perennial challenge, but analogies, rhetoric, and the living illustration of a pastor’s life can bridge this gap. 

            I truly could not identify any real weak points in Carlson’s book. I found his overall work to be excellent and presented quite convincingly.

            I learned “If we were to take Amos 1–2 as its own sermon, the introduction is two-thirds of the entire sermon. Even if we were to read Amos 1–6 as one sermon, the introduction still comprises more than one-fifth of the entire message.”[11] This is something that I’ve tended to struggle with over the years, and it reminded me to reexamine the time and attention I give to the introductions of the sermons I preach and extend them if it will facilitate the contemporary relevance and clarity of the Message.

            My views were confirmed when Carlson wrote, “… the key dynamic of prophetic preaching is far more than social criticism; it is bringing both past redemption and future hope to bear on present realities and right living.”[12] This is important because it gives our listeners a larger Biblically scoped eternal perspective. I was heartened by Carlson’s emphasis and exhortation to be mindful of this aspect in preaching through the OT prophets.

            My views were also confirmed when he wrote, “We should not need to advertise the Spirit’s presence in our preaching; the Lord’s presence should be evident in our own lives and in the power of God’s word proclaimed by us. At the same time, we should not be “Spirit-shy.” We should expect and earnestly seek the Spirit’s divine enabling and empowering as those sent by the Lord as his messengers.”[13] This is significant because if we testify to the Spirit’s presence concerning our own preaching we reveal that we are placing the emphasis on ourselves rather than the veracity of the Biblical message. If our work is of the Spirit, the Spirit will convince people of this without our own ‘fanfare.’

            I also greatly appreciated his emphasis on the Spirit’s vital role in the efficacy of preaching, and a believer’s ongoing need to be filled with God the Holy Spirit when he wrote, “While it is true that every born-again believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the filling of the Spirit should not be taken for granted. It is evident that we should not assume that all Christians are filled with the Spirit by the fact that we are commanded to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18). The imperative mood and passive voice of the verb “be filled” show that “it is ‘by the Spirit’ that God’s people are filled. At the same time believers, both individually and corporately, are to be wholly and utterly involved in this process of infilling.” The present tense of the verb suggests that “believers’ experience of the Spirit’s fullness is to be a continuing one.”[14] This is an excellent point, and one that we would do well to heed in prayerful request for the Spirit’s ongoing filling.

            I disagreed with Carlson’s forgivable misuse of the technical philosophical phrase ‘begs the question,’ such as when he wrote, “In these examples, the initial questions are then contrasted to present conditions which beg a different question.”[15] And, “Considering the Old Testament prophets as a pattern for pastoral preaching also begs the question, “Which prophet is preaching?”[16] I understand that what he really meant and should have employed here is the phrase, “raises the question,” but in a technical sense this is not the appropriate phrase. While most readers will not notice this, those who’ve studied formal logic and philosophy will see that he’s using the phrase incorrectly and it may cause them to question if they should trust an author who employs phrases which he himself does not seem to understand.[17] In reality, ‘begging the question’ occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it. Begging the question is also called ‘arguing in a circle.’ What Carlson clearly meant was ‘raises the question,’ or ‘brings the question to mind.’ Revising these sentences would make his work even stronger

            I’ve changed my understanding of a sermon illustration’s primary purpose when he cites Chapell as saying, “Thus, the primary purpose of illustration is not to clarify but to motivate.”[18] I’ve often failed to see this, and therefore failed to motivate people.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Carlson’s book is to give more time to prayerful petition before the preaching event, instead of relying so much on merely my preparation process with the manuscript, rhetoric, homiletical approach, and logical presentation. While all of those aspects are important, or even essential, once I’ve studied and prayerfully prepared with diligence, I should (even then) ask for God’s fresh and full infilling to deliver, by His Spirit, what He inspired in His Word to be heard and received by faith.

Thompson, Andrew.  “Community Oracles; A Model for Applying and Preaching the Prophets.” Paper read at the 2009 meeting of the Evangelical Homiletic Society.

         Andrew Thompson presents the overview of his thesis by saying, “…a “covenant context” model for applying and preaching the prophetic oracles …is communal in approach. Prophets drew on a common past (the Mosaic tradition), preached from a shared identity (the people of God), and envisioned a corresponding future (judgment and salvation).  By helping people to draw these same connections to their own place in redemptive history, preachers can follow the prophets’ example in order to forge a community through preaching.”[19]

            His concern is that many pastors/preachers tend to preach the prophetic books with an individualistic approach in mind and run straight toward application for a single person at the expense of the implications it should have for a NT covenant community of faith in the context of the church.

         He writes, “The prophets (like most of the NT epistles) spoke directly to a group of people. Therefore, interpreting them rightly requires a corporate mindset.”[20] I suspect that Americans may be his primary target audience since we tend to reduce the Bible to a ‘self-help’ book, as congregants reveal by saying things like, “I just didn’t personally see how that sermon applies to me.” Andrew seems to be hitting on a very real problem and one that the thoughtful preacher would do well to ponder.

            He parallels ancient Israel with the Church without conflating either their historical contexts or their individual identities. This is a refreshing and helpful distinction as he develops what a preacher should be considering when preparing to relate the ancient Biblical Text written to the Israelite people over 3000 years ago to contemporary listeners in a NT Christian congregation today.

            He writes, “Instead of drawing tenuous parallels between prophets and individuals in our church, or between Israel and our nation, this approach relies on the much broader base of a shared communal identity as the people of God.”[21] 

            His approach is compelling and helpful as an overall hermeneutical approach to including the OT as a regular and relevant part of a church’s homiletical diet.

            The strong point of the paper was that he gives practical ways of capturing how the covenant communities of ancient Israel and the Church are distinctive and yet analogous in their relationality to God due His loving character and the way He relates to those in covenant with Himself. Thompson describes this approach as the best “bridge” to ensuring that preachers maintain the corporate nature of the prophets’ messages when they are re-presented in a NT church context. He writes, “This similarity of situation—living in covenant with the same Lord as Israel did —provides the surest bridge for applying the prophets today.”[22] He gives an example of when and how a community of God (Israel or the Church) is hearing a message from the Lord (and how in relation to the time and covenant that message is being received in) will drastically affect the way a message should be understood and applied. One example he gives is, “…a warning about the destruction of Jerusalem, [and how it] will be heard differently by someone living before 586 B.C. than by someone living after that critical date.  For the former, the oracle is an ominous threat.  But for the latter it may serve as a reminder of God’s longsuffering, his justice, and his mercy in sustaining a remnant of survivors.”[23] A preacher’s approach to conveying this same text would be drastically different from the original presentation, and yet still faithful to the timeless authorial purposes of God; the first to repent, the second to give thanks and marvel at His sovereignty.

            What I liked about his work was that it shifts the listeners’ perspective by reorienting the preacher’s hermeneutical and homiletical approach. When we begin thinking about our faith communities as just that - communities - we can preach in a way that promotes the communal nature of the prophets’ messages. This should begin to shape an individual’s understanding of their own identity, and their shared identity in the Body of Christ, as not merely an individual journey that we take on our own, but one that is to be pursued as a corporate experience with others in the covenant, whether Old or New (Israel or the Church). 

            The weak points of the paper were, in my humble opinion, absent. I would have given him the highest marks for this helpful and insightful paper. I found nothing in it that smacked of weakness or casual oversight. 

            My view was confirmed when he wrote, “Too often our parishioners look into the Bible to find themselves, and to hear God’s unique word to them.  Of course, God’s promises and warnings and declarations do affect our day to day lives, our most minute decisions, and the inner thoughts of our hearts.  But (especially in the prophets) they address these realities from the perspective of being a member of a community that is in relationship with God, and that therefore is bound together inseparably.”[24] 

            My view was confirmed again when he wrote, “Depending on historical context and one’s theological understanding, the application may be one of continuity (emulating a prophet’s intent) or discontinuity (highlighting the contrast between the OT and NT situations).[25] This is probably the more challenging aspect of translating the messages of the OT prophets into a contemporary context. This powerful theological commitment is what makes sermons from Jeremiah 29:11 or Psalm 46:10 either 21st century ‘self-help’ coffee cup memes, or full embodied recognitions of what God is doing on a massive world-wide scale for the good of his own people in spite of their current experiences, and ultimately for the honor of His own Name.

            I disagreed when he wrote, “Keep in mind that such a sermon may not be appropriate for a less mature audience who has no idea who Moses was in the first place.”[26] Although I agree that the maturity of a preacher’s audience should greatly impact the content and delivery style of his message, I think that all of Scripture is ‘fair game,’ and can be made suitable for any audience if a preacher gives careful thought and preparation to properly orienting his audience to whatever passage he might be presenting. If the audience has little or no familiarity with who Moses is, nor of the Mosaic Law, then an extended introduction may be needed which will provide a brief orientation of those major individuals and the ‘big ideas’ they contributed to the community. Theoretically, this could be accomplished in the first 5-10 minutes or less of a message, even if one’s audience is unfamiliar with certain individuals as prodigious and consequential as Moses. Granted, an audience who is very familiar with such material will benefit from this fact, but a thoughtful and intentional preacher should be able to summarize this kind of background without it canceling out his message altogether.

            I’ve changed my thinking a bit on adding caution to individualist application before dealing with corporate application. While the individual will by necessity be involved in application focused on a covenant community. Thompson rightly advises that we put the emphasis on, and bring clarity to how what God is saying through the prophets should be impacting the way the community thinks, behaves, and worships in such a way that it begins to form their corporate identity more and more over time as the church and family of Christ.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Thompson’s thesis is give careful attention to coming up with corporate illustrations that visualize community application before I talk about applying how the prophets’ messages might touch on our individual lives.

            I will implement these changes by drawing up a chart or list of major community groups, events, activities, and gatherings that either embody good examples of the ‘Big Idea’ the Text is driving at or illustrate a contemporary parallel in spiritual oversight. Once I have two or three examples that show how the Text could clearly apply to a contemporary group in the NT church, then I can sprinkle examples of individual scenarios for which the message might also apply.

Preaching Apocalyptic Literature:

Bauckham, Richard. The Theology of the Book of Revelation.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

            In his very thorough work, Bauckham seeks to give his audience a refreshed big-picture vision for the book of Revelation that takes into account its threefold nature as apocalyptic literature, prophesy, as well as a circular letter to the churches in the Roman province of Asia.[27] He also seeks to reframe the Book’s primary thesis as a call to Christian martyrdom as Jesus’ ‘continued witness’ on earth until the Parousia to inspire others to repent and exercise saving-faith in Jesus. 

            He advocates that the Apostle John would have seen his work as merely ‘prophetic,’ with a stylistic ‘nod’ to the 1st century Jewish apocalyptic genre when he writes, “…the relationship between Revelation and the Jewish apocalypses has… been debated. Often the issue has been posed in a misleading way, as though John himself would have made the kinds of distinction modern scholars have made between prophecy and apocalyptic. This is very unlikely.”[28]

            Bauckham’s work relies on a definition he’s adopted from J. J. Collins concerning Apocalypse as a genre in which he writes: “… ‘Apocalypse’ is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.”[29]

            Through this hermeneutical lens Bauckham walks a tightrope of interpretation meticulously balancing these aspects with John’s purpose of encouraging the churches by calling for ‘conquering courage’ through martyrdom while also using the symbolic language of the book to capture the imaginations and emotions of both John’s original and contemporary audiences to help them understand how the Parousia will unfold.

            Bauckham wants to drive home the oft forgotten point of Revelation’s felt relevance to its initial recipients. He writes, “John’s apocalypse,… is exclusively concerned with eschatology: with eschatological judgment and salvation, and with the impact of these on the present situation...”[30] By this he is referring to the Roman practice of Pax Romana, and how God will eventually overthrow that false kingdom of forced peace along with all its idolatry, through Jesus’ follower’s faithful witness, and ultimately through the 2nd coming of Christ.

            The strong points of the book were his convincing demonstration of Revelation’s exhortation to bear witness to Christ through suffering as the way a believer ‘endures,’ or ‘conquers,’ and his emphasis on highlighting John’s high Christology. Concerning carrying on as witnesses in the world through a demonstrated willingness to suffer for Jesus’ Name, he makes a compelling case, hitting on an aspect of Revelation that seems often neglected in others’ treatments. Concerning the worship of Jesus as articulated by a thoroughly Jewish man, he does an excellent job demonstrating that John presents Jesus as the validly anticipated OT Jewish recipient of worship throughout the book.

            He juxtaposes the lifestyle expectations of the Roman world with the way a 1st century Christian ought to conduct themselves when he writes, “…John sees that the nature of Roman power is such that, if Christians are faithful witnesses to God, then they must suffer the inevitable clash between Rome’s divine pretensions and their witness to the true God.”[31] Essentially, he’s bringing out the sometimes overlooked dilemma that 1st century Christians were in by existing within the socio-religious-political milieu of the Roman empire. An empire which demanded that to be ‘good’ citizens, one had to honor the Roman customs and the ‘gods’ they worshiped in ways that regularly violated what it meant to truly worship God/Jesus. In this regard, he captures the ‘salve’ that the book of Revelation was to the 1st Century believer, who was inspired, relieved, validated, and encouraged as they suffered for their faith even for simply abstaining from local sacrifices, libations, and tributes that Roman citizens were expected to engage in to retain the favor of the state.

            He goes on to make the point that a Christian’s resistance (conquering resistance) is to be characterized by peace when he writes, “While rejecting the apocalyptic militancy that called for literal holy war against Rome, John’s message is not, ‘Do not resist!’ It is, ‘Resist! – but by witness and martyrdom, not by violence.’”[32]

            When highlighting John’s advocation for worshiping Jesus within a monotheistic framework he writes, “Jesus, …is represented as the source of revelation (22:16). The implication would seem to be that he is not, like the angel, excluded from monotheistic worship, but included in it. This implication is confirmed by the explicit worship of Jesus elsewhere in Revelation.”[33]

            What I liked about Bauckham’s work was how he helps his readers see that the exaltation of God over and above all other forms of worship is an overarching purpose of Revelation. He writes, “For John and those who shared his prophetic insight, it was the Christian vision of the incomparable God, exalted above all worldly power, which relativized Roman power and exposed Rome’s pretensions to divinity as a dangerous delusion.”[34] I also liked his insight into the subtly subversive nature of John’s Apocalypse when he said, “It is one of the deepest ironies of Christian history that, when the Roman Empire became nominally Christian under the Christian emperors, Christianity came to function not so very differently from the state religion which Revelation portrays as Rome’s idolatrous self-deification.”[35]

            The weak points of the book were that he seems to dismiss the yet-to-come and incarnational aspect of Revelation’s prophesies. He writes, “Of course, the highly schematized portrayal of the judgments depicts their theological significance. It cannot be meant as a literal prediction of events.”[36]

            These were important because some individuals become obsessed with the predictive nature of the book at the expense of its overarching purpose—God’s glory through world-wide worship. But I also felt that Bauckham too easily set aside the reality of OT prophecy as tried and proven examples of the coming literal fulfillment of revelation that was given previously in the form of timeless symbols. While these symbols had ‘near’ fulfillments that their contemporaries either witnessed, or understood as being ‘fulfilled’ in their lifetimes, it’s also the case that many prophecies that were deemed fulfilled in one sense, were simultaneously deemed as unfulfilled in another—i.e.—Isaiah 9:6-7 etc.            

