The following message was delivered
at the 1991 Trinity Pastors Conference held on October 20th through
24th at the Trinity Baptist Church in Monteville, New Jersey. But
because application lies so much at the heart of any adequate
theology of preaching, I judged it to be the part of wisdom to
take the remainder of our time this morning and the entirety
of the next 50-minute session in order to address this critical
issue. Now the axiom appears in your
printed notes 2.5 or 2.6, I'm sorry, is the numbering at the
bottom of the right-hand corner and three-quarters of the way
down, axiom number four, that the proclamation, explanation,
and application of scriptural truths with specific references
to the thinking Behavior patterns, affections, consciences, and
wills of your hearers must constitute your continuous practice. Now in that rather lengthy construction
of the axiom, since application is found as one of the essential
elements of preaching at the beginning of each axiom, proclamation,
explanation, and application, I'm indicating that application
in preaching must indeed touch the whole spectrum of our hearers. And that's why I've piled up
these words, their thought patterns, behavior patterns, their affections,
their consciences, and their wills. But for the sake of brevity,
I will simply refer to all of that as application in preaching. And in opening up this axiom,
we'll do so under four major headings. The headings appear
as A, B, on that sheet and over on the next page as C and D,
and under D, the headings continue all the way to the top third
of page 2.8. So you should be able to follow
without any difficulty. We begin then with what is most
crucial, namely a description and definition of application
in preaching. When we speak of application
in preaching, what are we talking about? One has accurately written
that application in preaching is the highway from the head
to the heart in our preaching of the Word of God. To use another
analogy, we should think of application as the bridge from correct notions
of biblical truth to proper affections and righteous volitions giving
birth to righteous actions in the light of that truth perceived
by the illuminated understanding. Or to state it another way, If
in our exposition we establish what men are to know of God's
truth, then in our application we answer the question, in the
light of what I know, so what as far as my thinking, my willing,
my feeling, my choosing, my living? Application addresses the question,
so what, with reference to the teaching we have established
from the Word of God. Application is that aspect of
our preaching in which our hearers are made to feel that we are
not merely saying true and good things in their hearing. but
that we are proclaiming and pressing vital things to their hearts. And there's a world of difference
between those two things. It was said of Philip Henry,
father of the famous Matthew Henry, who really tutored his
son, and was the great instrument in the hands of God to prepare
him for that great legacy that he has left to the Christian
church in terms of his commentary that sits on so many of our shelves,
he did not shoot the arrow of the word over the heads of his
audience in flourishes of affected rhetoric, nor under their feet
by coarse expressions, but into their hearts in close and lively
application. To use another analogy, if truth
is the nail and exposition is the tap which sets the nail in
the minds of men, then application is the blow of the hammer which
drives it through the mind and into the heart and into the conscience. In all of our preaching, our
aim must be to have the truth driven down into the deepest
recesses of the heart, whether in conviction, consolation, encouragement,
or motivation to do deeds. But it is never the outer vestibule
of the ear at which we aim in preaching, or even the inner
chambers of the mind, that marvelously constructed computer that receives
the programming by word spoken. But we are always concerned with
the deep inner chambers of the heart. where conscience stands
as a monitor between a man and his God, and his actions, his
feelings, his thinking in the light of the claims of that God. To use an analogy from Scripture,
we need to seek to do in our preaching what J.L., wife of
Heber, did when Sisera came into her tent. While he was sleeping,
she did not merely place a tent pin on his scalp and tap it enough
to loosen his dandruff. She placed the tent pin on his
temple and, it says, drove it clean through till it stuck fast
in the earth. Brethren, that's what we need
to seek to do in our preaching. not merely bring the truth to
the scalp of men and tap it enough to loosen a little religious
dandruff, but drive it clean through under the blessing of
God into the deep chambers of the heart. Broadus has accurately
stated, Application in the strict sense is that part or those parts
of the sermon in which we show how the subject applies to the
persons addressed, what practical instructions it offers them,
what practical demands it makes upon them. Sometimes this is
affected by means of what are called remarks, that is, certain
noticeable matters belonging to or connected with the subject
to which attention is now especially directed. These should always
be of a very practical character, bearing down upon the feelings
and the will. and the applications must not
diverge in various directions and become like the untwisted
cracker of a whip. You know that end of the whip
that causes the snap? It should not be, he says, like
the untwisted crackers of the whip, but should have a common
aim and make a combined impression. Now, that this concept of application
is not something novel to me, is not something novel to some
of us who are convinced that preaching without application
is not preaching, I do want to take the time to quote just several
of the old masters. I cannot bring you all the quotes
I would like to, but I do want to bring several. Again, listen
to Broadus, the application in the sermon is not merely an appendage
to the discussion, that is the body of the sermon, or a subordinate
part of it, but it is the main thing to be done. Spurgeon says,
and here is Broadus quoting Spurgeon, Where the application begins,
there the sermon begins." We are not to speak before people,
but to them, and must earnestly strive to make them take to themselves
what we say. Daniel Webster once said, and
repeated it with emphasis, when a man preaches to me, I want
him to make it a personal matter. a personal matter, a personal
matter. It is our solemn duty thus to
address all men whether they wish it or not. And then in his classic work
on the Christian ministry, Charles Bridges, in his excellent chapters
dealing with discriminating preaching of the gospel, applicatory preaching
of the gospel, listen, to the words of Bridges on page 270. Speaking of the great French
preacher Massillon, Massillon's preaching is said to have been
so pointed that no one stopped to criticize or admire it. Each
carried away the arrow fastened to his heart, considering himself
to be the person addressed and having neither time, thought,
or inclination to apply it to others. We must not expect our
