Preaching

Center Preaching on God

January 15, 2009

A good reminder from Biblical Preaching:

Based on the nature of Scripture, I think it is vital that we grasp the necessity of theocentric interpretation, and consequently, preaching. Kent Edwards, in a journal article, stated:

The point of a biblical story is always a theological point. We learn something about God and how to live in response to him when we understand a biblical story. The narrative literature of the Bible is concretized theology. (J.Kent Edwards, JEHS 7:1, 10)

How true that is! Even if you were to study Esther, the story in the Bible where God is textually absent, it doesn’t take long to recognize that God is very much present as the hero of the story! Let’s be sure we don’t study Bible passages, stories in particular, and merely derive little lessons for life. We can leave that with Aesop’s Fables. Let’s be sure we grapple with the theological point of every story, the intersection between God and humanity. God’s Word is all relevant and useful, so our preaching should likewise be relevant and useful to life. But we also center our preaching on God, because the Bible is centered on Him

J

Just Preach the Gospel

June 20, 2007

Selected quotes from an excellent article by Marianne Meye Thompson:

To preach the gospel is to proclaim the accounts of the Scriptures in light of the fact that their central character is God, and that the gospel is from God and about the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

It is so easy to make the most powerful of Gospel stories center on human action and not on God, to think that somehow our actions, our decisions, are the heart and center of the gospel story. To make that move is to sell out the gospel.

To be guided by the gospel is to remember that the gospel is first and foremost about what God does, and not about what we do.

Preaching should help people locate themselves in the context of the biblical story of God's creation of the world, call of Israel, sending...