            I learned that one of the primary theses of John’s book was that Jesus’ conquering witness (His own death/resurrection and His people’s suffering-witness) is engineered as an apologetic to a world of those who ‘live by the sword,’ when he wrote, “Jesus’ work of witness is continued by his followers, who are not only called his witnesses (17:6; cf. 2:13) but are also said to hold ‘the witness of Jesus’ (12:17; 19:10), which is the same as their own witness (6:9; 12:11). ‘The witness of Jesus’ means not ‘witness to Jesus’, but the witness Jesus himself bore and which his faithful followers continue to bear. It is primarily Jesus’ and his followers’ witness to the true God and his righteousness, which exposes the falsehood of idolatry and the evil of those who worship the beast.”[37] While I had previously connected this type of thought with the beheaded martyrs of Revelation, I had not quite grasped this broader ethos of John’s Christian hortatory purposes to the seven churches and all others until Christ’s return.

            My views on God as Trinity were confirmed when Bauckham wrote, “Although it might initially seem that God and Christ are in some way distinguished by the two different self-declarations in 1:8 and 1:17, in 22:13 the placing of the title which is used only of Christ (‘the first and the last’) between those which have hitherto been used only of God seems deliberately to align all three as equivalent [in deity].”[38]

            I disagreed when he wrote, “How is the eschatological life of resurrection compatible with an unrenewed earth? Who are the nations Satan deceives at the end of the millennium? And so on. The millennium becomes incomprehensible once we take the image literally.”[39] I find this quite a simple matter exegetically, in that there are more dispensations, and that during the thousand-year reign life is improved but not yet perfect before Satan is released to tempt the nations one final time before God ushers in the Eternal State when He makes “all things new.”

            I’ve changed my appreciation for the call to carry on Jesus’ witness as agents of peaceful sufferers as a primary thesis of the Book of Revelation.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading is stress the importance of suffering as an effective and God-ordained witness to an unbelieving world. I think Bauckham captures it best when he says, “The point is not that the beast and the Christians each win some victories; rather, the same event – the martyrdom of Christians – is described both as the beast’s victory over them and as their victory over the beast.”[40] And again when he writes, “Not every faithful witness will actually be put to death, but all faithful witness requires the endurance and the faithfulness (13:10) that will accept martyrdom if it comes.”[41]

            I will implement these changes by presenting the overview of the Book’s purpose before presenting the particular pericopes of the Book and reminding people as we work through the book that there is an underlying expectation that being willing to carry on Jesus’ witness through ‘conquering suffering’ should characterize we who look forward to Christ’s imminent return.

Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination, 3rd, ed. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016.  [Chapter 1]

            Collins begins his chapter by laying out how he differentiates between the eschatological terms: apocalypse and apocalyptic. He writes, “Koch already distinguished between “apocalypse” as a literary type and “apocalyptic” as a historical movement. More recent scholarship, with some unfortunate exceptions, has abandoned the use of “apocalyptic” as a noun and distinguishes between apocalypse as a literary genre, apocalypticism as a social ideology, and apocalyptic eschatology as a set of ideas and motifs that may also be found in other genres and social settings.”[42]

            In this he implicitly hints at the direction his work will take, namely that he does not see “apocalyptic” literature as a monolith, but as one with gradations, genres, and subgenres. He then spends the chapter presenting various examples of how apocalypse as a literary genre and apocalypticism as an ideology might be better appreciated as distinct foci in material, origin, theme, and characteristic expression (i.e., cultural-historical vs. other-worldly-journeys).

            He defines apocalypses as, “a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.”[43] Apocalypticism is presented broadly as a social ideology or mindset preoccupied with future deliverance and future societal eschatological outcomes from which a writing may arise. He admits from the outset that his approach works from assumptions about the genre when he writes: “An interpreter always begins with an assumption about the genre of a text. If our expectations are fulfilled, the assumptions will need no revision. If they are not fulfilled, we must revise our idea of the genre or relinquish the attempt to understand. There can be no understanding without at least an implicit notion of genre.”[44]

            The strong points of the chapter were that although he heavily entertains the possibility of cultural influences and even interpolations within the biblical text, as a general rule, he favors a view of single authorship with a unified overarching authorial purpose of exhortation. He writes: “…we must learn the conventions that are actually employed in the text rather than assume that our own criteria of consistency are applicable. In short, our working assumptions should favor unity of the document, unless there is cogent evidence to the contrary.[45] …On the one hand, this work suggested that the various seams detected by the so-called literary critics (e.g., when an interpretation ignores some elements in a vision) need not point to multiple authorship but only to the use of traditional material by a single author.”[46]

            These are important grounding statements concerning his core leanings when it comes to the Biblical text, because outside of these statements it is quite difficult to get a sense of whether or not he views the Biblical texts as legitimate original documents or merely as a hodgepodge of pseudepigraphal writings arising from a popular socio-political backdrop who are merely ‘copycatting’ the culture in which they find themselves—rife with a desire for eschatological deliverance.

            What I liked about it was how it delved into the historical, cultural, and socio-political factors that may have been shaping people’s worldviews outside of the Biblical text and trying to see what, if any, bearing those trends, writings, events, and eschatological/mythological themes were repeated, reimagined, or repurposed in a Jewish context. This is a fascinating study that sheds a slew of helpful insights on how we read the Bible and can help us appreciate to what degree the Bible is aligning or standing in contrast to the peoples and cultures in which it was contemporary.

            The weak point of the chapter was that Collins is a bit too veiled as to his own position concerning the Biblical text’s origin or if he holds to the doctrines of inspiration and inerrancy. Instead, his exploration of the Hellenistic, Persian, and Babylonian myths with their eschatological themes, essentially overshadows, if not eclipses the unique revelatory elements which Biblical prophecy provides over and above that of other sources for which apocalypticism was in vogue.

            This is important because if the Bible is just another ‘voice’ of apocalypticism, then its value on the ‘world stage’ of the genre is greatly diminished and terminates in nearly reducing its prophetic writings to very fancy plagiarisms, heavily implying that God did not actually reveal or inspire them.

            I learned that there are different types of apocalypses. This is not something I had given a lot of energy or thought to specifically. I knew there were several veins or expressions of ancient eschatological work (i.e.—Persian, Babylonian, Grecian etc.), but I had not been thinking about the intertextuality that might have existed between them, how they might inform one another in terms of stylistic presentation, form, structure, and genre, or that the ‘movement’ they were in could help further classify the works more narrowly. He touches on this when he writes, “If the word “apocalypticism” is taken to mean the ideology of a movement that shares the conceptual structure of the apocalypses, then we must recognize that there may be different types of apocalyptic movements, just as there are different types of apocalypses.”[47] Jewish apocalypses therefore warrant their own special classification.

            My views were confirmed when Collins said, “Older scholarship in this area has suffered from excessive hastiness because of the tendency to assume that the setting of one or two well-known apocalypses is representative of the whole genre. We will refrain deliberately from applying a sociological or anthropological model. Such models may well prove to be illuminating, but if they are to be used validly they must presuppose an adequate literary understanding of the apocalypses.”[48] I appreciated the balance he seeks to bring with this approach. Jewish, Biblical apocalypses need to be assessed on their own grounds, motifs, backgrounds, and earlier contiguous OT revelation instead of forcing the veneer of a nonrepresentative model upon it.

            I disagreed with Collin’s assertion about Christ’s Parousia when he said, “…the “Son of Man” passage in Mark 13:26 alludes to Daniel, but the figure in Mark does not have the same reference as it had in Daniel, and the full narrative of Daniel 7 is not implied. Mythological allusions, like biblical allusions, are not simple copies of the original source. Rather they transfer motifs from one context to another.”[49]        

            I think it’s quite plain that Jesus is making a direct reference to Himself when He refers to Daniel 7, for the events which unfold in the chapter are in excellent alignment with the context of Jesus’ discourse in Mark 13. It strains credulity in my opinion to take it otherwise. Furthermore, Collins seems to conflate the Eternal State with the Millennium when he writes, “Life will be transformed, but it will still be distinctly this-worldly (“they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit”). It will also be finite, however lengthened it may be. This conception is quite different from the expectation of resurrection or of the judgment of the dead as we find it in Daniel and Enoch.”[50] So he does not see these as proleptic prophecies which can be presented ‘out of sequential order’ as it were, and simply referring to different dispensations. Instead, he seems to misunderstand these prophecies as contradictory or incomplete and therefore nothing more than metaphorical in their fulfillment since they appear to not ‘agree.’

            I’ve changed my appreciation for how the Biblical authors may have approached the task of conveying their visions genre-wise due to the ‘options’ they would have been familiar with from their contemporaries’ presentations of apocalypses. I venture to suppose God might even have used these formats as a rough outline for contemporary relevance in communicating their themes and motifs to their original recipients.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Collins’ chapter is to keep in mind that “…an apocalyptic vision facilitates an alternative experience of reality.”[51] Because the images used are there to evoke a certain level of mystery and emotion, it would be appropriate to try to respect that function in my preaching. A function as Collins says is to, “…shape one’s imaginative perception of a situation and so lay the basis for whatever course of action it exhorts.”[52]

            I will implement these changes by trying to leverage the enigmatic imagery through dramatic descriptions, letting the mystery and tension build so that the congregation feels the need for explanation and interpretation that apocalypses are meant to evoke. A cerebral and overly obvious treatment right up front might rob the hearers of the very effect the genre is meant to achieve. Therefore, sharing the imagery, and then asking some thoughtful questions may lend itself to raising curiosity and make people crave an explanation. Beyond this (if appropriate), I might be able to show the interplay between Jewish apocalypses and other types, but only insofar as they serve to show the difference between God’s truth and the world’s, or how they serve as a powerful polemic over and against the prevailing eschatology of their day, and how the exhortation of the Text is still relevant for the same reason in our own era.

Gentry, Kenneth L. Jr., Hamstra, Sam Jr., Thomas, Robert L., and Pate, C. Marvin. Four Views on the Book of Revelation. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998.

            This work, edited by Gundry and Pate, was quite informative and robust, yet employed brevity due to the necessity of handling four different views on how to understand and interpret the book of Revelation succinctly in one volume. There was a spirit of ecumenicism amidst sharply diverging viewpoints that readers should find refreshing. This is captured by Gundry and Pate when they write, “The four interpretations in this volume represent the interpretive parts while its readership, aided by the Spirit, forms the whole.”[53] The four views addressed were, “…the preterist; the futurist, which can be delineated into classical dispensationalism and progressive dispensationalism; and the idealist.”[54] They generally agreed that “…Revelation consists of a mixture of three genres: apocalyptic, prophetic, and epistolary.”[55] But thereafter their views begin to diverge fairly sharply. While each theologian uses a markedly different approach to reaching their respective conclusions, they each seek to do so through a grammatical hermeneutic which attempts to interpret the book through the unique language it employs.

            Gentry presents his view of Preterism as, “…the bulk of John’s prophecies occur in the first century, soon after his writing of them. Though the prophecies were in the future when John wrote and when his original audience read them, they are now in our past.”[56] Of course, this has huge implications for interpretation and application mostly being example and aspirational in character.

            Hamstra presents his view of Idealism as, “In Revelation words take the place of pigments and brushes to create a portrait designed to visualize great principles, not particular incidents. Resisting the temptation to dissect the portrait described in each vision, you let the vision as a whole impress you. And impress you it will.”[57] In this he jettisons the need to discern any chronology in the book or assign too specific a meaning to any of its symbols beyond the general truths they might convey. In this approach the book of Revelation serves as a call to endure until the Eternal State.

            Pate presents his view of Progressive Dispensationalism as, “…the hermeneutical key to Revelation …is the “already/not yet” eschatological tension… the first coming of Jesus Christ … already dawned, but it is not yet complete; it awaits the Parousia for its consummation.” This means his view is heavily expectant of future fulfillment, while also acknowledging (as Preterism does) that some of these prophecies have been fulfilled typologically while awaiting (in OT fashion) their final and ultimate fulfillment—i.e.—rapture, Christ’s Parousia, 1000-year reign, and Eternity.

            Thomas presents his view as, “A dispensational view holds that the book is primarily prophetic rather than apocalyptic and that biblical prophecy deserves literal interpretation, just as do other literary genres of Scripture.”[58] Therefore, (like progressives) he would primarily see the book through a future expectational lens, awaiting Christ’s Rapture of His Church, Israel’s salvation, Jesus’ Parousia, 1000 year earthly kingdom on David’s Throne (only in the future—i.e.—contrasting progressives), and the consummation of the Eternal State all taking place literally though spoken of symbolically via the genre of the book.

            The strong points of the book were its succinctness and generally accessible tone per contributing author even to those who may not be as familiar with the subject matter prior to reading it. Another strength of the book was the high caliber of each contributor’s ability to forcefully recommend their view in a fairly compelling fashion.

            What I liked about it was that it gives readers a more efficient ‘highlight reel’ of these respective experts’ views that give a pastor, student, or layman better access to the key reasons intelligent scholars hold these differing views without forcing them to invest months or even years to grasp the major qualitative differences with clarity.

            The weak points of the book were few. But if I have to think of a way to improve the work I would simply say that it might have been helpful or informative for the book to include rejoinders after each chapter with the previous author’s responses to those points lodged against their respective views to better appreciate their thinking on those particular points. These would be important because it would give readers a better understanding of how the others deal with specific points which seem to null and void the previous author’s conclusions and measure for themselves whose Biblical assertions seem to hold up best under such a robust diatribe.

            I learned that classic dispensationalists see progressive dispensationalists as not even a part of their eschatological system when Thomas wrote, “Progressive dispensationalism, on the other hand, represents a significant change in principles of interpretation, so that the name “dispensationalism” does not apply to that system.”[59] This surprised me to some degree. I’m not sure how many other classic dispensationalists hold this viewpoint, but I found it to be somewhat strong, or even slightly harsh.

            I learned that Preterists view the 2nd Advent as “effectively universaliz[ing] the Christian faith by freeing it from all Jewish constraints (Matt. 28:18-20; Eph. 2:12-22) that tend to “pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:7; cf. Acts 15:1; Gal. 4:10; Col. 2:16).”[60] This was a bit of a shocking and, frankly, rather antisemitic comment I felt was unwarranted and not in keeping with Paul’s pro-Jewish argument in Romans 11.

            My views were confirmed when Thomas wrote, “Old Testament citations to prove Christ is presently on David’s throne (1 Chron. 28:5; 29:23; 2 Chron. 9:8) are unconvincing, because in each case, the Old Testament context clarifies that “the throne of the LORD” is on earth, not in heaven. The plain fact about Revelation 3:21 is that it distinguishes between two thrones, the Father’s, and Christ’s. To ignore this is to ignore the obvious: One is in heaven, so the other must be on earth in the future.”[61] While I understand that Christ has been given “all authority on Heaven and Earth,” (Matt. 28:18) I also think that Thomas is right, and that He is currently waiting at the Father’s right hand to fully exercise that authority on earth as Psalm 2, 110, Daniel 7, Acts 1:6-11, Revelation 19, and 20 make quite plain.

            I disagreed when Gentry wrote “The closer we get to the year 2000, the farther we get from the events of Revelation. This claim, as remarkable as it may sound, summarizes the evangelical preterist view of Revelation.”[62]Obviously, that was 23 years ago now, and I couldn’t disagree more. While I appreciate the good work Gentry did in demonstrating the ‘near fulfillment’ of John’s prophecies, I was altogether unconvinced by his overall thesis because of the current and recent history of the world. If this is currently the best Jesus can do to rule and reign with His Saints over the whole world, then He’s failing miserably. On the contrary, the world still groans and longs for redemption (Rom. 8), and even unredeemed people can see that for the most part!