hearers to apply to themselves unpalatable truths. So unnatural
is this habit of personal application that most will fit the doctrine
to anyone but themselves. I've stated it this way. There
is an area in the remaining sin of the human heart that is Santa
Claus personified. There is in our remaining sin
a Santa Claus in every one of us. And that Santa Claus will
put into his bag every single pointed personal application
that belongs to us and very benevolently parcel it out to everyone else
until there's nothing left in the bag to take home and lay
down at our own feet. This is what Bridges is acknowledging. And he says the preacher must
make the application himself. The goads and nails must not
be laid by as if the post would knock them in of their own, but
they must, in the language of Ecclesiastes, be fastened by
the masters of the assemblies. To insist therefore upon general
truths without distributive application, or to give important directions
without clearing the way for their improvement, this is not,
according to the design of our ministry, to lay the truth at
every man's door, to press it upon every man's heart, and to
give them their portion of meat in due season. And then he goes
on to quote from Job, it will probably only produce the heartless
reply that is unapplied preaching. How forcible are right words,
but what doth your arguing preprove? This palatable ministry that
blunts the edge of the sword of the spirit in order to avoid
the reproach of the cross brings upon the preacher a most tremendous
responsibility. Preaching, in order to be effective,
must be reduced from vague generalities to a tangible, individual character,
coming home to every man's business, even to his own bosom. And then I want to give you a
couple of choice quotes from Brooks. This one comes from volume
4, his treatise on Hebrews 12 and verse 14, follow holiness
without which no man shall see the Lord. And on page 23, he
says, doctrine is but the drawing of the bow. Application is the
hitting of the mark. How many are wise in generalities
but vain in their practical inferences. A general doctrine not applied
is as a sword without an edge, not in itself but to others,
or as a whole loaf set out before children that will do them no
good. A garment fitted for all bodies
is fit for nobody. And so that which is spoken to
all is taken as though it were spoken to none. And then he goes
on on page 218, to amplify this matter in a most convincing way,
I commend it to you for your careful consideration. Similar
remarks in volume one of Brooks. pages 438 and 439 and I could
quote from Spurgeon and Dabney and all of the recognized masters
in Israel and what is the summary of all that we consider Well,
it is this that by application we are referring to that element
in our preaching in which we make a conscious effort to bring
home to each of our hearers' consciences the spiritual, moral,
and practical implications, consolations, and demands of the truth proclaimed
and explained in the body. of the sermon. That's what we
mean by application. A conscious effort on our part
to bring home to each hearer's conscience the spiritual, moral,
and practical implications, consolations, and demands of the truths proclaimed
and explained in the body of the sermon. Now before moving
to our next head, let me give a word of qualification. And that word of qualification
is that I am not asserting, nor were these other men, that God
only makes applications at the precise points that we do. Under
the preaching of the Word and the Spirit of God operating by
and with His own Word can make applications in a thousand areas
that we never articulate and in ways that to us seem relatively
unconnected with what we're preaching. And that's one of the great mysteries
of the Word of God turned loose. God can and does do things that
far exceed anything we could conceive of or that we could
legitimately work in to the applicatory elements of our sermons, and
therefore I am not suggesting in the least that our conscious
efforts at application will be the measure of the application
made by the Holy Ghost in the act of preaching. God is greater
and bigger than our purposes, and His work, bless His name,
exceeds our efforts. However, the field of our concern
is not to open up what God is free in His sovereignty to do,
what in the exercise of his sovereignty he actually does, but we're concerned
with what our responsibility is as preachers. And our responsibility
is to labor in our preaching to make sure that with our proclamation
and explanation there is application of scriptural truth with specific
references to the thinking, behavior patterns, affections, consciences,
and wills of our hearers. And then we shall leave to God
to do what we could never imagine He would do, But to expect him
to do that work while we do not labor towards that end is gross
presumption and reflects either moral cowardice or a defective
view of preaching. And I have found, alas, both
in many who preach. Well, having given a description
and definition of application in preaching with that caveat
at the end, we come now to letter B, a demonstration of the scriptural
basis of application in preaching. And brethren, if I cannot persuade
your conscience from scripture that this is your duty, then
my whole case falls to the ground and it ought to fall. For I am
not giving you my personal theory of preaching, I'm attempting
to give a theology of preaching hammered out of the Word of God
itself. And I'm amazed at how many people don't even assume
that maybe the Bible that teaches us that preaching is central
in the purposes of God just might contain the materials to construct
a theology of how we ought to preach. And I've approached the
whole subject with that conviction of the sufficiency of scripture. So then, I would seek to lay
before you what I have called in your notes a scriptural case
for applicatory preaching. And the first line of evidence
is what I am calling the most crucial passage, which in reality
is the locus classicus on the subject of application in preaching,
namely 2 Timothy 3.16 through chapter 4 and verse 2. And you'll notice in your notes
that I have listed that as number one. Having told Timothy that
from a child or from a nursing babe he had known the scriptures
which are able to make one wise unto salvation through faith
which is in Christ Jesus, he goes on to say that all scripture
is God-breathed and is also profitable for teaching, for reproof. for correction, for instruction
or discipline or training which is in righteousness, that the
man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work. God-breathed Scripture is not
only sufficient to teach us all we need to know about ourselves
as those who need God's salvation, But all we need to know about
that salvation as it has come to us in space, time, history,
and the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he says,
Timothy, Scripture is also inspired of God and adequate to furnish
you completely unto every good work. And it will do that as
you personally experience its profit in teaching, that is,
enlarging your mind in an understanding of the revelation of God's mind
with respect to everything concerning which He speaks in Scripture.
