Bryan Chapell - Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon

1994, 2005 by Bryan Chapell

Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2011

Ebook corrections 11.11.2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4412-0022-8

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations identified KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

To
my wife, Kathy,
for the love, family, home, and friendship
the Lord has graced us to share

Appendixes

I consider this second edition of Christ-Centered Preaching to be a collaborative effort. In the ten years since its first publication, many pastors, students, and colleagues have offered encouragement, suggestions, and clarifications that I have incorporated into this volume.

I am particularly thankful for the aid provided by fellow homiletics instructors who so thoughtfully responded to my requests for input on making this second edition better serve the next generation of preachers. A host of homiletics colleagues responded, and I want to express my gratitude in particular to the following: Ronald Allen, a thoughtful examiner of many preaching traditions; Edmund Clowney, esteemed father of the unfolding mystery of all Scripture; Steve Brown, an uncompromising pastor-teacher of grace; Zack Eswine, my colleague of great heart for Gods Word; Sidney Greidanus, dean of redemptive preaching and its finest scholar; Bill Hogan, a fellow yokeman in preparing a generation of Reformed pastors; David Larsen, a great historian and advocate of faithful exposition; Calvin Miller, a master storyteller and imaginations spokesman; Haddon Robinson, expository preachings senior statesman; Larry Roff, a faithful listener to the music of Scripture; Robert Smith, a zealot for keeping the heart with the mind of preaching; Timothy Warren, a pastor of preachers; and Paul Scott Wilson, an insightful scholar of homiletics scope. Thank you, friends and colleagues, for your aid and encouragement.

I am also grateful for my students. Twenty-plus years of teaching you to preach, listening to your sermons, and thrilling in the ways that God is ministering through you have refined my thought, deepened my appreciation for Gods Word, and made me a better preacher. I am especially thankful for those in class during 2003 and 2004 who helped me review and correct this manuscript. Your diligence and care ministered to me and will minister to many more through the publication of this book you helped me write.

A second edition offers the opportunity for clarification, addition, and even correction. In the ten years since the first publication, I have rethought some things, learned some things, and become more committed to preaching my Savior always. All of these aspects of discovery find expression here.

Clarifications

As to clarification, I have taken greater pains to indicate that the reason all Scripture has a Fallen Condition Focus (FCF) is so that it can expose Gods redemptive purposes for his people in order to magnify his glory. Although the preeminent goal of Gods glory was expressed in the first edition, recent discussions of need-based preaching caused some to read the Fallen Condition Focus as just an oblique way of speaking about human, felt needs. The main reason to ask why the Holy Spirit inspired any text is to expose what fallen aspect of the human condition needs to be addressed in order for Gods glory to be properly recognized and honored. The FCF exposes the necessity of a divine solution to the human dilemma and necessarily makes God the hero of the text as he displays his redemptive provision for his people. God rescues his people from their broken nature and world by his grace alone in order for them to experience his goodness and express his glory.

Contemporary discussions about the proper motivation for Christian obedience have also led me to refine my discussion of this important aspect of preaching. Gratitude is a concept richly used in church history to reflect loving thankfulness for all aspects of Gods redemptionpast, present, and future. In some contemporary church contexts, however, the term gratitude has been abused, suggesting a debt for believers to repay in order to claim Christs past redeeming work. Preachers may plead (or imply), Cant you do this little act of obedience to pay back Jesus, since he did so much for you? The creation of a debtors ethic that calls for a believers obedience primarily as a way of paying back God for his mercy fails to recognize the unconditional nature of his grace and the inadequacy of our best works to compensate God for his inestimable gift. Thus, I have sought to make plain that the historic sense of gratitude is used in this book and to make this term (as well as terms such as thanksgiving, appreciation, and praise) but one expression of the unfettered, freely offered, and compelling love by which the Spirit motivates believers to honor God because of their joy in all the dimensions of his matchless gift.

In numerous places of this edition, I have sought to clean up fuzzy wording, awkward phrasing, and misleading emphases. I have sought to indicate in clearer terms what may be right as well as what may be wrong with messages that encourage imitating a biblical character or practice. The Deadly Bes (i.e., messages that only exhort believers to be like a biblical character, to be good, or to be more disciplined) possess deadly stings if redemptive contexts are not included.

I have attempted to clarify the redemptive context of Christ-centered messages in two ways. First, by indicating that the term itself is a synecdochestanding not only for reference to Christs incarnation or death on the cross but for the entire matrix of Gods redemptive work, which finds its culminating expression in Christs person and work. Second, by indicating that a message is Christ-centered not because it makes creative mention of an aspect of Jesus life or death but because it discloses an aspect of Gods redeeming nature (evident in the text) that is ultimately understood, fulfilled, and/or accomplished in Christ. Messages on the atonement are certainly Christ-centered because Christ provided his sacrifice on our behalf. But messages on the establishment of the Old Testament kingdom and the new creation kingdom are also Christ-centered to the extent that they demonstrate that each is a provision of Gods grace for his people in order to glorify himself in his Son. Grace may appear in Old Testament clothes or new covenant robes, but it is always Christ-centered when a preacher makes it plain that God provides what his people could not and cannot provide for themselves.

Additions

In responding to numerous suggestions and requests, I have added more examples in the text: sample outlines, examples of structural dos and donts, and a sample sermon. For additional clarity, I have also added more information on how to move from an exegetical to a homiletical outline. A definition of expository preaching now appears in the first chapter in addition to the more refined definition in chapter 6.