            I disagreed when Gentry wrote, “When viewed against the backdrop of the theme of Jewish judgment, …the covenantal nature of the transaction suggests that the seven-sealed scroll is God’s divorce decree against his Old Testament wife for her spiritual adultery.[63] I would argue that although OT prophets used divorce in the OT as a hypothetical illustration to decry Israel’s spiritual unfaithfulness, God’s gracious character is to remain faithful to His people and His promises even if they are unfaithful (Cf. Hosea), and that the 144,000 Jews who turn and repent by exercising faith in Jesus as their Messiah with members from each and every ancient tribe of Israel shows that God does not divorce her, but redeems her as Hosea redeemed Gomer, and will also fulfill His pending OT promises to the nation of Israel (Cf. Rom. 11).

            I’ve changed my appreciation for how important the dating of the book of Revelation is to determine the hermeneutical lens through which one reads it. If one dates it prior to the destruction of the temple and the early persecution of the Jewish church, then the tendency to see it from a Preterist or Idealist view is greatly increased.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading this book is take time to explain why even though the book of Revelation is an Apocalypse, it is primarily to be understood as a prophetic book which employed symbolism to communicate a series of events that are yet to unfold in the future in a literal and incarnational fashion; just as Christ’s first coming was prophesied and had ‘near’ and ‘far’ fulfillments, so too will Christ’s second coming follow the same pattern.

            I will implement these changes by referencing the instances of OT prophecy which employed symbolic imagery but also took on literal fulfillment to demonstrate that Revelation simply continues the longtime tradition of Israel’s ancient prophets through John, who shows us not only what the second coming of Christ will entail chronologically, but what the remaking of the world will be when He makes “all things new” when I preach on the book of Revelation.

Evangelistic Preaching

Moyer, R. Larry, Show Me How to Illustrate Evangelistic Sermons.  Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic and Professional, 2012.

         Moyer set out to give others a resource they could turn to again and again as they sit down regularly to prepare messages that will not merely tell but show people the truths of the Gospel in vivid and memorable ways. He states his motivation by saying, “I wanted to write a book on illustrations—but a very different book. …I want to provide more than just thought-provoking stories. Illustrations alone don’t excite me. I want to do for you, the reader, what I wish someone would have done for me years ago—explain how to use them. The effectiveness of an illustration depends on the way you walk into it or out of it.”[64] And this, quite simply, is exactly what he does. He gives the Biblical reasoning for this kind of a resource by saying, “Jesus knew stories communicate. Truth from the mouth of the speaker becomes understanding in the mind of the listener. The Master Communicator knew the importance of illustrations. …Illustrations use something people do understand to explain something they don’t understand.””[65]

            Moyer successfully demonstrates the clear benefits of Illustrations and even argues that they are not employed in the typical sermon nearly enough, saying, “Very few sermons are over-illustrated; multitudes are under-illustrated. We are speaking to a generation of people who watch. They don’t read. Illustrations help them watch. They see the truth, not merely hear it.”

            Thereafter he recommends ways of finding, recording, and continually looking for message illustrations. He then spends the bulk of his work sharing a compendium of illustrations which touch on key aspects related closely to sharing the Gospel (sin, substitution, & saving-faith), before ending with a pre-sermon checklist that helps his readers gauge if the illustrations they are considering are an appropriate fit for the hearers, time limitations, and cultural context they are speaking within. 

            The strong points of the book were its practical usefulness for preachers who speak on a regular basis, its variety of illustrations which touch a large range of emotional currents from humorous to shockingly serious, and its easy to navigate subject index at the back of the book for quick navigation to relevant stories for various message foci.

            What I liked about it was its purposefulness and simplicity. Moyer was clear that illustrations should serve a clear purpose that helps move the Message forward. That they should be fitting and appropriate for driving home a Biblical concept to enhance the hearer’s understanding when he writes, “The most effective illustrations are not like a shotgun shell full of pellets that scatter. They’re like a rifle shell with a single tip, or in this case, a point that penetrates. There must be a single truth the illustration drives home. Never use an illustration unless you have a purpose for using it.”[66]

            A weak point of the book were that a fair number of the illustrations were not analogous enough to the theological concepts they were included in the book to illustrate. Sometimes I felt these illustrations either broke down too quickly, were simply too inaccurate to be helpful, or were too shockingly morbid (especially the child murder stories) to be helpful for the majority of congregations or groups they were meant to be shared with, therefore negating the very purpose for which they were included.  

            These were important because inexperienced preachers may feel empowered to use these illustrations without understanding the shock or confusion they may create, and end up causing confusion about sin, substitution, and saving-faith. On this last aspect in particular Moyer repeatedly presents ‘saving-faith’ in such a fashion as to give the strong impression that the slightest ‘mental-ascent’ and a desire to escape eternal punishment of sin is synonymous with genuinely Biblical saving-faith. The illustrations were vacuously devoid of any notion that repentance is a real aspect which regularly or normatively precedes genuine saving-faith throughout the Gospels and the corpus of the New Testament. While repentance does not ‘earn’ us salvation, a deep conviction of sin brought on by the Holy Spirit (Jn. 16:8) should normatively be present and produce a ‘godly sorrow’ which leads to repentance, which leads to ‘saving faith’ (Mark 1:15, Matt. 7:21-23, Luke 24:47, Acts 2:42, 3:19, 11:18-21, 26:20, 2 Cor. 7:10-12, Rev. 3:16-22 etc.).

            I learned that “Illustrations that don’t sound truthful—even if they are—will hurt more than help.”[67] This is something that I suppose I had a ‘gut feeling’ about over the years but had overlooked. I think the ‘novelty’ or ‘surprising’ nature of such illustrations tempted me to use them because of their ‘wow-factor’, or power to grab people’s attention and stave off sleep early on a Sunday morning. But I see that Moyer makes an excellent point here. Sometimes ‘less is more.’

            I also learned that “Dr. Chuck Swindoll…. averages twelve illustrations per message.”[68] Although I am quite familiar with Pastor Swindoll’s messages, I had not realized that he used this many illustrations on average! That seems like a lot! And yet, it cannot be denied that he is one of the most memorable and effective ministers of the past several decades. This was a good reminder and challenge to rethink my sense of what percent of illustrations any given message might need to truly ‘show’ people what I’m trying to help them understand or feel about God’s Word.

            I also learned about perspective in presenting and setting up one’s hearers on how to interpret if comments are serious or humorous when Moyer shared the quote from Ray Charles, “Live every day like it’s your last, ‘cause one day you’re gonna be right.”[69] And then went on to explain, “Comments like this could be considered humorous or serious. It all depends on how you say it.”[70] While I know this on one level, it's not something that I usually consciously remember or acknowledge when I prepare a message. I tend to read things as either serious or humorous, but I sometimes forget so much of it depends on how a speaker frames things.

            My views were confirmed on being somewhat skeptical of putting too much trust in a local’s cultural assumptions concerning a group or congregation’s preferences when Moyer shared this story: “When I was in Russia, I prepared to speak at a city-wide outreach. As I talked through my messages with my interpreter, I shared a humorous story I planned to use. He said, “Don’t use that. Russians don’t identify with humor.” I removed all humor from my messages. Then I got to know the people of Russia. They loved humor. The pastors just weren’t using any. I wondered, “Is that why many churches in Russia have no young people? What image are they presenting of God? Aren’t Christians, of all people, the ones who should laugh and enjoy life? So, I convinced my interpreter that if I used humor the people would respond. Attendance climbed each night.”[71] Sometimes locals need an outsider to bring a fresh perspective.

            My views were confirmed when Moyer wrote: “Possible Entrance: Man’s basic problem is himself. It doesn’t matter what you give a man, he will still want more. Instead of being satisfied with what he has, he’ll want his neighbor’s house, his neighbor’s wife, and his neighbor’s income. Everything he can get he wants—power and position, wealth, and worship. Possible Exit: That’s why when God changes us He works from the inside out. He knows our basic problem is bigger than what we do, it’s who we are.”[72] Man is not ‘basically good,’ but ‘basically evil.’ It’s important to show this.

            I disagreed when Moyer wrote, “…do not use the terminology as stated in this illustration. It’s best to use the appropriate wording. So here, one would say, “That very night, that merchant decided to trust Christ…” instead of “That very night, Mr. Goodear decided to give his life to the Lord….” I disagree with this quite a bit. While I understand that He’s trying to help people see they can’t ‘earn’ their salvation, I would argue that if someone cannot freely say I “give my life to the Lord,” how genuine can their trust/faith really be? Not very, in my opinion, and I think Jesus says as much (Matt. 16:25-26).

            I’ve changed my assumptions about what percent of illustrations I can consider using in a message and want to think about how I might incorporate them to a greater degree.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading is consider more “…sources….[such as] television programs…conversations…reading… newspapers…. magazines… USA Today… Time magazine…Reader’s Digest… Our Daily Bread…”[73] and to incorporate them more often—i.e.—Intros, interludes, conclusions etc.            

            I will implement these changes by visiting not only the Christian illustration websites I normally use, but by taking 2 hours preparing for each message to peruse these non-Christian sources to gain more insight into relevant stories that non-Christians will relate to, and which can ‘show’ them what I’m trying to communicate from the Scriptures.

Moyer, R. Larry, Show Me How to Preach Evangelistic Sermons.  Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic and Professional, 2012

         Moyer’s work seeks to marry the two oft unfairly bifurcated worlds of evangelistic and expository preaching. He states this purpose as: “…I advocate an approach called expository evangelistic speaking. This type of speaking rests on the authority of Scripture. Non-Christians leave knowing not simply what you said, but where in the Bible God said it first. It’s His voice through His word that they have heard.”[74]

            He refreshingly demonstrates that these two emphases can be pursued and executed simultaneously with relevance and a deep respect for authorial intent, when he writes, “If expository preaching—which is biblical preaching—is the most relevant message we can offer to our hearers, then what do we mean by expository preaching? In the broadest sense, it is preaching that draws its substance from the Scriptures. Actually, true exposition is more of an attitude than a method. It is the honest answer to the questions, “Do I subject my thought to the Scripture, or do I subject the Scripture to my thought?””[75]

            He achieves his goal exceptionally well, and convincingly demonstrates not only that this can be done, but that it is the approach that we should prefer since it respects the Biblical author’s intent, and therefore God’s timeless purpose in communicating the Gospel.

            The strong points of the book were its emphasis on handling the Biblical Text with carefulness and respect, and calling speakers to prioritize sermon preparation that does not merely use the Biblical Text as a springboard to say whatever they would have said whether they were making use of the Bible or not. Moyer gives the following reasons for which expositional evangelistic preaching is recommended, “It gives the clear authority of the Bible to your message. It gives your speaking content beyond the emotion. It guards against false theology. It edifies believers.”[76]

            He also does an excellent job at exposing the pitfalls of popular ‘folk-theology’ that imparts theologically unhelpful and Biblically inaccurate explanations of what saving-faith really is. To this end he writes, ““Invite Christ into your heart” other evangelistic speakers beckon. They mean well, but that phrase is never used of salvation in Scripture. People who misunderstand the phrase think that by saying a prayer in which they “invite Christ into their heart: they are saved.” The word Scripture uses is “believe”—which means understanding that Christ died for me, arose, and that I have to trust Christ alone to save me.  To imply that people are saved by saying a prayer in which they invite Jesus into their hearts may be as damaging as saying we are saved by good behavior.  It is also confusing to children and others who think in concrete terms. They cannot picture how Jesus can physically walk into their hearts. Expository evangelistic preaching guards against false theology. It makes us examine everything we say with the standard, “Is this what the Bible says?””[77]

            What I liked about it was the refreshing correction and balance it brings to the conversation about the legitimacy of evangelistic preaching also being grounded in solid exposition. It obviously benefits the unbeliever, but he also aptly points out that, “If expository evangelistic speaking did nothing more than bring non-Christians to Christ, that would be enough. But the results affect both Christians and non-Christians. Non-Christians are introduced to Christ while Christians are brought closer to Him.”[78]

            The weak points of the book were his seemingly anemic handling of the NT’s emphasis on repentance when it comes to saving-faith in Christ. He, on the one hand, attempts to affirm the necessity of repentance due to the NT’s replete commands to do so in direct connection with saving faith (Mk. 1:15), while on the other, making it so devoid of substantive meaning it comes across as almost nothing more than ‘lip service.’ He writes, “…it is only after[79] we come to Christ that we develop a sorrow for sin as we discover more about His righteousness and our unrighteousness.”[80] But this is not what we observe from the unbelieving crowd in Acts 2 when Peter preaches the Gospel to them and they are “cut the heart…” begging him to tell them “…what they must do…” and for which he then instructs them to “…repent…&…believe…”. Moyer often seems so worried that people will interpret a call to repentance as a salvifically  meritorious work that he’s afraid to employ it as openly as the original evangelists themselves, and even Jesus did to great effect.[81]

            These were important because as Dean Inserra has observed, “According to a study of US adults, 80% of those polled believe in God, but only 56% believe in God as described in the Bible. Considering the fact that approximately 70% of the US population still identifies as Christian, we have a large group of people that would likely be overlooked in outreach or missions. With this in mind, I believe Cultural Christianity is the most underrated mission field in America.”[82] Therefore, softening what it means to truly repent in connection with the Gospel (Mk. 1:15) concerning receiving Christ (Jn. 1:12) as the conscientious NT expositor must honestly observe (Matt. 8:22, Lk. 14:29 etc.), risks producing or accidentally affirming ‘false conversions’ (Matt. 7:21-23) which turn out to be nothing more than mental accent rather than saving-faith.[83] After all, who wants to go to Hell? Jesus did not evangelize the rich young ruler this way, even though the man fell to his knees begging to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. Instead, Jesus called him to repent of making wealth his ‘god,’ by calling him to choose Jesus over his money. Jesus didn’t evangelize the crowds this way either (Jn. 6). Trying to separate genuine saving faith from repentance out of a fear that people will assume they are ‘saving themselves’ via their repentance is simply not a fight the NT asks of us. Repentance is a work of the Spirit, a gift of God, how Jesus called people to saving-faith, and something one can make clear in the process of giving the Gospel if one is worried people will misunderstand (Mk. 1:15, Jn. 16:7-10, Acts 11:18, 17:30-31, 26:20 etc.). But let’s not teach people that repentance (a deep change of mind wrought by the Holy Spirit with an overwhelming desire to please God) does not go hand in hand with and is indicative of saving-faith.

            I did not learn much that I was not already familiar with. While I see Moyer’s book as a genuinely positive contribution to the work of evangelistic preaching, I generally found this book to be in line with what I already know, believe, and aspire to practice.

            My views were confirmed when Moyer wrote insightfully on the misuse of the ‘altar call,’ saying, “This form of invitation is probably best known throughout the world. Its familiarity has encouraged its misuse and even an unbiblical application. I once heard an evangelistic speaker say, “there are two conditions of salvation. One is to come to Christ. The other is to come forward.” That statement is false and unbiblical. It’s also interesting that I’ve never heard that said of any kind of invitation other than the altar call. I can’t help but think its familiarity has encouraged mishandling.”[84] I couldn’t agree more. And while I’m not ‘wholesale’ against ‘altar calls,’ I’m highly adverse to them for these very reasons.

            I disagreed with Moyer’s de-emphasis on repentance as a God-given prerequisite part of coming to saving-faith in Christ. He gave the impression that it was nonnormative in the NT, or that it comes after a person comes to Jesus, when in the NT it clearly precedes saving-faith and is the very way in which people are normally exhorted to come to Jesus! As Acts 26:20 makes clear,  “but I declared to those in Damascus first, and then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds consistent with repentance.”[85]   

            Notice that Paul makes a distinction between repentance and "deeds consistent with repentance." This means that repentance is not a meritorious work but a natural response to the Gospel as the Holy Spirit imparts conviction of sin (Jn. 16:8) prior to exercising saving faith by revealing and convincing us of our need for salvation. How can someone genuinely believe in something for which he cannot see his genuine ‘need’ to take a different view of life and instead ‘agree with’ and ‘turn’ to God through the Gospel of Jesus? A Gospel presentation that is afraid to include a call to repentance is not passing on “The Faith... …once for all delivered to the Saints," (Jude 3) nor fully "devoted" to the Apostles' teaching (Mark 1:15, Luke 24:47, Acts 2:42, 3:19).