That's teaching. It is profitable for teaching,
but not only for teaching, but also for reproof, for pointing
out those areas where in your thinking, in your patterns of
life, in your speech, in your attitudes, you are walking contrary
to the salvation that you possess in Jesus Christ. Scripture is
profitable for not only teaching, but for reproof, and then for
correction, not only pointing out the wrong way, but then marking
out the proper way in which to walk so as to please God, and
also for discipline or training in the realm of righteousness. What does it mean to think righteously,
to feel righteously, to act righteously in all the relationships of life? And now to the man of God, who
himself is being continually equipped and gradually furnished
by the impact of Scripture upon the totality of his own redeemed
humanity, He then says, I charge you in the sight of God and of
Christ Jesus, preach the word, be urgent in season, out of season,
reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. Timothy, you are with that word
which continually makes its impact upon your own heart, with a disposition
of patience, you are to open up its truth, its doctrines in
the manner of teaching, but you are not simply to leave the teaching
out there hanging by itself, trusting that people will take
to themselves its legitimate rebukes, reproofs, encouragements,
incentives to action. But with that word, you are to
reprove, to rebuke, as well as to comfort and seek to incite
with biblical motivation to godly action. And therefore, when people
say in that trite little old semi-humorous shop-worn terminology,
well, he really left preaching and went to meddling, there's
no way you can handle the Word of God aright without meddling.
You've not preached until you've meddled, because the very nature
of Scripture demands meddling. It was given for reproof, for
correction. for training in righteousness. And Paul does not envision Timothy,
his faithful spiritual son, engaging in a ministry of proclaiming
the Word of God as a herald without there being included in that
proclamation the solid substance of apostolic teaching at its
foundation. He is not to be carried away
with Jewish fables. He is not to be carried away
by the pressure that will rise around him of those who turn
away from the truth. No, he is to cling to the word
of truth. He is to hold to the pattern
of sound words. That teaching is to be the basis
of all of His ministerial exercises, but He is to have a concern to
do something more than merely give the objective teaching.
With that teaching, He is to reprove, He is to rebuke, He
is to exhort in all of the breadth of the meaning of that word,
exhort. with consolation, encouragement,
with seeking to press people with gospel motivations to action. As you know, if you've ever done
a word study of the verb parakalē or the noun paraklēsis, you know
that it involves the full spectrum of everything from consolation
to mild reproof to encouragement, seeking to tells you, action,
Timothy, you are not simply to leave the teaching out there
to do its own work. You are to, with a long-suffering
and patient heart, in spite of declension all around you, preach
the Word. Do it when you feel like it and
when you don't feel like it. And in your preaching the Word,
do not solace your conscience. You've given them the teaching,
and you leave the applications to the Holy Ghost. Timothy, you
reprove. You rebuke. You exhort. Do it with long-suffering. Do
it with patience, but do it. Do it! Timothy, you're to do
it. And so I say this is the locus
classicus with regard to the biblical case for applicatory
preaching. But then secondly, the recorded
sermons of the prophets, apostles, and our Lord are all of them
fundamentally applicatory in their very nature and substance. When we read the recorded sermons
of the prophets, the apostles, and our Lord, we see the applicatory
element as a dominant and an essential ingredient in their
preaching. For example, Any denunciations
of sin were specific, and they related to the concrete realities
of the specific sins of the specific people to whom they were speaking. In Isaiah 1, you have the formalism
of Judah in that day, dealt with in the most concrete, vivid,
graphic, forceful language imaginable. Jehovah says, what unto me? are all of your feasts and your
new moons and your Sabbaths. I cannot weigh with it. I'm sick
and tired of the whole thing. When you make many prayers, I
won't hear you." It was not some generic statement. God is concerned
about the purity of His worship. Don't you think you ought to
go home and reflect upon that and see if in some way or another
it does not have some relevance to your present patterns of life?