            When we read such verses as Mark 1:15 and Acts 26:20, it becomes quite clear that Jesus and Paul were more concerned about reality than appearance. They didn’t merely make the message 'marketable' at the expense of accuracy. They were 'up front' and open with everyone about what God was calling people to do. At the end of the day Jesus is calling people to 'change their mind' so that they switch allegiances—to stop building their own 'kingdom,' so they will step into His Kingdom. We would do well to follow His lead as evangelists. We should notcall people to a ‘definitely-maybe’ kind of ‘trust’ in Christ, but a Matt. 16:25 genuine ‘trust’ in Christ, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it.” While not every believer may literally lose his life for Christ, if their faith is genuine, they will be willing to.

            I’ve changed my appreciation for how apparently ‘rare’ it is to hear a message that is both evangelistic and expositional. I have been committed to this for over 20 years, but I had not fully realized that it was so rare until Dr. Moyer wrote of it.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Moyer’s work is to recognize that while I may desire to reach every kind of unbeliever at any given opportunity, that may simply be beyond the scope of what is to be routinely achieved. Moyer helpfully reminds his readers that, “I try to reach a particular kind of non-Christian. This is determined by the thrust of the text and, consequently, my message.”[86]

            I will implement these changes by giving myself permission to preach Biblical Texts that deal with a significant portion of my listeners rather than trying to always appeal to everyone in general. As I prepare, I will tailor my introduction, illustrations, and applications with a significant portion of the people in mind, trusting God to edify and encourage others in supernatural ways even if they are not my primary target/s.

Moyer, R. Larry, The 3 Minute Window; 52 Ways to Inject the Gospel into Every Message. Evantell, Inc, 2021.

         Moyer’s succinct work seeks to help the mindful minister who wants to mature and disciple his congregation but also be attentive to the reality that over the course of time he should also be injecting the Message of the Gospel into each Sunday even if he only has several minutes at the top or bottom of any given gathering. To this end he writes, “not every message a pastor gives can be directed towards non-Christians. If it were, the church would be full of people who are shallow spiritually—who have learned how to enter the Christian life but know very little about how to live it.”[87]

            He weaves the perennial themes of life into 52 different mini messages that address people’s need for salvation in quick and easy to relay snippets of Scripture.

            A minister or lay leader could employ these short devotional-style homilies before communion, or special occasions in the church (child dedications, baptisms, Christmas Eve, graduations, funerals, retirement parties, Thanksgiving etc.).

            He also writes, “Another way is to inject the truth of salvation wherever in the course of a message it would be appropriate to do so. One may be speaking about love, sacrifice, the results of sin, death, substitution, humility, victory, marriage, parenting, eternal life, or a host of other subjects. Topics such as those provide an opportunity to give a brief explanation of the gospel. When doing this every Sunday, it must be done with variety—otherwise it will cease to draw attention and lose its meaning.”[88]

            The strong points of the book were its practical and simple use of analogies that most people can understand and connect with even if they are not familiar with the Scriptures from which a preacher might be speaking.

            What I liked about it was the call for preachers to not just use the Scriptures as a ‘springboard’ to talk about whatever it is we would have talked about anyways. Moyer makes use of special occasions, or issues that naturally weave into the pericopal focus of that day’s Text, using those elements as a springboard into the Gospel. Short and succinct, he makes effective use of his limited 30-minute Message time-goal in this way, while making room for pastors, lay teachers, and Christian speakers to regularly attend to other Biblical matters beyond evangelism.

            The weak points of the book were what seems characteristic of Moyer’s evangelistic approach in general: to obscure or omit any mention of repentance, surrender, or counting the cost of following Christ from any Gospel presentation for fear people will not ‘bite’ right then or see it as ‘earning’ their salvation. Jesus did not do this. In fact, one could easily demonstrate He repeatedly, and even shockingly, did just the opposite (Matt. 8:22, Lk. 9:60, 18:18-30, etc.).

            These were important because research shows that responses garnered in this way simply produce false conversions 90% of the time.[89]

            I learned that his primary inspiration for writing this book was because someone challenged him to come up with 52 different ways to present the Gospel in the course of the calendar year[90] in the midst of everything else the church needs to address over a 12-month period, so that the Gospel is always present each and every time someone comes to church. I think this is an excellent goal and very laudable in its aim to reach as many people as possible with the Good News of Christ.

            My views were confirmed when he wrote, “you will show your people how to share the gospel in different ways and even be modeling the need to do so. You will thus lead your people in evangelism through example, not merely exhortation.”[91]

            I disagreed with the lack of transparency that Jesus always included in His own invitations to ‘believe’ in Him in the Gospels. While Jesus taught salvation is ‘free’ and by grace, He simultaneously called people to saving-faith that understood the life they were going to be facing after trusting in Him. He didn’t pull a ‘bait-&-switch’ on people. He didn’t just tell people He could/would save them, but instead, invited them to ‘count the cost,’ so that people could make a meaningful and informed decision (Matt. 10:37, Lk. 9:62, 14:29 etc.). When Jesus asked people to trust Him, He meant they needed to actually trust Him, not merely use Him as a means to an end. Jesus isn’t “Hell Insurance” (i.e.—positive mental ascent concerning God’s love + the historical facts of the Gospel + a desire not to suffer in Hell + an understanding that God does not want anyone to suffer in Hell, does not = saving-faith). While I understand that Moyer would not advocate that he is presenting Jesus as “Hell Insurance,” or desireto communicate the Gospel in this way: functionally (as statistics bear out) that’s what most (although not all) people seem to actually take presentations of the Gospel done in this reductionistic fashion to actually mean, whereas the Bible marks genuine belief otherwise as in Mk. 4:17, Jn. 8:31, 10:27, 13:35, and 1 Jn. 2:4, 4:20 etc.

            I’ve changed my mindfulness to always include a brief and cogent presentation of the Gospel each time I am afforded an opportunity to share God’s Word, even if the primary focus of the Message might not be directly evangelistic.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading ‘The 3 Minute Window,’ is to plan to either open, weave into the middle, or close with a short Gospel presentation.

            I will implement these changes by taking stock of any special occasions, national holidays, or cultural phenomenon that I could use as a pivot to a short passage dealing with the Gospel in a Message. But I will also be careful to tell people what will happen if they choose to become a Christian. That it is a difficult road that will test them in every imaginable way, resulting in intense spiritual, emotional, and mental challenges as the world, the Devil, and their own sinful nature do everything to fight against daily communion with Christ. In doing so, I would hope that the ‘decision’ I am encouraging them to make is fully honest right up front, just like Jesus Himself did when He evangelized (Matt. 16:25, Jn. 16:1 et al.). 

Goldsworthy, Graeme.  Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000

            Goldsworthy opens his work by stating that his purpose is to, “provide a handbook for preachers that will help them apply a consistently Christ-centered approach to their sermons.”[92] To this end he largely succeeds.

            He begins by handling the definitions of what the Bible is (God’s supernaturally, timelessly true, inspired Word), what Biblical Theology is (the context of the Text in the whole of Biblical revelation), if Christ was a ‘Biblical Theologian’ (Goldsworthy affirms ‘yes’—Cf. Luke 24:13-27), the Bible’s unity (all about and for Christ), the essential elements of the Gospel (Christ’s life, death, resurrection, ascension, and 2nd coming), the structure of Biblical revelation (typology, …deal[ing] with …historical events, and identify[ing] real correspondences between historical events), and the essential need of preaching Christ in every and all sermons from the books of Genesis through Revelation. He then handles in succession all the major genres of the Biblical Canon (OT historical narrative, OT Law, OT Prophets, OT Wisdom Literature, Psalms, OT & NT Apocalyptic texts, & NT Gospels, Acts, & Epistles) in how they can be shown in their relation to Christ’s life, atoning death, resurrection, ascension, and immanent return. 

            The strong points of the book were its insightful and healthy pragmatism and the ability to marshal mild humor to get a point across such as when he writes, “Perhaps it could be said with some justification that the question of Christian application is not the concern of commentaries. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be the concern of any other major body of literature either.”[93]—i.e.—it should be addressed somewhere or what’s the point of knowing it at all?

            What I liked about it was its balanced approach to focusing on Christ as the antidote to drifting into moralism/legalism. He argued instead for a spirit-infused reliance upon Christ to live out any implication or imperative ‘call to action’ for the believer, advocating cogently that even the OT Law was meant to foreshadow the holiness that ultimately can only come through faith in and reliance upon Christ. He then rightly exhorts the preacher to communicate all imperative application with this focus.

            The weak points of the book were what seems to be germane to Covenant Theology itself, namely, that the Church has replaced Israel, while confusingly claiming that Jesus Himself is also the true ‘Israel,’ while also claiming that the Church is the ‘new Israel.’

            These were important because it seems quite plain that a normative reading of the Biblical text requires the basic acknowledgement that God has not forsaken, divorced, or replaced Israel, but has rather ‘made room,’ to graft in believing Gentiles (the Church) until He fulfills His unconditional promises to Abraham and Jacob by redeeming the ethnic nation of Israel (Rom. 11, through the faithfulness of Christ) who will bring the remnant to repentant-saving faith during the time of Jacob’s Trouble/the Tribulation (Rev. 7:4) prior to His return and fulfillment of Ps. 2 and 110.

            I learned that Goldsworthy holds a more objective and demonstrable view that “… typology, …deals not with words but historical events, and that it identifies real correspondences between historical events.”[94] This was a refreshingly balanced approach compared to what I have encountered at times as dizzying ‘free association’ demarcated as ‘typology’ which seems to spiral out of control and lack consistent standards of what does and does not constitute a true ‘type’ in the OT with a convincing candidate in the NT. While I disagree with some of this approach, I acknowledge there are ‘types’ especially when the NT explicitly cites them as such. Since Goldsworthy grounds these types as historical events that foreshadow future events, he successfully shows what they envisage and how they are later fulfilled in Christ or will be.

            My views were confirmed when he wrote, “Since it is the gospel that, by revelation, shows us the real nature of our human problem as well as God’s answer to it, relevance has to be assessed by the gospel. …The further away from a gospel-oriented mind-set people are, the harder it will be to motivate them to listen to the exposition of God’s word.”[95] This was a very insightful and subtle refutation of Enlightenment style thinking, which can exalt human rationalism as an incipient kind of intellectual Pelagianism—i.e.—'If I can understand, feel, or see what God says is true, only then is it true.’ But, without the Spirit of God, the ‘natural man’ can never ‘see’ truth (1 Cor. 2:14.). Therefore, the preached Word is essential to salvation (Rom. 10:17).

            I disagreed when Goldsworthy wrote, “Luke pointedly leaves it to the dying thief …to recognize that Jesus is the king, but his humiliation in crucifixion surely cannot be a demonstration of his kingship. So, he asks, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power” (Luke 23:42). Jesus’ answer is “Today.” The thief’s inability to square the crucifixion with the kingdom is apparently shared by the two Emmaus-bound disciples of Jesus, and it earns them a strong rebuke:”[96] I disagreed with this because it’s a failure to recognize at least 3 unresolved issues. 1) Jesus did not ascend to Heaven that day as ‘king,’ but down to Sheol, (Paradise/Abraham’s Bosom—Cf. Luke 16), w/ the thief for 3 days where they waited with all OT saints before Jesus took them all to Heaven (1 Pt. 3:18-22, Eph. 4:8) when He rose with power and all spiritual authority over death (Matt. 28:18-20, Rev. 1:18). 2)Jesus is not already ‘king’ merely because the epoch of the Kingdom has been inaugurated at His first coming (Mk. 1:15-16—“near” not “here”) but awaits Jesus’ consummation of the Kingdom (Dan. 7, Ps. 2, Is. 63, Rev. 19-20). This is what the thief rightly was referring to. Just because Jesus tells him he will be with Him “Today,” does not mean the Kingdom is ‘in place’ currently with Jesus as its reigning King. 3) It does not make sense of Ps. 110:1-2 which still sees Jesus as waiting on the Father to commence His eternal reign as prophesied in 2nd Sam. 7. Therefore, the thief was not incorrect to expect a literal kingdom, but simply promised by Jesus that he would be with Him that very day (Acts 1:6-7). He told him this to comfort him as he was dying, not to communicate the kingdom was already established.

            I’ve changed in my sensitivity to thinking about the potential misunderstanding that may arise from calling people to obedience without making known the relationship that call has in connection to the power of God in Christ through the Gospel. Goldsworthy captured this well when he said, “…any attempt to relate a text directly to us or our contemporary hearers without inquiring into its primary relationship to Christ is fraught with danger. The only thing that controls the matter of the relationship of the text to us is its prior relationship to Christ.”[97]

            What I will do differently in the future after reading ‘Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture,’ is to ask myself how the biblical text points to, towards, or is fulfilled in Christ, with a specific commitment to making it understood that apart from Christ’s perfect life, death, resurrection, ascension, and imminent coming, all human pursuit of the Christian life is incomplete since only Christ can, has, or will embody God’s will perfectly until the Eternal State.

            I will implement these changes by adding these questions (how does the text point to, or is/will be fulfilled in Christ) to my digital sermon templates so that I will remember to answer them and incorporate them into the preparation and delivery of my Messages, especially from the Old Testament.

Johnson, Dennis E.  Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures.  Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007

         Johnson’s voluminous work seeks to help expositors of the Bible to “…testify faithfully and effectively about Jesus the Christ in the twenty-first century, as the apostles did in the first, …to reconcile three divorced “couples” whose “marriages” were made in heaven: …Old Testament and New Testament, apostolic doctrine and apostolic hermeneutics, biblical interpretation, and biblical proclamation.”[98]

            Over the course of ten chapters, he argues for his readers to consider the seriousness of Jesus’ hermeneutical lens revealed in Luke saying, “[Jesus] interpreted to them the things written about himself in all the scriptures.”[99]

            In essence he wants the contemporary Bible expositor to understand how the Apostles would have read and interpreted any given OT passage to be about Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, and Kingdom. He goes to great pains to advocate that the primary task of any preacher is to reframe for his audience how the Text they are hearing is seen in relation to Christ, and His Gospel Message. He writes, “The Christian preacher must never preach an Old Testament text (narrative or other genre) in such a way that his sermon could have been acceptable in a synagogue whose members do not recognize that Jesus is the Messiah.”[100]

            He does this by calling his readers to remember Paul’s constant commitment to “preaching Christ crucified,”[101] and how Peter employed OT Texts as he called people to faith in Christ that were not understood by the Jews to be referring to Jesus specifically, or God’s miraculous working throughout the book of Acts.

            He recommends trying to recapture the Apostle’s approach to preaching OT Texts, while also acknowledging reservations, past errors, and overreaches of former exegetes who failed to govern their imaginations when attempting to interpret OT types and symbols. Johnson concludes his work by advocating that contemporary preachers should emulate the hermeneutical approach of the Apostles, and Church fathers who employed allegorical and symbolic ‘types’ even for passages not explicitly cited in the NT as to their exact foreshadowing of Christ and His redemptive work.

            The strong points of the book were its attempt to be self-critical and analytical, it’s admission of past errors of those who took the allegorical approach too far (The Alexandrian School) while also trying to remain committed to Christ-centered interpretations of the Text even though they are naturally somewhat subjective without a NT writer’s further special revelation to ground them.