No! He stood and said, what unto
me are your feasts and your fasts and your holy days? Think of
our Lord Jesus. After warning his own disciples
about the painful influence of the scribes and the Pharisees,
he turns to them and in those horrible woes he describes with
an incisiveness and with a vividness of imagery and even with a grotesqueness
of simile and metaphor, their specific sins in ways that they
must have gnashed their teeth. You silly Pharisees, you're like
the man that goes out there and when he takes his cup of wine
Since some fleas may have dropped into the open, hewn-out stone
wine vat where they pressed it out with their feet, and then
it was placed into the wine skin, and you're drawing out your cup
of wine from the wine skin, you put your muzzle in over that
leg that's opened up to make sure that you strain out any
little gnats that might get into your wine. And he said, when
you've strained out all the gnats and set your wine cup down, Just
as you're about to take your draft, your camel gets loose
from behind your tent and he stands in your cup and you gulp
down your wine with the whole camel. You strain out a gnat
and you swallow a camel. That's not flattering. That's
not generic. That was specific. It was grotesque
illustration to show how utterly turned on its ear had come their
moral sensitivity had become while they were nitpicking at
ceremonial naps. They were swallowing down gross
vagaries and gross departures from the moral law of God. And
then when we turn to the epistles, because here I take exception
to some who oppose applicatory preaching. They say, when you're
addressing the redeemed community, you are to address them for what
they are in their profession and never assume they are anything
other than that. Is that so? Paul had no trouble
addressing the letter to the Corinthians in this kind of language
in the opening chapter. And here, brethren, if I have
a little edge on what I say, forgive me. I trust on not sinning
with the edge. Paul called to be an apostle
of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes, our brother,
unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that
are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all that
call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in every place,
their Lord and ours." And then in verse 4, he tells them the
things for which he gives thanks. He does address them. as a Christian
community. But does that mean he has no
right to call them to searching of heart, to blasting away by
specific applicatory writing to them that there may be some
self-deceived and hypocrites among them? Well, I turn to chapter
6, and what do I read? Verse 9. He says, or know ye
not, to a Christian assembly, to a people already addressed
as sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, know ye not that
the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't you
be deceived. He didn't say, don't allow outsiders
there who are not in the church to be deceived. He says, don't
any of you within the Christian community be deceived. Neither
fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor
abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the
kingdom of God." He says that to a Christian community, and
then he goes on to say, such were some of you But if you have
come under the dynamics of redemptive grace, that lifestyle has been
left behind definitively, radically, pervasively. But he recognized
that there might be some in the assembly who, having experienced
something less than a true work of grace, were on the verge of
self-deception, that they could put in the realm of the struggle
with remaining sin patterns of idolatry, adultery, effeminacy,
homosexuality, and he says, don't be deceived. Whatever sins may
be consistent with the dethroning of reigning sin and the violent
actions of remaining sin, no pattern of these sins is consistent
with being in a state of grace. Don't be deceived. And you see, in doing that, he
didn't simply say, now don't be deceived, any gross pattern
of continuous involvement in naughty things, you won't enter
the kingdom. I'll leave to you to make the
application. He got specific, and he got specific
with the sins that were most likely to be the manifestations
of reigning sin there at Corinth. You find it in 2 Corinthians
12. He says, I have fears about you. I have fears about you. I fear, verse 20 of 2 Corinthians
12, I fear lest by any means when I come I should find you
not such as I would, and should myself be found of you such as
you would not, lest by any means. And then he gets specific. There
should be strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, backbitings,
whisperings, swellings, tumults, lest again when I come my God
should humble me before you and I should mourn for many of you,
that many of them that have sinned heretofore and repented not of
the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they
committed. He didn't deal in broad-stroke
generalities, brethren. He said, I fear lest when I come
my heart will be broken, and instead of you finding me as
you would a loving spiritual father, you'll find me coming
with the rob of correction and sternness. What will ye that
I come in love or with a rob? You'd love to have me come and
stroke you with gospel consolations, but I may not come in the way
you would like me to come, because I may find you to be not as I
desire to find you to be. And he didn't deal in vague generality.
They weren't scratching their heads saying, I wonder what Paul
meant about that cryptic statement. He hopes that maybe he can come
and he'll not be grieved and we'll not be grieved. I wonder
what he meant by that. He didn't say, well, I'll give them the
principle and let the Holy Ghost apply it. He got specific. And then after all of that, he
says in chapter 13 in verse 5, you people putting me on trial.