            What I liked about it was his attempt at trying to retain a commitment to a grammatical historical hermeneutic in establishing what any given Text’s original audience would have been hearing and understanding when the book was first penned while also trying to incorporate that original meaning into the Christ-centered proclamation of that given Text. He wants, on the one hand, to ground the Text in real past historical realities that the ancient Israelites would have experienced and understood the writer to be addressing, while on the other hand, acknowledging that as the Ultimate Sovereign, God was at work inside and over time/space to bring about His Gospel-purposes in Christ since before the foundations of the world.[102]

            The weak points of the book were its overall verboseness and lack of reliably reproducible methods, or systematic checks-and-balances for exactly how the would-be-Christ-centered-preacher might go about preaching Christ accurately from every OT Text with enough reliability. If an obscure OT Text was given to 10 different reformed-covenantal-preachers, would each arrive (using said system) at the same meaning based on the specific ‘types’ of a given Text, and how exactly (given its historical setting, and message) they prefigure Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming Kingdom? In the end, the reader is left with subjective conclusions at best, or shaky generalizations at worst, of guessing about types vs. antitypes—especially in the lives of individuals in OT narrative passages that terminate in unreliable subjectivity.

            There was also an overt ‘shyness’ or even willful omission concerning meaningful application for how to live out the Christian faith on a daily basis for fear of promoting legalism. This seems to be an underlying ethos of Presbyterian and Lutheran theologians. After all, Luther referred to the NT letter of James as an “…epistle of straw.”

            These were important because while in theory it’s a laudable goal to pursue emulating the hermeneutical approach Christ and His Apostles seemed to employ for any and all OT Texts concerning Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming Kingdom, it may not be wise to pursue it with such an overbearing obligation and tacit overconfidence beyond the general overarching truth that it points towards the thread of the ‘Seed of the Promise’[103] running from Genesis to Revelation. While there are ‘types,’ ‘prefigures,’ and ‘symbols’ that need interpreting as to their legitimate Christological value, to hold oneself up to the task of retrofitting every single OT Text to explicitly preach “Christ and Him crucified,” strains credulity and could even (ironically) distort what God is ‘doing’ with the Text meta-historically (macro vs. micro). God does in fact address the ways we ought to conduct ourselves, and that in and of itself must sometimes be addressed, albeit with the work and grace of Christ, as Paul and the Apostles were known to do with their practical instructions in their letters to the churches. 

            I learned that the “…rise of the Enlightenment, with its suspicion and contempt for the distorting influences of church dogma, [viewed]…the usefulness of biblical research to the church …as incidental, and sometimes as a distraction from the aims of “pure” scholarship.”[104] Although I had heard about this in a cursory fashion, he helped to crystalize the historical impact this had on theological development over the course of time—i.e.—the faith vs. science—false dichotomy.

            My views were confirmed when Johnson wrote, “…sermons sometimes preached to show non-Christians that the Bible speaks relevantly to their issues may sound more like a Reader’s Digest “tips for living” article than a summons to abandon self-reliance and rest on Christ alone for all his saving benefits, lavished freely on helpless paupers.”[105] This is an excellent grace-focused and Gospel-infused view of sanctification that I wish more pastors understood and preached from.

            I also greatly appreciated his realistic recognition of the challenging and weighty task it is to faithfully present the Word of God in a fully informed and responsible manner when he wrote, “The mixed success of past preachers over the last twenty centuries shows that it is no easy task to proclaim a passage of Scripture in a way that respects its original context, displays its unique message and purpose, relates it rightly to the grand flow of Scripture’s witness to Jesus, and applies it with life-changing relevance to a diverse audience.”[106] In highlighting each of these elements he gives an excellent reminder of not only the content of good preaching, but the difficulty of the task.

            I disagreed strongly with Johnson when he said, “…dispensational theologians, …adopted a hermeneutic that drove another wedge between Old Testament and New. Reacting to historical criticism’s dismissal of the church’s pre-critical reading of its Scriptures as subjective and imprecise, dispensationalism believed that it could establish the objectivity of its reading of Scripture by treating symbolism with suspicion and preoccupying itself with establishing the text’s “literal” sense… Thus, …the theological substructure of apostolic hermeneutics and homiletics has been assaulted both by the “hostile fire” of Enlightenment criticism and by the “friendly fire” of Bible-believing students who sought to develop an objective hermeneutic sufficient to withstand the acidic rigors of Enlightenment doubt.”[107]

            I thought this was a bit unfair since dispensationalism’s primary aims were displayed somewhat ‘one dimensionally.’ Rather than merely being a ‘reaction’ to liberal scholasticism, thoughtful Bible-believing individuals sought to make good sense out of God’s unfulfilled promises from the OT to the NT, recognizing (as Johnson himself would affirm) that the two testaments are the record of One Divine Author whose plans and purposes transcend time and space, but have impacted time and space. Rather than ‘spiritualizing’ the Text to the point of docetic fulfillment, dispensationalists rightly look to make sense out of God’s integrity by seeing that He will fulfill His unconditional Covenant with Abraham and David via Christ’s unfulfilled rule on David’s throne on the earth (Ps. 2, 110, 2 Sam. 7, etc.).

            I’ve changed my appreciation for a non-dispensational approach to the Scriptures that seeks to avoid erroneous allegory of the Text, for a thoughtful grounding in the grammatical historical real-life events of the original audience, with a keen eye toward how it points to Christ and His Gospel.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Johnson’s book is think carefully about how the Text may warrant a connection to Christ’s work in the NT, especially if a NT writer reveals that a particular Text is ultimately fulfilled in Christ through a certain NT event, as well as be careful to emphasize that it is by the Spirit’s gracious empowerment that we are only ever able to live God’s imperative commands.

            I will implement these changes by adding short allusions to its fulfillment within the Sermon I’m preaching, that helps people understand the Gospel, how God had planned all along for it to point to and be fulfilled by Jesus, and the grace He supplies to live out the Gospel’s implications by faith in grateful response to His perfect work.

Keller, Timothy.  Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism.  New York: Viking, 2015.

         Keller’s book on preaching is a truly unique contribution to the insight, personal devotion, and cultural understanding required to address the many challenges currently facing the contemporary communicator of God’s Word in three specific arenas.

            He opens by outlining his aims as, “Every Christian needs to understand the message of the Bible well enough to explain and apply it to other Christians and to his neighbors in informal and personal settings (level 1). …at level 2 (writing, blogging, teaching classes and small groups, mentoring, moderating open discussion forums on issues of faith) …and delivering sermons (level 3). This book aims to be a resource for all those who communicate their Christian faith in any way, particularly at levels 2 and 3.”[108]

            Keller has an uncommon and compelling ability to explain the aspects necessary for good preaching and the importance of the task we currently face in attempting to communicate God’s Word effectively to an increasingly skeptical world and culture.

            He addresses the current socio-cultural and moral relativism that much of America and the world has embraced while demonstrating how the ‘prima facie’ truth-claims of this defacto-religion are essentially unsatisfying and failing when compared with what Christ offers and desires to communicate through His Gospel.

            Keller effectively shows how the job of the preacher is to help people get beyond shallow misunderstandings of the Gospel as mere moralism or a trendy ‘self-help’ program, to seeing Jesus as the reason for life itself—the deepest answer to our deepest yearnings—and the only object worthy of our worship.

            The strong points of the book were its refreshingly balanced emphasis on both diligent preparation combined with a prayerful and desperate dependence upon the Holy Spirit throughout the process of preparation, study, illustrating, applying, and delivering the sermon.

            He was quite skillful at exegeting the cultural moment in which we find ourselves to bring the greatest possible effect upon the listener through a deft application of the Word to everyday life that ‘gets at’ the real issues which stop people from seeing how Jesus is the answer to their sin, problems, and deepest longings.

            What I liked about it was that Keller did not recapitulate the exegetical process of preparing a sermon (acknowledging that others have achieved this already), but spent a significant amount of time ‘pastoring’ would-be-preachers in the ‘matters of the heart’ involved in good preaching—i.e.—prayer, reliance upon the Holy Spirit, personal conviction, serving the Text, having Christ on one’s mind during the Sermon, and calling preachers to speak to people holistically by addressing their hearts, while inviting people into a Biblical Worldview.

            The weak points of the book were few and far between, but his full admission that “preaching Christ from all of Scripture,” is more a matter of intuition than skill or objective exegetical diligence[109] seemed to fall short of Keller’s normative high bar of excellence. 

            This is important because while Keller may be able to accurately “preach Christ from all of Scripture,” not every would-be-preacher is so gifted, discerning, or mindful of orthodoxy.              Many would not only do this poorly, but in a manner that could result in preaching heresy—i.e.—As in the 4th century, when the Church found itself dealing with a north African pastor from Alexandria, Egypt, named Arius. Preaching a sermon from Proverbs chapter eight, verse twenty-two—which personifies wisdom as being present with God while He created the world—Arius sought to persuade his congregation and others that this wisdom was in fact Jesus, by connecting this passage to the NT in first Corinthians chapter one, verse twenty-four, saying Jesus was the ‘wisdom of God’ and therefore the first thing ‘god’ created. This is the kind of error recommending intuition as a means to ‘preach[ing] Christ from all of Scripture,’ opens itself up to. The book failed to provide any objective or clear procedure for accurately “preaching Christ from all of Scripture.”

            I learned that “… expository preaching was the norm during the first five centuries of the church’s life, at a time when the society was not merely non-Christian but often virulently anti-Christian.”[110] Although I had surmised as much, this further solidified in my understanding the ancient practice of going through the Scriptures as ‘Lectio Continua,’ over a prolonged period of time to handle the whole counsel of God’s Word. Therefore, we can and should practice this today as well—to be spiritually relevant.

            My views were confirmed when Keller wrote, “You may be eager to learn “the secret to great preaching” as a set of instructions for the formation of a discipline. That way you could nearly always accomplish great preaching if you followed the directions to the letter. However, I cannot give you such a formula—and no one can—because that secret lies in the depths of God’s wise plans and the power of God’s Spirit. I’m talking about what many have referred to as “unction” or “anointing.””[111] This was refreshing because though Keller is an incredibly thoughtful and meticulous preacher, he is careful to remind his readers that ultimately our sufficiency comes from God.

            My views are also confirmed when he said, “Cultural engagement in preaching must never be for the sake of appearing “relevant” but rather must be for the purpose of laying bare the listener’s life foundations.”[112] I appreciated this because it’s vital that we not get the ‘cart before the horse,’ in preaching. We don’t choose what to preach by talking about what people want, but rather by observing the culture and preaching whatever God’s all-sufficient Word has to say concerning that issue exegetically.

            I disagreed with nearly nothing that Keller had to say except for the ‘intuitive’ method of applying a Christological hermeneutic to every OT Passage. This seems ill advised and wrought with subjectivity. Not to mention, it creates fertile ground for modeling poor Bible reading through ‘willy-nilly’ eisegesis for the untrained congregant who will likely misapply this more oft than not. If the Christological hermeneutic is to be recommended, it behooves its proponents to set forth reliable criteria for how to arrive at valid, repeatable, and objective methods for which to do so.

            I’ve changed how I think about the conclusion of my Messages as Keller wrote, “Resist ending your sermon with “live like this,” and rather end with some form of “You can’t live like this. Oh, but there’s one who did! And through faith with him you can begin to live like this too.” The change in the room will be palpable as the sermon moves from primarily being about them to being about Jesus. They will have shifted from learning to worship.”[113] Although I have tended towards this from time to time, Keller reminded me how relentlessly ‘legalistic’ the human heart is, and how most people need to hear (repeatedly), that any exhortation is really only possible as we rely on Jesus Himself.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading is pay closer attention to how I should be helping people apply my Messages. He addressed this in the following ways, “Use a balance of the many forms of application. Application includes, at least, (a) warning and admonishing, (b) encouraging and renewing, (c) comforting and soothing, and (d) urging, pleading, and “stirring up.” Most preachers have a dangerous tendency to specialize in just one of these as a manifestation of their temperament or personality.”[114]

            I will implement these changes by taking stock of the frequency for which I have employed these various forms of application and reflect on which one best matches the tone of a given Text from which I am preaching. I will then pick a fresh form than what I’ve used in the last several Messages, but that still matches the tone of the passage. In doing so, I will also make it clear that I am not simply advocating for a moralistic appeal, but a call for relying on Christ in desperate dependance to produce in us what we cannot produce in and of ourselves, while pursuing particular obedience (Cf. Jn. 15:5).

--Boutot, M. Hopson.  “Losing the Trees for the Forest: Redemptive Historical Preaching and the Loss of Micro-Biblical Literacy.”  Paper presented at the 2015 conference of the Evangelical Homiletical Society. 

--Davis, Ralph Dale. The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach from Old Testament Narrative Texts, pp. 134-138.  Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2006.

--Schmidt, Francis Jerome.  “Development And Evaluation Of A Course On Relevance In Expository Preaching In The Master’s Program Of The Central American Theological Seminary”, pp. 16-33.  An Independent Study done in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Ministry, Dallas Theological Seminary, 2015.

         Boutot, Davis, and Schmidt set out in their respective works to bring moderation and balance to what seems to be a tendency towards unmitigated extremes in Biblical Theology that unintentionally terminate in legalism or antinomianism. They advocate for preaching the full Text of both Old and New Testaments with carefulness and an overarching focus on Christ, while also addressing pastorally those who are ‘in Christ,’ and supernaturally empowered by His Spirit to live out His commands.

            Boutot aptly captures part of the problem with the Redemptive Historical Perspective hermeneutics when he writes, “…micro-biblical illiteracy understands the redemptive whole but fails to unpack the significance of the individual parts.”[115] RHP fails to explain what we are to make of the details of the OT and NT, especially when commands and specific instructions from God are given in the Text. While the RHP gives a worthy note of caution that attempts to guard against legalism, it fails to explain in a convincing way, what a believer is to make of a great deal of the Scriptures. Schmidt hits on this writing, “the dominant framework in expository preaching for relating a passage to Christ is Christ-centered preaching, an attempt is also made to find a theoretical framework for how a text should relate to Christ, that on one hand preserves the virtues of Christ-centered preaching, and on the other avoids some of the abuses of some of its practitioners.”[116]

         They demonstrate an excellent grasp on the core ‘pillars’ of the Redemptive Historical Perspective, and graciously grant it the merit it deserves in what it does accomplish, while at the same time bringing to light its very real oversights, which fail to handle large portions of both the OT and NT in practical terms for intelligible reflections on what the Text would have meant for its original hearers everyday lives and how we should analogously understand those very aspects and principles working out in our lives today through reliance upon Christ. Boutot points out that the Redemptive Historical Perspective champions Christ-centered Biblical theology, the entire Bible points to Jesus, progressive revelation, revelation is the story of redemption, Biblical continuity, twofold homiletical necessity, and a heightened emphasis on the individual sermon.[117]

            The strong points of their writings were their refreshing and needed corrections to Redemptive Historical Perspective’s oversimplification of doing justice to the real imperatives in the Biblical Texts of the OT and NT. Boutot captures it well saying, “RHP has rightly combatted illiteracy of Scriptures metanarrative, but an exclusive diet of this type of preaching may soon result in an illiteracy of Scripture’s countless micronarratives, each with something valuable to offer the struggling Christian.”[118]

            What I liked about these works was the honest and practical nature of how they sought to honor all of Scripture as special revelation which is useful for the Christian life (2 Tim. 3:16), while simultaneously commending the RHP for its genuine contributions and benefits.