I'm not on trial. My status as a servant of God
and of Christ and an apostle has no just grounds to be questioned. Rather, he says, try your own
selves, whether you are in the faith. Prove your own selves. Put your own selves to the test. And know ye not as to your own
selves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed ye be reprobate. Oh, you mean he assumed there
might be some such within the pale of the church? Yes, he did. Now those that clearly manifested
a pattern of sin inconsistent with being in a state of grace,
he very clearly dealt with in chapter 5 and said, the next
time you gather together, cast that wicked man out of the church. but he had no notions that excommunicating
that blatantly immoral man was the end of the problem of the
possibility of unconverted people within the church. So you see
the denunciations of the prophets of our Lord and of the apostles
are found to be consistently specific and applicatory in their
nature. Now we'll break right there and
then we'll pick right up because I said I plan to stick with this
through the next hour and trying to show some sensitivity to our
dear ladies. We'll break at this point and
God willing come back and take up and illustrate that the consolations
are just as specific and the announcements of God's attributes
and purposes take the same flavor as well. Brethren, taking our outlines
and seeking to pick up the thread of thought where I'm seeking
to demonstrate the biblical case for application as an essential
and vital element of all true preaching, we are opening up
number two at the top of page 2.7, the recorded sermons of
the prophets, apostles, and our Lord. And I sought to demonstrate
that the denunciations of sin were thundered forth in the concrete
realities of the specific sins under which the, or which the
hearers were guilty, or of which they were guilty. But the same
is true also with the consolations of the distressed. And we find
in the preaching recorded as done by the apostles, The prophets
and our Lord, when it was consolatory in nature, it was also distinctly
applicatory. For example, the upper room discourse. Our Lord recognizing that the
hearts of His own were troubled because He had announced that
He was to leave them He gives them one consolation after another,
tailor-made to the very circumstances of their present grief against
the backdrop of His announced departure. Likewise, in Revelation
2 and 3, surely Jesus ought to know how to preach to His churches.
And in Revelation 2 and 3, we find Him beginning every one
of the messages to those seven churches in Asia Minor with the
words, I know thy works." And where commendation was in order,
He gave commendation, but not in generic terms. He gave commendation
in terms of the specific and the concrete manifestations of
their fidelity to Christ and the cause of the gospel in their
circumstances. When he points out sin, he does
not do it generically and say, I have something against you
and the Holy Spirit will cause you to know what it is. No, he
says, I have this against you. You've left your first love. I have this against you. You
suffer that woman Jezebel to teach my servants to commit fornication. This is what concerns me. You have a name that you're alive,
but you are dead. And so, both the consolations
given, the exposing of sin, takes the particular. And you find
that in the epistles. For example, 1 Thessalonians
4, verses 14 and following. The apostle Paul did not simply
say, I understand there are some of you grieving because your
loved ones have died, and because you have unclear views about
the second come your distress, Take my word for it, everything
will turn out all right. No, he gives specific doctrinal
instruction fleshing out their understanding of the relationship
of the second coming, particularly to dead and living saints, because
that was the peculiar problem that was causing their distress.
Then he says at the end, wherefore comfort one another with these
words. Not generic words about the second
coming, but the specific details of that coming as they relate
to dead saints and living saints. That's why he says that we who
are alive will not have a first class entrance into heaven. Rather, the Lord is going to
take care of His sleeping ones first. The dead in Christ will
rise first, right down to the numerical order. Why? Not so
that jokers could have charts, but that the people of God at
Corinth could have comfort, tailor-made, and the people at Thessalonica
could have comfort, tailor-made to the particular question that
was burning within their breasts at that time. And likewise, even
the pronouncements of God's attributes and purposes, they take their
shape and their form from the peculiar setting and circumstances
of the people of God. We love to quote, and rightly
so, as a good proof text for God's absolute sovereignty, Daniel
4.35. that great statement from the
lips of Nebuchadnezzar concerning God doing according to His will
among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth
and none can stay His hand. But God didn't just dump that
generic statement of His sovereignty into a vacuum, but it grows out
of a situation in which that element of divine sovereignty
is set forth in a unique, applicatory setting. And we can go through
the scriptures. It almost seems like trying to
prove that words are words. It's so patent in the recorded
sermons of prophets, apostles, and our Lord. So in summary,
let me say that what is said of our Lord's preaching should
be true of us. We read in Matthew 21, 45, they
perceived that he spake of them. They did not stand back and admire
and say, isn't that a marvelous sermon for somewhere, at some
time, in some place under God's heaven. they said that is a word
directed to us in these circumstances on this particular occasion and
I would urge you if it's been a while since you've read the
section in Charles Bridges on applicatory preaching to read
it again page 271 he has a wonderful distillation of the entire witness
scripture with reference to this matter of applicatory preaching. But I do want to say a word very
quickly regarding the witness of church history. We've looked
at the, what I believe to be the watershed text, the recorded
sermons of prophets, apostles, and our Lord, and if our perception
is right, then there ought to be the quality control and the
validating voice of the history of the church. And surely, when
we look at the history of preaching, particularly as we are able to
trace it much more fully in Reformation and post-Reformation preaching,
though some light can be given from such men as Chrysostom,
and some of the other great preachers of the early post-apostolic church
history, What we learn from the Reformation onward speaks with
one voice that whenever God has blessed His church with powerful
preaching in the widespread conversion of sinners, in the building up
of a community of vigorously godly and useful saints, biblical,
applicatory preaching has been at the heart of those movements
of God. In his very helpful work, Dr. Packer's work, A Quest for Godliness,
which is really a collection of essays done over the years
in reference to Puritanism, he has a wonderful statement with
respect to this element in Puritan preaching. On page 286 he says,
Puritan preaching was piercing in its applicants. Over and above
applicatory generalizations, the preachers trained their homiletical
searchlights on specific states of spiritual need and spoke to
these in a precise and detailed way. Earlier, we noted how Perkins,
in his classic work, The Art of Prophesying, distinguished
the different classes of people that the preacher could expect
to be addressing in any ordinary congregation. The ignorant and
unteachable, who needed the equivalent of a bomb under their seats.
The ignorant but teachable, who needed orderly instruction in
what Christianity is all about. The knowledgeable but unhumbled
who needed to be given a sense of sin. The humbled and desperate
who needed to be grounded in the truth of the gospel. Believers
going on with God who needed to be built up. Believers who
had fallen into error, intellectual or moral, and who needed correction. Other subcategories spring to
mind. Once one starts thinking of the
congregation in these terms, such as the discouraged, the
hurting, or the depressed, This is what the Puritans described
as melancholy. And then he goes on to make reference
to what I want to make reference to, and that is the directory
for public worship. And in the Directory of Public
Worship, which is included in the versions of the Westminster
Confession of Faith and the larger and shorter catechisms that we
have available in our own bookstore, in that Directory for Public
Worship, which the ministers were to take seriously, we find
the following statement. The preacher is not to rest in
general doctrine, although never so much cleared and confirmed
but to bring it home by special use, by application to his hearers,
which, albeit it prove a work of great difficulty to himself,
requiring much prudence, zeal, and meditation, and to the natural
and corrupt man will be very unpleasant, yet he is to endeavor
to perform it in such a manner that his hearers may feel may
feel that the Word of God is quick and powerful, and a discerner
of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and that if any unbeliever
or ignorant person be present, he may have the secrets of his
heart made manifest, and give glory to God, an illusion to
1 Corinthians 14, and I believe it's verse 25. It is also sometimes
requisite to give some notes of trial, which are very profitable,
especially when performed by able and experienced ministers,
with circumspection and prudence, and the signs clearly grounded
on the Holy Scripture, whereby the hearers may be able to examine
themselves, whether they have attained those graces and performed
those duties to which he exhorted, or to be guilty of the sin reprehended
and in danger of the judgments threatened, etc., etc. In other words, These men regarded
the application of the Word of God as an essential aspect of
the proper preaching of the Scriptures. And even those whose views of
preaching have not been known to produce searching, applicatory
preachers, there is recognition of the necessity of application. It's very interesting. that in
Dr. Edmund Clowney's book, On Call
to the Ministry, he writes on page 60, this leads to the third
aspect of preaching reflected in a third group of New Testament
terms. Preaching means application. The preacher exhorts, comforts,
reproves, rebukes, warns, and censures 2 Timothy 3.16, 2 Timothy
4.2, Titus 1.9. The requirement for an elder,
he must be able to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict
the gainsayers. Preaching today requires apostolic
practicality as well as apostolic orthodoxy. Dr. Clowney, who's
been known to greatly advance the cause of a view of preaching
against which I have spoken, when it is a dominant view and
becomes a straitjacket, nonetheless recognize in dealing with the
Word of God with integrity that there's a whole block of biblical
terms that cannot in any way be related to preaching if the
concept of application is absent. And so, though we could give
you many other quotes of the confirming voice of Church history,
let me conclude this heading by dealing briefly, number four,
with a refutation of the objection that application is a work of
the Holy Spirit. Now there are those who say,
I am simply to open the text and I am to leave to the Holy
Spirit to make the application to the hearts of men. Now we
concede the fact that only the Holy Spirit can make the most
carefully thought out, most penetrating searching application morally
effectual. That is the prerogative of the
Holy Spirit, just as the most painstaking, careful, clear teaching
can only be understood by the illuminating ministry of the
Spirit. So the most painstaking, detailed,
pressing, searching application can only be made effectual in
the conscience by the Holy Spirit, granted. But because we believe
only the Holy Spirit can illuminate, Do we therefore have the right
to be utterly indifferent and careless as to how we preach?
That would lead to the view that preaching is nothing but reading
the text. Forget homiletics. Forget explanation. That kind of logic would do away
with all exposition, not to speak also of application. No, the
Holy Spirit alone can illuminate in the knowledge of the truth.
He alone can make effectual the pressure of the truth upon the
affections, the judgment, the conscience, and the will. But
just as we are to labor to make the Word of God clear and plain
to our people, we are to labor in the matter of pointed, specific
applications, trusting to the Holy Spirit to bring it home
with power. For example, when Peter stands
before his hearers in an evangelistic setting, and in Acts chapter
2 is preaching, he does not say, now there were some people at
a certain point in history that did some naughty things to Jesus. Go home and think about it. And
I'll go home and pray that if you were in any way involved
in that, God will convict you. You, with wicked hands, crucified
and slew him. But God raised him up. Now when
they heard this, they were stabbed as with a dagger in the heart.