            The weak points of these works were few or non-existent. Not only did they treat the differing perspectives of their brothers in Christ graciously, but they successfully demonstrate that there is more to exegeting a Text than to merely make every Text ‘speak of Christ,’ in such a fashion that it neuters the specific aspect of instruction we are to be gleaning from the Text. While emphasizing grace and God’s energizing work as the only way to ‘live out’ God’s commands, RHP unintentionally gets in the Bible’s way of bringing needed conviction for God-desired-life-change in and through the Spirit’s work as He applies the full weight of the Word to people’s hearts so they will see their genuine need for Christ who alone can deliver them from whatever challenge they might face (salvific or otherwise).

            These were important because while it is good to guard against legalism, this should not be done in such a way as to implicitly teach congregants that it doesn’t really matter how they are living, that any attempt to conform their lives to Scripture’s imperatives is really just trying to ‘earn their own salvation,’ and that sanctification is something that doesn’t really matter to God. Not to mention, it fails to make meaningful sense of the NT’s robust imperative expectations for which God is often exhorting His people to faithfully obey. It is not simply that we ‘trust in Christ,’ and live ‘willy-nilly’ because anything else is a ‘false Gospel.’ On the contrary, because we have believed the true Gospel we strive to obey the Lord with reverence and awe in reliance upon His Spirit in response to His commands.

            I learned that some “…advocates of RHP are wary of any specific application, fearing that calls to change behavior will usurp the Spirit’s role in application and drift into anthropocentric moralism. To avoid moralistic readings of narrative leads some to refuse all moral use of narratives. But narratives edify too. Indicatives precede imperatives, but there are imperatives.”[119]

            My views were confirmed when Davis wrote, “From Jesus' statements I make an inference and form a corollary: the whole Old Testament bears witness to Christ; and the Old Testament does not bear witness only to Christ. Why this corollary? Because I agree with making an extensive inference from Luke 24:27 and 44 but hold that an intensive inference is illegitimate. What on earth does that mean? It means I think Jesus is teaching that all parts of the Old Testament testify of the Messiah in his suffering and glory, but I do not think Jesus is saying that every Old Testament passage/text bears witness to him. Jesus referred to the things written about him in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms - he did not say that every passage spoke of him (v. 44).”[120]

            I cannot say I disagreed with any of these writers. Their argumentation was sound, convincing, and brought a needed balance to what otherwise devolves into functional antinomianism masquerading as ‘Christian Gospel-maturity.’

            I’ve resolved not to change my preaching approach but remain preaching Christ from every passage that points to Him from the OT, affirming every NT Text that looks back on the OT revealing Christ, and looking for Him elsewhere when the picture is clear. But as Schmidt cites Kuruvilla, “It is hard to defend a stance that locates Christ in every word, verse, and story, without the interpreter engaging in some hermeneutical acrobatics.”[121]

            What I will do differently in the future after reading these works is to be mindful that many of my siblings in Christ have been taught that any concrete application is literally the same thing as legalism itself, and therefore I will convey in no uncertain terms that apart from Christ we can do nothing (Jn. 15:5), and that we are empowered to do all that Christ commands by the free gift of God the Holy Spirit, who causes us to bear His fruit (Gal 3:2, 5:22 etc.).

            I will implement these by prefacing any imperatives for application with a reminder that apart from Jesus’ empowering help, all such pursuits are impossible (Jn. 6:63).

Chou, Abner.  “A Hermeneutical Evaluation of the Christocentric Hermeneutic,” Master’s Seminary Journal27:2 (Fall 2016), Pp. 113-139.

            Chou presents an extremely cogent, robust, and convincing argument in his corrective critique of the Redemptive Historical Perspective of Biblical interpretation. He gives weighty Biblical evidence and powerful logical argumentation for maintaining the authorial intent of all OT writers, their own understanding of how what they were writing pointed to the Messiah/Christ, and how a restrictively Christocentric hermeneutical lens actually endangers orthodoxy, and ironically produces an anemic understanding of Christ Himself, resulting in not only the diminishing of His Word, but the very glory which RHP seeks to grant Him. Chou states the purpose of his article as, “The Christocentric hermeneutic has proposed a modification to a grammatical-historical hermeneutical approach. This article maintains that such an alteration is not Scripturally warranted and that the grammatical-historical method is not only justified by Scripture but also more than sufficient to discover the glories of Christ as perfectly presented in God's Word. Accordingly, a Christ-centered ministry not only honors Christ in the pulpit by proclaiming Him but also in the study by handling His Word the way He demands.”[122]

            The strong points of the article were its clarity on the differences between the Christotelic view Chou advocates and the firm but fair way he critiqued a Christocentric view. He writes, “The Christotelic view upholds the original meaning of a text while acknowledging a text’s implications may ultimately link with Christ.”[123] In critiquing the Christocentric view in this manner he praises them for their desire to see Christ throughout the OT with a conviction that the OT sees its ultimate fulfillment in Christ, while simultaneously making the needed distinction that not every OT text is about Christ directly, but rather points towards Him in various ways lesser or greater.

            Another strong point was his refreshing adeptness at bringing out the crucial issues facing proponents of the Historical Redemptive Perspective/Christocentric view. He writes, “Their insistence on making every text speak of Christ and their way of accomplishing this produce implications that do not seem to fit with the main purpose of a passage. This imprecise connection between meaning and significance is the main dilemma in the Christocentric hermeneutic.”[124] This is quite an important observation, and one not lightly set aside. For if a text cannot clearly retain its original meaning and demonstrate its usefulness to its first audience while also pointing to Christ, then a contemporary interpreter finds himself unwittingly pitting Christ against the revelatory purposes of His own Word. This would put Him at odds with His own understanding of His sovereign role in redemption, not to mention His ability to prophesy about it accurately beforehand.

            What I liked about it was his thoughtful handling of the specific Scriptures most often cited as grounds for restricting preachers to only a Christocentric Hermeneutic and his logical argumentation showing that it is not the most convincing or responsible way of handling the whole Bible—especially since even proponents admit their ‘prooftexts’ are not quite as restrictive as they initially claim. Chou writes, “…advocates place additional qualifications on “Christ and Him crucified.” They contend the statement does not exclude teaching the whole counsel of God’s Word. All of this demonstrates Paul’s statement in and of itself is not an exhaustive declaration. The proponents of the Christocentric hermeneutic admit this.”[125] Therefore, he shows how the context of Paul’s initial interactions with the Corinthians in saying he “…was determined to know nothing among you except Christ crucified…” (1 Cor. 2:2) isn’t even demonstrated restrictively within the very letter in which it’s found, nor the predominant content focus in the rest of Paul’s inspired writings.—i.e., Paul regularly taught grace-enabled sanctification as well as justification (Rom. 12, Gal 3:2 etc.). I especially appreciated when Chou said, “Our Lord declares the disciples were foolish to not recognize what the prophets had spoken (Luke 24:25). With that statement, Jesus does not claim a hermeneutical shift. He does not reinterpret the prophets or give the “time meaning” of what they said but rather simply affirms what they said. ’ He upholds what the human authors of Scripture meant. In doing so, Luke 24:24-26 better supports a grammatical-historical hermeneutic as opposed to a Christocentric hermeneutic.”[126]

            The weak points of the article were infinitesimal, other than what brevity required Chou to leave out by way of further examples due to time and space limitations. But this is not a true weakness of content, but merely a natural limitation of the literary genre (journal article), and the occasion for which he is writing.

            These were important because while on the one hand the Historical Redemptive Perspective/Christocentric approach is laudable in theory, it is fraught with methodological subjectivity, a serious breach in respecting OT authors knowledge of what they are doing with their material prophetically, allusion-wise, and metaphorically. It also calls into question the reliability and objectivity of Biblical interpretation over time rooted in authorial intent, occasion of writing, and demonstrable/intelligible fulfillment in Christ that does not lead to a functional demotion of Scripture or the diminishing of God as Trinity (Father-Son-Holy Spirit).

            I learned a more helpful definition for analogy vs. typology when Chou wrote, “… analogy deals strictly with the area of significance, but typology deals with both meaning and significance.”[127] This was a helpful distinction since methods for recognizing and understanding legitimate typology appears to be such a challenging and subjective task that not even proponents for the Christocentric view seem to be able to recommend a meaningful method for identification, verification, interpretation, and application. With Chou’s definition, one can acknowledge that typology is present in the OT Scripture, but it should not be conflated with analogy, and it should not be given more weight than is warranted from the context, occasion, or grammar in a demonstrable way. 

            My views were confirmed throughout the article, so it’s hard to select just one or two, but there were some particularly well-worded observations that I felt ‘hit the nail on the head’ when it comes to recognizing the hermeneutical conundrum the Historical Redemptive Perspective all too easily falls into with its overreaching demand that ‘every’ and ‘all’ texts speak directly about or of Christ in a demonstrable way. On the contrary, there is quite a lot of instruction in the Scripture in both Old and New Testaments, to which God actually expects His people to respond in faith-based obedience, (“failing forward in faith”—if you will) until Christ came to fulfill all righteousness perfectly. There is in fact legitimacy for actual exhortation to be given and calls to pursue obedience ‘in’ Christ, as Hebrews 11:6 and the epistle of James demonstrate (i.e.—genuine faith is spirit-empowered ‘actioned’ faith).

            Chou captures the problem an overly restrictive Christocentric hermeneutic unintentionally creates when he points out that it produces a ‘lesser’ Scripture (a ‘canon’ within a Canon) that needlessly pits the OT against the NT. He states this very well when he says, “The only way to handle life in all of its demands on our daily lives, worldview, and decisions is to know the whole counsel of God’s Word (Acts 20:27; cf. 2 Pet 1:3). A canon within a canon inherently cannot produce that.”[128] Instead, he advocates for a more comprehensive appreciation of God’s Word by pointing out that, “One does this [understanding how Christ is seen in the OT] by not zooming in and forcing details to conform to Christ but zooming out and seeing how a text plays in the bigger picture.”[129]In seeking to obey Christ, a Christocentric approach unintentionally demotes His Word, and neuters His own instructions that are meant to draw people closer to Him for His glory.

            I honestly couldn’t find anything I disagreed with Chou on concerning his critique. It was an incredibly impressive treatment of the Christotelic and Christocentric views.

            I’ve deepened my appreciation of the grammatical historical literary hermeneutic and feel all the more confident that it is a more responsible way to honor Christ, His Word, as well as the fullness of the Godhead in His transtestamental work as the One True God who is—Yahweh (He Who Is)—Father, Son, Spirit.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Chou’s article is attempt to lovingly share this article (and hermeneutical lens) with those interested in hearing a compelling reason for a Christotelic approach to interpreting and preaching the entirety of the OT and NT Scriptures.

            I will implement these changes by asking (when appropriate) if my colleagues would be interested in reading Chou’s article, and recommending it to them for consideration and further discussion, as well as recommending it to various pastors that I currently mentor and encourage in Biblical hermeneutics and homiletics on a regular basis in my work with www.StepUpToLife.com 

Kuruvilla, Abraham.  “The Aqedah and Christiconic Interpretation,” Chapter 4 in Privilege the Text.  Chicago: Moody Press, 2013. 

            Kuruvilla treats the famous OT passage known as the ‘Aqedah’ with an entire chapter dedicated to recommending a ‘Christiconic’ lens over a Christocentric lens of interpretation. He aims to bring a corrective perspective to the passage. To rediscover and appreciate the pericope afresh in light of its authorial intent (aka, God’s purpose for Israel via Moses), in understanding what unique contribution this text made to Israel’s understanding of its relationship to Yahweh. God called the patriarch Abraham to ‘illogical faith-based obedience,’ which would define an entire people and usher in exponential blessing in his own life, as well as those who followed after him in the Jewish nation, up to Christ, and now, (by faith in Jesus) to the ‘children of Abraham’ via faith to the ‘grafted in’ church (Rom. 11) now made up of both Jew and Gentile alike (Eph. 2).

            Kuruvilla reminds his readers that “…each text bears a divine demand intended to be obeyed, not as a condition for salvation, but as a call to sanctification.”[130] In doing so, he deftly reminds his readers that without recovering and appreciating what this text was originally intended to mean, rather than merely seeing it predominantly as a prefigure of the substitutionary atonement of Christ, we miss God’s authorial intent not only for Israel, but for how believers today should relate to God in faith and obedience.

            The strong points of the chapter were that Kuruvilla successfully argues that Christ is not to be preached directly from every text, but rather that God is calling us into Christ’s image through every text. Some Biblical texts are explicitly pointing to or about Christ, while others are projecting an ethic or divine demand to be embodied or obeyed. This is an important distinction, because if we do not understand this we might (with all good intentions) preach Christ, but not as the Bible itself is warranting, and therefore cause people to sidestep the very purpose the text was intended to have upon us. In this case, to obey God at all costs, even if it means thwarting normal human logic and reason. While this text does in fact prefigure Christ’s substitutionary death, that does not excuse Israel, or modern believers in Christ from being willing to make ultimate sacrifices if God so commands (Cf. Matt. 16:25 etc.). 

            What I liked about it was the refreshing respectfulness that Kuruvilla gives to the ancient Text. There is a renewed sense of ‘treading on holy ground’ as one reads Kuruvilla’s reverence for the Text. You get the sense that both Moses and Jesus would be nodding their heads in knowing appreciation for seeing how they were being fully understood in their respective dispensation eras in the sovereign work of God through them each concerning this pericope and how it helps us anticipate what God would ultimately do in the NT through Christ. On the one hand, we (like Israel) should be willing to obey God no matter the cost if our faith is truly ‘Abrahamic,’ while on the other, we see how Christ comes to be our perfect substitute—like the ram in place of Isaac. It’s not just ‘one or the other,’ but ‘both and…’ i.e.—while the Text does prefigure what God would ultimately provide through the Messiah, that does not negate the clear implications of the Text, to live by faith at any cost—to obey God no matter what. It calls believers to a ‘live’ an ‘active’ reliant faith that trusts God no matter what He commands and without excuses.

            The weak points of the chapter were nonexistent in my opinion. Having benefited from Dr. Kuruvilla as a former professor, I admit I am a bit biased, and yet assessing his work on the grounds of theological argumentation alone I find his thesis unassailable from historical, grammatical, and theological considerations that genuinely attempt to capture what the Text must have meant to the ancient Hebrews, as well as its significance as pertaining to Christ and His Church.

            These were important because this Text is not merely pointing toward God’s ultimate provision of Christ as our substitute (although that is true), but it actually has real-life implications for those professing faith in Yahweh, Israel’s God, and our God (if we are in Christ). Therefore, we must be willing to obey no matter what or we will not be fully living by faith as Abraham modeled, and as God Himself in this pericope demands.

            I learned “…what is important is not the apostolic hermeneutic behind the text, but what is actually in the text and what is thereby projected in front of the text: what the authors were saying and what they were doing with what they were saying—OT citation, allusions, and all. Elements that are behind the text, including hermeneutical methodology, mechanics of revelation (divination, dreams, Urim and Thummim, braying of donkeys, casting of lots), scribal material employed (skin and papyrus, quill and ink), form of corpus (codex and scroll), methods of illustration (parabolic material, words of ancient Greek seer), etc., are not inspired and thus not profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness ( 2 Tim 3:16-17). What is inspired is the biblical account of those events, the final scripted product of those behind-the-text hermeneutical methodologies, relational mechanics, real-life events, and rhetorical strategies.  Therefore, the interpreter must privilege the text, not what lies behind it.”[131]

            My views were confirmed when Kuruvilla said, “…the law is still theologically valid for believers in every dispensation, as the NT application of such commands shows (1 Co 9:9-10; 1 Tim 5:17-18).”[132] “…Scripture is more than just a witness to the fulfillment of messianic promises; there are ethical demands therein as well that must be brought to bear upon the lives of God’s people.”[133] This is a high contrast to the Redemptive Historical Perspective which essentially reduces all divine demands (especially those of the OT) to ungodly legalism, rather than Christ-energized-faith in action.

            I disagreed with nothing in Kuruvilla’s treatment of this Text. On the contrary, it was a relieving and refreshing re-read. The OT is not God’s second-rate Word, but His timeless truth, which needs to be understood according to the dispensation in which it was given, and the ways which God was preparing the world to receive His Christ were being unfolded.

            I’ve changed only in my ever-deepening appreciation for theologians like Kuruvilla. Having been unwittingly blessed with a grammatical historical hermeneutical approach since undergraduate studies, I have grown to appreciate its aim for distrusting human nature to intuit proper Scriptural conclusions and leaning instead into the very words God Himself inspired, even down to the verb tenses, grammar, and syntax. Reading authors like Kuruvilla when compared to others only makes me see how excellent this approach really is for maintaining Biblical integrity in the pursuit of objective truth.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading is keep a watchful diligence over such ‘famous’ pericopes and ask myself what from this Text calls me/us to “…fulfill the divine demand, text by text, becom[ing] progressively more Christlike as the divine demands of pericopes are sequentially met. …see[ing] each pericope as projecting facets of Christlikeness...”[134]

            I will implement these changes by first establishing what the Text could only have meant to its original recipients and preach that, combined with Christ-empowered-reliance (Jn. 15:5) for application of each specific Text’s particular emphasis.

Langley, Ken. “When Christ Replaces God at the Center of Preaching.”  Paper presented at the 2008 conference of the Evangelical Homiletical Society.

         Langley argues in his paper for a Theocentric (Trinitarian) approach to preaching as Biblical context requires over and against a Christocentric approach, citing several problems the view entails and erroneously models for congregants who perpetually ‘sit under’ such preaching. These errors include “1. Fail[ing] to honor God the Father as He deserves to be honored; 2. Misunderstanding the Gospel; 3. Learn[ing] an inaccurate way of interpreting Scripture; 4. Grow[ing] bored with sermons that all seem to say the same thing; and 5. Practic[ing] a privatized or Jesus-only pop spirituality.”[135]

            Alternatively, he asserts that “[m]aking God central in preaching achieves the worthy aims of Christocentric preaching without the risks discussed in this essay.”[136]

            Langley is quite adept and forceful in his critiques of the Christocentric approach to interpretation as it pertains to the task of preaching. On the one hand, he tries to graciously celebrate the general aim Christocentric proponents desire to exalt Christ and emphasize the Gospel, while on the other, rightly recognizing that not evenJesus or Paul (who Christocentric hermeneutics and preaching is supposedly modeled upon) can actually be found in Scripture restricting themselves to such an approach, not to mention the rest of the NT authors who should be modeling this method if it is in fact the ‘only way’ to properly preach the Scriptures. 

            Langley acknowledges that many who demand the Christocentric approach be the only way to preach from either Old or New Testaments, often do so in appropriate ways, but that even its best proponents make questionable allusions or claims to typology at times. In doing so they model a poor and confusing hermeneutical approach to those they lead who have less of an awareness of the nuance required in recognizing how or why an OT Text is either about or pointing to Christ and His salvific work in ways that are legitimate and align with orthodoxy. He writes, “…I’m concerned that their students and readers may miss some of the subtleties of their argument and that the people in the pew who listen to sermons shaped by a less careful Christocentric homiletic,” [will misunderstand]. “They’re not sanguine about incipient Marcionism in our pews. What we differ on is a matter of emphasis. But that does not mean our difference is unimportant. I think it’s fair to ask, “What did Christ himself emphasize?”[137] He then demonstrates that Christ Himself often addressed actual application and exhorted His hearers to submit to those commands without mentioning or explicitly explaining what have come to be known as the monikers of ‘the Gospel’—i.e.—Christ’s incarnation, sinless life, atoning death, resurrection, ascension, and imminent return (1 Cor. 11-15).

            The strong points of the paper were how he grounds his views for Christotelic preaching in the very methods of Jesus, Paul, and the Apostles themselves who demonstrate over and over again a Christological or Christotelic homiletical preaching approach that clearly proclaimed the Gospel without jettisoning real life application. They preached predominantly from the OT while clearly communicating its implications for application in the context of Sunday worship gatherings to those who were already part of the Church. They routinely stressed that believing the Gospel should have practical effects on a person for living it out, addressing the spiritual struggles and sin of the people they were speaking to.

            What I liked about it was how effectively he pointed out the inadvertent risks and dangers such a seemingly harmless aim can have upon its recipients. Langley writes,  “Christocentric preaching may inadvertently train people to look past what’s plainly there in the text and to look instead for a reference to Christ that may or may not be there.”[138] Not only does this produce an anemic obedience to Christ but can even result in Christocentric heresy.

            I did not find any ‘weak points’ in Langley’s work. His logic, Scriptural argumentation, and historical perspective from orthodox Church history were evident and convincing.

            I learned about the highly questionable exegetical assertions from proponents of the Christocentric approach when Langley wrote, “But I’m afraid that all too often the plain meaning and burden of a text is nudged aside to make room for a Christocentric reading. M.R. DeHann takes Adam’s sleeping while God makes him a wife as an allegory of Christ’s “sleeping” in the tomb to get a bride for himself (Greidanus, 2007, pp.9-10). Edmund Clowney takes the story of David dancing before the ark as prefiguring the ascension of Christ (Clowney, p.81)”[139] While I was aware of Greidanus, the spurious assertions from DeHann and Clowney were new to me and caused me to feel a great swell of pity for those needlessly beholden to such a restrictive hermeneutic which causes such a constrained interpretation of the Canon. It almost feels as if I’m watching people try to run a marathon with fireman’s gear on ‘just in case’ a fire breaks out on the course. One can run that way, but the likelihood that they will encounter a fire is so silly it’s asinine to do so. Possible, but unnecessary, and ineffective.

            My views were confirmed when Langley wrote, “John’s Christology is arguably the “highest” of the four gospels, but no one is clearer than John that the Son is subject to the Father and lives to make him known. If this is the burden of our Lord himself and the evangelists who told his story, should it not be ours as well?”[140] This was a refreshingly Trinitarian approach to keep a fully Theocentric emphasis on communicating the full corpus of the Scriptures. Yes, we should put a great emphasis and clarity on who Jesus is, His life, death, resurrection, ascension, and imminent return, but ought we not also speak clearly of the Father, and the Holy Spirit when they in fact are the focus of a given Text?—Of course, we ought. Leave Christ out?—No, of course not. But if we are truly communicating the whole counsel of God, let’s actually include the whole story of who God is, especially when the Bible is focusing our attention there!

            My views were also confirmed when Langley wrote, “Even Paul, whose life was so thoroughly revolutionized when he was apprehended by Christ, nonetheless casts a broader theological vision than Jesus only. He sees redemptive history moving from the creation of the world when God’s eternal power and divine nature were clearly seen (Rom. 1:20) toward a consummation in which the Son hands over the kingdom to his Father, and the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all (1 Cor 15:24, 28). The drama of the Bible, for Paul, begins and ends with God.”[141] This is vitally important, because if we cannot see this then the bulk of God’s practical instructions for life after coming to know Christ, (even prior to His incarnation in the OT), are reduced to mere platitudes, rather than supernatural revelation that communicate the heart and character of God which call us to Christlikeness. Because as Langley so perfectly points out, the “themes of preaching are larger than crucifixion and resurrection. The same apostle who wrote “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23), could also say “I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God” (Acts 20:27).”[142] Paul clearly and repeatedly models preaching both justification and sanctification.

            I cannot truly say that I disagreed with anything Langley presented. He was very thorough and convincing, providing vital insights and corrections to a hermeneutical approach which ironically does an injustice to the very Scriptures it seeks to honor.

            I’ve changed my appreciation to what uninitiated newcomers may be ‘hearing’ when they first come into the Church, when Langley wrote, “…[Christocentric] preaching inadvertently sets Father and Son over against one another in the gospel story. Though most pastors would not knowingly encourage such a perverted notion, some people imagine a drama of salvation in which Jesus and God are on opposite sides. The Father – harsh, demanding, and wrathful – is intent on judging us. But Jesus – kind, compassionate, and merciful – comes to the rescue and offers himself as a sacrifice in our stead. Who could blame anyone who thinks that this is the gospel for loving Jesus but shrinking from God?”[143]

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Langley’s work is attempt to make a concerted effort to preach with the Trinity in view as I prepare. Wherever the Scripture emphasizes the work of one member of the Godhead, I will endeavor to make that clear. I will also lean into practical, Christ-empowered application that does justice to the unique revelatory contribution of that particular Old or New Testament Text. 

            I will implement these changes by assessing how the Text would have been heard or understood in its original setting, what the real-life implications are for us as believers today, and then mention (when the Text warrants) how that particular Text points towards God the Father, Christ, The Holy Spirit, or the Godhead (Yahweh) as 3 in 1.

Miller, Alan.  “New Testament Proclamation: Christocentric or Multifaceted?  A Thesis done in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Theology, Talbot School of Theology, 2010.

            Miller’s Thesis sets out to give the background and development of how hermeneutics underwent a progression of development throughout Church history, how the broad brush of the Christocentric lens came to be championed, adjusted, and finally, how a Christological approach does greater justice to the Biblical Text over and against a Christocentric one.

            Miller summarizes the Christocentric perspective as those “…whose hermeneutical and theological presuppositions dictate that Christ must stand as the big idea of every text; this is Christocentric preaching. Here, the Bible is narrowly understood as the one word of the one God concerning the one way of salvation which is ultimately realized in the one Savior, Jesus Christ.”[144]

            On the other hand, he defines the Christological approach to preaching as a “…distinction… …between the Big Idea of scripture—God’s redemption in Christ—and the big idea of a scripture—a Christological or non-Christological piece of God’s multifaceted witness.“[145]

            Miller successfully argues for a Christological approach by demonstrating how subjective and difficult it is to reproduce reliable methods of interpretation that actually yield consistent and convincing results beyond a preacher’s personal opinion, personality, creativity, and imagination because they may or may not correspond to the author’s original intent, what even his fellow Christocentrics would ‘see,’ and could even fly in the face of orthodoxy.

            He traces the Reformation’s adjustment of the Christocentric approach via Luther and Calvin but outlines its perpetuation despite these two prodigious preachers and exegetes’ commitment to the historicity of the text, although Calvin tended to be more committed to the ‘plain meaning’ of the text than Luther, especially on Christocentricity.

            Miller summarizes his purpose for writing and his position on the matter as, “… multifaceted homileticians do not superimpose a Christocentric Sitz im Leben upon every text but instead allow the text to speak on its own accord.”[146]

            The strong points of the Thesis were its ode to church history and its careful comparison of how those interpretive approaches from the Church Fathers to the Reformation and beyond actually match up exegetically with how Jesus Himself and the disciples are recorded preaching (both in method and content) and writing to people in the NT. Miller states his position by saying, “Time and again, the evangelists present Jesus as the climax of the whole OT, but neither Jesus nor the evangelists interpret every part of the OT Christologically. Instead, Christological and non-Christological interpretations stand side-by-side. What is more, the proclamation of Jesus and his disciples is multifaceted, reflecting both ethical and redemptive aspects. Consequently, while the evangelists herald Jesus as the gospel’s central figure, they do not hold him as their exclusive focus.”[147]

            What I liked about it was the thoroughness of tracing not only how Christians from the Apostles through the Reformation and onward typically dealt with the task of preaching/writing and interpreting the Scriptures, but also how he went through the entire NT methodically demonstrating the patterns and wider context of how the writers were understanding the OT texts which they were quoting from and drawing on. Time and time again Miller clearly demonstrated how Jesus, the Apostles, and the NT itself reveal a Christological preaching model over and against the needless rigidity of the overly simplistic model of Christocentrism. In summary of this emphasis Miller writes, “…while the Bible contains Christology it is not Christocentric.”[148]

            The weak points of the Thesis were nearly impossible for me to see. I’m sure an individual who holds to a Redemptive Historical Perspective on preaching would have ample criticisms of Miller’s Thesis, but I cannot quite imagine what they would be. While he is thoughtfully critical of those who hold to RHP, he does try to celebrate their overall aims, while simultaneously showing how in desiring to do ‘justice’ to the Scriptures they fall short of honoring them in all they were inspired to communicate.

            This was important because while it may be necessary to make one’s case against views one may not agree with, and for which argumentation for others’ benefit is incumbent, that does not mean one ought to lack Christian charity, equity, respect, and deference for fellow siblings in Christ across the broad spectrum of interpretive traditions and commitments that may vary, and which are held by those who are themselves ‘held’ by Christ for all eternity

            I learned that there are scholars who bifurcate preaching and teaching so as to ‘make room’ for Christian instruction that is not primarily Christocentric when Miller wrote, “…Dodd’s highly technical dichotomization between khru/ssw, and dida¿skw, becomes untraceably blurry. Resultingly, NT proclamation is necessarily multifaceted in that it contains elements of Christology as well as kingdom ethics.”[149] Of course, Miller is arguing for a Christological approach which can easily appropriate both preaching and teaching necessary to the responsibility of faithfully communicating God’s whole revelation. There is no need to bifurcate these emphases, but rather employ them when appropriate at varying degrees for best results and understanding—i.e., the Gospel and its implications for everyday Spirit-empowered living. 

            I also learned that “…a Christocentric reading of the OT stems from a redemptive Bibliology which sees the OT as seedling or immature revelation.”[150] This strikes me as hermeneutically problematic and unintentionally pits the OT and NT against each other, rather than on a unified continuum of lasting relevance that points towards Christ without demoting the OT to the dustbin of irrelevancy as Paul instructed Timothy that “Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Tim. 3:16). This carries even more weight when we recognize that at the time Paul wrote this most of the NT had not yet been composed or widely known by the church! Paul is instructing Timothy to employ the OT as the basis for exhorting the NT church to specific God-honoring behaviors, not to merely ‘trust Christ’ as the point of each and every Message he preached (2 Tim. 4:2).

            My views were confirmed when Miller said “When taken with the Christ-event, these portions of scripture are said to change from ethical-centric to Christocentric. What has taken place in this expansion, however, is an unnecessarily complex sleight of hand. While it is perfectly acceptable to expand natural units of scripture to include redemption, it is crucial to note that in doing so one has enlarged the natural unit of scripture and is thus dealing with a different main point. Jesus himself preached this ethical unit quite apart from his redemptive work on the cross; thus, any homiletic which demands that the natural unit of scripture always be stretched to encapsulate other theology necessarily neglects the big idea of the part for that of the whole.”[151] I thought this was brilliantly communicated. We ought not neglect meaningful and specific application. While we may preach Christologically we should not neglect proper pastoral instruction when that’s the point of the pericope or passage we are handling.

            I greatly appreciated how Miller showed that the very inclusion of the epistle of James in the NT Canon shows that Christocentric preaching is not the Apostolic expectation or ‘norm’ from the earliest days of the Church. He writes, “Yet far from disqualifying the book from Christian origins, James’s lack of Christology is the result of his purpose: to argue for ethical, not dogmatic, results. Consequently, the book of James firmly disproves an early homiletic that was Christocentric.”[152]

            I cannot say I disagreed with anything Miller presented in his Thesis. It was an incredibly helpful, convincing, and thoughtful handling of the issue which showed that a Christological approach to preaching is a more Biblical, pastoral, practical, reliable approach which follows in the method of Christ, the Apostles, and even the NT’s normative aim of presenting all of God’s Truth for ongoing application.