And who did that? The Holy Ghost. But what did
Peter do? He didn't traffic in vague generalities. Certain things happened in Jerusalem
a few days ago that were despicable. Some of you might be implicant,
and since I would not usurp the office of the Holy Spirit, you
go home in what nonsense. And I'm convinced that the heart
of it is moral cowardice! Moral cowardice! And most likely,
backsliding of heart in the preacher who is not engaged in a constant
applicatory interaction with the Word of God in his day-by-day
reading of the Scriptures for himself. Therefore, brethren, I trust
you are persuaded from the Scriptures that applicatory preaching is
of the very essence of biblical preaching. Now I must hasten
to let her see some guidelines for cultivating aptitude in application. And brethren, I've chosen my
words carefully. Guidelines. I didn't say rules. They're guidelines. And it's
a set of guidelines to cultivate. This is a process to cultivate
aptitude. I didn't say perfection. or the
most unique gift and facility. I hope the statement is reasonable.
Guidelines for cultivating aptitude in application. And I have set
before you four of them. Number one, there must be continual
engagements in the disciplines of personal piety. One of the emphases that the
men in the academy get, and if they reject it, I feel my hands
are clean that it isn't because they didn't hear it enough. And
that is, in the language of the old writer, the life of a minister
is the life of his ministry. And the greatest task of any
minister has nothing to do with his outward ministerial duties. It has to do with Proverbs 4.23.
Guard thy heart above all that thou guardest, for out of it
are the issues of life. That my greatest responsibility
with reference to the Word of God is not my public treatment
of it, but its treatment of me in secret. That it's when I take
the posture of the disciple who has his own ear wakened morning
by morning as one that is taught, only then can I speak with the
tongue of the learned. And if I'm to be an applicant
to a preacher, it will grow out of the matrix of my own devotional
disciplines when day after day I'm coming to the Word of God,
preaching every statement, every syllable, every paragraph, every
segment of narrative, my own heart. not merely reading to
refresh myself in my general acquaintance with the content
of Scripture to be a better preacher, though that is a secondary purpose,
but primarily reading with a view that God may do what? Teach me,
prove me, correct me, and train me in righteousness. For the
scripture is given to perfect me into being the man of God
I ought to be. And it's when you are diving
into your own heart under the present ministry, the Word and
the Spirit in the secret place that you will begin to be equipped
to dive into the hearts of others in the sanctuary with the Word
of God and under the power and unction of the Holy Spirit. You see the relationship of 2
Timothy 3, 16 and 17 to chapter 4 and verse 2. If Timothy would
preach the word, reprove, rebuke, and exhort others, he must first
of all have scripture reproving, rebuking, and exhorting him. And here again I'm convinced,
brethren, that over the long haul, richness in application
can only come with an ever-growing richness of inner spiritual experience. Staleness of application is usually
the mirror of staleness of heart interaction with God in the secret
place. Guidelines to cultivate aptitude
and application, there must be continual engagement in the disciplines
of personal piety. And then there must be, we must
experience the continual engagements of pastoral intimacy. You see, it is obvious that much
of what is found in the Gospels of the recorded discourses of
our Lord and in the epistles of the apostolic directives to
the churches grew out of pastoral intimacy with men. When our Lord
knows that some are vying for position, he brings a sermon
on humility. When he knows that the hearts
of the disciples are fearful and unedled, he comforts them
in the upper room discourse. When Paul learns from the household
of Chloe that there are divisions at Corinth, he takes three chapters
to address the subject and even tells who the Tapper was. It
has been reported to me of the household of Chloe that there
are divisions among you." You see, his real awareness of Timothy's
temperament, his physical condition, which gives shape and form and
subtle nuances to his letter, grew out of his intimate personal
pastoral acquaintance with Timothy. And so must it be. Thus, if the
truth expounded is to find its mark in applications, applications
which are related to our people where they are at this time,
then we must continually engage in those disciplines of pastoral
intimacy. Get out of touch with your people
and your preaching will be out of touch with your people. Perhaps one of the most tragic
things is when a man reacting against shallow, simplistic views
of preaching becomes convinced that he must study long and study
hard and must become weary at his desk, allows his books and
his desk to isolate him from his people. It is amazing how
much you can learn just by being among your people, both individually
and in their corporate gatherings, when you move among them and
you keep your ears open, you keep your eyes open, you see
patterns, you see relationships, you see and feel dynamics, that
without in any way using the pulpit as a coward's nest from
which to shoot and issues that you ought to have the moral courage
to deal with one to one. You pick up patterns that are
the legitimate focus of pastoral application. Again, I resist
the temptation to quote some of the old masters who saw this
so clearly. and who wrote so forcefully upon
it. But then thirdly, there must
be continual engagement in intellectual industry. I said yesterday that
preaching in great measure is imitated. And if we are to be
good applicatory preachers, we must be reading those sermons
and treatises which are examples of good applicatory preaching.