            I’ve changed only in that I have an even deeper appreciation for the Christotelic/Christological approach to preaching.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading is just give those in my audience who may have been taught that all preaching must be only ever Christocentric a ‘nod’ of gracious acknowledgement in the form of a kindly ‘disclaimer’ before I begin the Message.

            I will implement these changes by saying something along the lines of, “Before I begin today, I want to thank Pastor (insert name) for the invitation to speak. I would also simply say that I believe all of Scripture points to Christ, while also calling us to actions that honor Him as we rely on His Spirit to live out the moral and ethical commands in His Word. Today we’ll see not only what it means to trust in Christ’s work, but how after doing so, Christ works on, in, and through us!”

Murphy, Bryan. “From Old Testament Text to Sermon.” Master’s Seminary Journal 27:2 (Fall 2016), 141-150.

            Murphy sets out “…to demonstrate a number of biblically legitimate ways to preach the OT in a NT church context—thereby disproving the tenet that every message must have Christ as its point.”[153]

            He achieves his goal with great clarity and convincing argumentation. His examples are clear and show plainly that the Christocentric approach (while laudable in some respects) should not be taken to the extremes of what many proponents have recommended or tried to require.

            Murphy sympathizes with his colleagues but also calls them to reform by saying, “[t]hose who propose a Christocentric approach to preaching the OT in a NT church context are not wrong in a great many cases. The fallacy is that Christ must be the point of every passage. While it is true that He is not directly the point of every OT passage, He is most definitely the point of many OT texts. When He is, He should be preached as the point of the text today.”[154]

            Murphy recommends that modern preachers present Christ from the OT just as the Apostles and the writers of the NT modeled. He writes, “[Jesus] said, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me” (John 5:46). Jesus said that the OT specifically has portions of it that are directly written about Him. That means there are OT passages NT preachers can go to in order to point people directly to Jesus as well.”[155]

            Murphy outlines three major dangers of using a Christocentric approach to preaching. 1) It models bad hermeneutics”; 2) it rejects the biblical model; and 3) it fails to fully equip the saints.”[156]

         The strong points of the journal article were how straightforwardly he calls the modern preacher to preach Christ whenever the text clearly warrants. He rightly points out that “Jesus used the OT to justify His actions, respond to His critics, and confirm His identity. A NT preacher can do the same in pointing to Christ from OT texts when they fit the context.”[157]

            Another strength of the article was how he succinctly proves that the Scripture’s own composure undercuts a Christocentric approach. He refreshingly points out that “Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:2, preach the Word. He does not say, preach Christ. He says, preach the Word. As shown above, Scripture is useful for more than just pointing to the person and work of Christ. It is useful for everything from evangelism to practical Christian living (2 Tim 3:14-17).”[158]

            What I liked about it was its candidness, clear logical reasoning, Scriptural grounding in contextual analysis, and its call to reform for the sake of the maturity of Christ’s Body.

            The weak points of the journal article were essentially absent in my estimation. While I’m confident that an individual from the RHP would find ample elements to chide, I cannot point out any with any level of integrity. I think most objections would essentially be rooted in church politics connected to theological presuppositions and the fear of ‘betraying’ one’s own church tradition or confessional commitments. That’s unfortunate since it does not carry on the ethos of the very Reformation it so desires to celebrate.

            These were important because while it’s paramount to make sure that people regularly hear about Christ, His life, death, resurrection, ascension, and imminent return, that does not give us the right to neglect the clear calls and commands of Scripture in the name of evangelism and antinomianism. We can emphasize what the text emphasizes to be faithful.

            I did not necessarily learn anything ‘new’ in the sense that I’d not heard or considered it before, but I was reminded and sharpened in my understanding of the issues, as well as being made aware, by way of reminder, of the incipient dangers of preaching only Christ from every text, and what that can do to an unsuspecting congregation over time. Not only does this cause people to misinterpret the text at times in inappropriate ways alien to divine inspiration, but it prevents the congregation from ‘growing up’ and maturing in Christ as they ought (Heb. 6, Eph. 4:13, Col.1:28,  4:12 etc.).

            My views were confirmed when Murphy wrote, “Paul says the OT was written to teach believers (even in a NT context) how to live for God. In Romans 15:4, he states that, “whatever was written in earlier times [referring to the OT Scriptures] was written for our instruction [i.e., NT saints], so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. So, Christ is not the point of every passage.”[159]

            My views were also confirmed when Murphy said, “When Jesus appeared to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, He started with the Pentateuch and then expanded His exposition into the rest of the OT in order to show that the Christ had to suffer all the things that had taken place that week. While that does not mean that Jesus is the point of every OT passage, it does mean that Christ can be found throughout the OT.”[160]

            I agreed with Murphy’s observations that “the entire OT is an inspired record of men and women of faith who believed God, walked with God, gained the approval of God, and were made righteous by God, despite the fact that they fell short of the righteousness of God on their own.”[161]

            I also heartily agreed when he said “as it relates to the subject of preaching the OT in a NT church context, is the point Paul makes in the text that follows. “Now these things happened as examples for US… (1 Cor. 10:6a).”[162]

            I cannot say I disagreed with anything that Murphy presented in his article. It was very solid in my opinion, and I would be fascinated to see what kind of responses or rejoinders may be generated in response to what he wrote. I imagine it would be exceedingly difficult to argue against his position.

            I’ve changed my level of appreciation concerning the “dangers” Murphy reminds his readers that a Christocentric approach exposes a church body to over time.

            What I will do differently in the future after reading Murphy is encourage the pastors that I am mentoring and encouraging in homiletics to read Murphy’s article, as well as encourage them to, as Murphy put it so well, “Preach it in its biblical context and then relate it to the Church today. If it points to Christ, make Christ the point of the message. If Christ is not the point of the text, then do not force it. There are many ways that NT believers can benefit from a faithful exposition from an OT text.”[163]

            I will implement these changes by offering this article to any pastors/lay pastors who are interested and offer to have follow-up conversations discussing their observations, agreements, disagreements, and what they think may be worth implementing in their preaching.

 Bibliography:

[1] Langley, Kenneth, J.. How to Preach the Psalms (p. 16). Fontes Press. Kindle Edition.     

[2] Ibid. (p. 22).

[3] With the Psalms comprising roughly 5% and the other poetic books comprising roughly 6%. 

[4] Langley, Kenneth, J.. How to Preach the Psalms (p. 22). Fontes Press. Kindle Edition.

[5] Ibid. p. 30.

[6] Ibid. p. 94-95

[7] Ibid. p. 96

[8] Carlson, Robert A.. Preaching Like the Prophets: The Hebrew Prophets as Examples for the Practice of Pastoral Preaching (p. 10). Wipf & Stock, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.”

[9] Carlson, Robert A.. Preaching Like the Prophets: The Hebrew Prophets as Examples for the Practice of Pastoral Preaching (p. 14). Wipf & Stock, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.”

[10] Ibid. (p. 24).

[11] Ibid. (p. 66).

[12] Ibid. (p. 28).

[13] Ibid. (p. 42-43).

[14] Ibid. pp. 45-46).

[15] Ibid. (p. 87).

[16] Ibid. (p. 8).

[17] Copi. Introduction to Formal Logic , n.d. 14th ed. / Irving M. Copi, Carl Cohen and Kenneth McMahon (p. 136-9)

[18] Carlson, Robert A.. Preaching Like the Prophets: The Hebrew Prophets as Examples for the Practice of Pastoral Preaching (p. 120). Wipf & Stock, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.”

[19] Thompson, Andrew. “Community Oracles; A Model for Applying and Preaching the Prophets.” Paper read at the 2009 meeting of the Evangelical Homiletic Society (Location 1).

[20] Ibid. (Location 87) 

[21] Ibid. (Location 323)

[22] Thompson, Andrew.  “Community Oracles; A Model for Applying and Preaching the Prophets.” Paper read at the 2009 meeting of the Evangelical Homiletic Society (Kindle Locations 189-190). Kindle Edition.”

[23] Ibid. (Kindle Locations 177-179).

[24] Ibid. (Kindle Locations 344-348).

[25] Ibid. (Kindle Locations 403-404).

[26] Ibid. (Kindle Locations 366-367).

[27] Bauckham, Richard. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (p. 2). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

[28] Ibid. (p. 5).

[29] Ibid. (p. 6).

[30] Ibid. (p. 6).

[31] Ibid. (p. 38).

[32] Bauckham, Richard. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (p. 92). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.”

[33] Ibid. (p. 59-60).

[34] Ibid. (p. 39).

[35] Ibid. (p. 44).

[36] Ibid. (p. 41).

[37] Bauckham, Richard. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (pp. 72-73). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.”

[38] Ibid. (p. 55).

[39] Ibid. (p. 108).

[40] Ibid. (p. 90).

[41] Ibid. (p. 94).

[42] Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination, 3rd, ed. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016.  [Chapter 1] p. 3

[43] Ibid. p. 5

[44] Ibid. p. 9

[45] Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination, 3rd, ed. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016.  [Chapter 1] p. 18-19

[46] Ibid. p. 20-21

[47] Collins, John J. The Apocalyptic Imagination, 3rd, ed. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016.  [Chapter 1] p. 16-17

[48] Ibid. p. 48

[49] Ibid. p. 24

[50] Ibid. p. 32

[51] Ibid. p. 52

[52] Ibid. p. 52

[53] Four Views on the Book of Revelation (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) (p. 8). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.

[54] Ibid. p. 8

[55] Ibid. p. 9

[56] Four Views on the Book of Revelation (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) (p. 37). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.”

[57] Ibid. P. 104-105

[58] Ibid. p. 245

[59] Four Views on the Book of Revelation (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) (p. 195). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.”

[60] Ibid. p. 47

[61] Ibid. p. 200

[62] Ibid. p. 37

[63] Four Views on the Book of Revelation (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) (p. 52). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.”

[64] Moyer, R. Larry, Show Me How to Illustrate Evangelistic Sermons.  Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic and Professional, 2012.p. 11

[65] Ibid. p. 13-14

[66] Ibid. p. 22

[67] Ibid. p. 23

[68] Ibid. p. 29

[69] Ibid. p. 76 — Ray Charles quoted in Esquire, August 2003

[70] Ibid. p. 76

[71] Ibid. P. 17

[72] Ibid. p. 92

[73] Ibid. p. 29

[74] Moyer, R. Larry, Show Me How to Preach Evangelistic Sermons.  Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic and Professional, 2012 p. 20

[75] Ibid. p. 22

[76] Ibid. p. 38-40

[77] Ibid. p. 40

[78] Ibid. p. 41

[79] Emphasis added. 

[80] Ibid. p. 132

[81] https://bible.org/seriespage/1-genuine-conversion-various-scriptures

[82] Inserra, Dean. The Unsaved Christian (p. 15). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition. In other words, a lack of clarity on repentance fails to encompass the normative invitation to “count the cost” before believing the Gospel.

[83] 33X’s in significant soteriologically pregnant NT Texts from Matthew through Revelation.

[84] Ibid. p.

[85] NET Bible

[86] Ibid. p. 179

[87] Moyer, R. Larry. The 3 Minute Window (p. 8). Evantell, Inc. Kindle Edition.”

[88] Ibid. (pp. 8-9).

[89] Mcintyre, Patrick. 2005. The Graham Formula : Why Most Decisions for Christ Are Ineffective. Mammoth Spring, Ark.: White Harvest Publications.

[90] Moyer, R. Larry. The 3 Minute Window (p. 8). Evantell, Inc. Kindle Edition.”

[91] Moyer, R. Larry. The 3 Minute Window (p. 9). Evantell, Inc. Kindle Edition.”

[92] Goldsworthy, Graeme. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching . Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.”

[93] Ibid. Kindle location 148

[94] Goldsworthy, Graeme. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching (p. 112). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.”

[95] Ibid. (p. 61).

[96] Ibid. (p. 44).

[97] Goldsworthy, Graeme. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching (p. 113). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.”

[98] Johnson, Dennis E.. Him We Proclaim (Location 200). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.”

[99] Luke 24:27 (NET)             

[100] Johnson, Dennis E.. Him We Proclaim (Location 923) . P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.”

[101] 1 Cor. 2:2

[102] Eph. 1:4

[103] Gen. 3:15-16

[104] Ibid. (Location 331).

[105] Johnson, Dennis E.. Him We Proclaim (Location 657). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[106] Ibid. (Location 1753).

[107] Ibid. (Location 224-225).

[108] Keller, Timothy. Preaching (pp. 4-5). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[109] Ibid. (p. 86).

[110] Keller, Timothy. Preaching (p. 96). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[111] Ibid. (p. 11).

[112] Ibid. (p. 21).

[113] Keller, Timothy. Preaching (p. 179). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.”

[114] Ibid. (p. 186).

[115] Boutot, M. Hopson.  “Losing the Trees for the Forest: Redemptive Historical Preaching and the Loss of Micro-Biblical Literacy.”  Paper presented at the 2015 conference of the Evangelical Homiletical Society. p. 27

[116] Schmidt, Francis Jerome.  “Development And Evaluation Of A Course On Relevance In Expository Preaching p. 5

[117] Boutot, M. Hopson.  “Losing the Trees for the Forest: Redemptive Historical Preaching and the Loss of Micro-Biblical Literacy.”  Paper presented at the 2015 conference of the Evangelical Homiletical Society.. p. 30

[118] Ibid. p. 28

[119] Boutot, M. Hopson.  “Losing the Trees for the Forest: Redemptive Historical Preaching and the Loss of Micro-Biblical Literacy.” P. 35

[120] Davis, Ralph Dale. The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach from Old Testament Narrative Texts, pp. 134-138.  Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2006. p. 135

[121] Kuruvilla, 239.

[122] Chou, Abner.  “A Hermeneutical Evaluation of the Christocentric Hermeneutic,” Master’s Seminary Journal 27:2 (Fall 2016), p. 113.

[123] Ibid. p. 116

[124] Ibid. p. 120

[125] Ibid. p.125

[126] Ibid. p. 126

[127] Ibid. p. 117-118

[128] Ibid. p.135

[129] Ibid. p. 135

[130] Kuruvilla, Abraham.  “The Aqedah and Christiconic Interpretation,” Chapter 4 in Privilege the Text.  Chicago: Moody Press, 2013.  p. 211

[131] Ibid. p. 247

[132] Ibid. p. 243

[133] Ibid. p. 243

[134] Ibid. p. 260

[135] Langley, Ken. “When Christ Replaces God at the Center of Preaching.”  Paper presented at the 2008 conference of the Evangelical Homiletical Society. p. 1

[136] Ibid. p. 1

[137] Ibid. p. 4

[138] Ibid. p.9

[139] Ibid. p. 10

[140] Ibid. p.4-5

[141] Ibid. p. 5

[142] Ibid. p. 6

[143] Ibid. P. 7

[144] Miller, Alan.  “New Testament Proclamation: Christocentric or Multifaceted?  A Thesis done in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Theology, Talbot School of Theology, 2010. p. 2

[145] Ibid. p. 3

[146] Ibid. p. 16-17

[147] Ibid. p. 45

[148] Ibid. p. 13

[149] Ibid. p. 35

[150] Ibid. p.88

[151] Ibid. p. 28

[152] Ibid. p. 48-49

[153] Murphy, Bryan. “From Old Testament Text to Sermon.”  Master’s Seminary Journal 27:2 (Fall 2016), 141

[154] Ibid. p. 142

[155] Ibid. p. 143

[156] Ibid. p. 150

[157] Ibid. p. 143

[158] Ibid. p .150

[159] Ibid. p. 144

[160] Ibid. p. 143

[161] Ibid. p. 145

[162] Ibid. p. 146

[163] Ibid. p. 150