And as we do, there is a conditioning of the mind, there is the cultivation
of an applicatory mindset. We do not read good applicatory
preachers necessarily to extract the applications and to give
them to our people in a totally different setting and in a totally
different context, but we begin to develop a mindset of an applicatory
preacher. We see how the preacher makes
the bridge from the exposition to the application. And as we
expose our own minds and spirits to such ministries, both in books
And in living preachers that can sit under or listen to by
tape, there is by this intellectual industry a toning and a conditioning
of our own preacher's mind and disposition with reference to
the matter of application in preaching. And then I would say
in the fourth place, there must be continual engagements in the
disciplines of homiletical sedulity. And I only use that fancy word
so we'd have piety, intimacy, industry, and sedulity. But it's
a good word. Sedulous is that which has the
quality of working hard, working steadily, plodding on. And so it is a good word. And
there must be homiletical sedulity. Why do I say that? because there
are some passages of scripture, there are some individual texts
of scripture which virtually cry out for a vast array of applications
and the moment you begin to study them you find that you must start
whacking away with the discipline of exclusion in order to restrain
all of the applicatory data that begins to spill out from that
amazing creation of God called the human brain. However, there
are other passages in other sections of scripture where the exposition
is not relatively difficult, but how to make the bridge when
the people have heard what we say and are asking, so what? The answer is not so simple.
And we don't want to be artificial and we don't want to be forced
and we don't want to make illegitimate and unwarranted applications
because you see, they won't carry the conscience of an intelligent
people. A people trained by that example of the responsible handling
of the Word of God, when you make a leap from the text to
an application in which no one, no one, even Solomon could not
find the umbilical cord of logical conviction, you're discerning
people won't feel the pressure of that application, because
you are not bringing the Word of God to bear upon that application
to the conscience, you're hanging that application on the sky.
And so there are some passages where we must think and labor
and pray and pray and think and labor long. There must be the
discipline of homiletical sedulity. Now then, letter D, some concluding
observations and counsels about application in preaching. And
I have listed for you nine of them. All right, tighten your
seatbelt and we're going to make our way through them, God helping
us. First, make this aspect of your sermon preparation a matter
of earnest prayer. Not only do we need to pray,
O God, unbreast my eyes that I may behold wondrous things
out of thy law. Help me to ascertain the mind
of the Spirit in the text, in the passage, in the theme that
I'm going to open up from the Scriptures. But, O God, make
me sensitive to its legitimate applications to the people who
will be before me. We must cry to God for that wisdom
promised to those who ask Him. We must plead specifically that
the Lord would grant us help in this area. Then simply remember
and consider the real and diverse categories of people who are
attending upon your ministry. I try to carry my congregation
into my study. And when my mind is not engaged
in direct mental disciplines that would exclude it, try to
have the congregation there before you as you're preparing that
sermon. Think of them. Who are they?
Well, there's that family where they just had The third child,
all of them five years old and under. There's that family that's
just put a loved one into a nursing home. There's a family where
the man has just lost a job. You seek to bring near at the
study and at the desk the congregation in the real and diverse categories
of those who are attending upon your ministry. To be specific,
letter A, remember the three main divisions of mankind to
some degree present in every service, the church and the world. The people of God gather, but
unconverted gather with them. The faithful and the hypocrites
who are members of the church, in any well-ordered church, the
only ones on the membership should be true believers and clever
hypocrites. True believers who manifest at least the minimal
marks of grace and clever hypocrites. That's it. But remember, there
are clever hypocrites. And though we should not preach
week after week as though three quarters of the members are clever
hypocrites, that would be an imbalance. The street to preach
as though there's no possibility that you have a Judas in your
ranks is to betray your trust. Remember, there are the faithful
and the hypocrites. And then thirdly, there are the
various stages of spiritual growth within the church. John was conscious
of that. I run to you fathers. I write
unto you young men. I write unto you little born
ones. He was conscious of those divisions.
The writer to the Hebrews was conscious that there in the Hebrew
believing community there were some who were full grown men
who by reason of use had their senses exercised to discern good
and evil. But there were also those who
were relic babes. The same is true in 1 Corinthians
chapter 3 where Paul is conscious of those various stages of spiritual
growth within the church then. Remember the chronological divisions
of the congregation. You've got people who are struggling
with the problems of old age, and my dear brethren, you'll
soon be in that category. Some of us know that we're on
the borders of it. There was a time when we could
pop out of bed in the morning and head straight to the study
to pray. We didn't need caffeine to hit
our brain. We didn't need to loosen up the
arthritic conditions from surgical procedures on backs and knees,
and we're very, very conscious that we're heading to our graves.
Well, remember the age differences, the children, the little ones,
the age, the infirm, Remember the occupational differences,
the temptations, the struggles, the concerns of the man bearing
burden of executive responsibility, and the temptations that are
peculiarly his and different from the man working on the construction
crew. Those differences are there.
Thirdly, when applications are hard in coming, here's my third
general counsel, consult the proven letters. Matthew Henry,
John Calvin, the Puritans, Spurgeon, and add Bishop Ryle. There's
a man sitting here who will bear witness to this fact. He called
me, one of our former students, some months ago, and he said,
Pastor, I'm having a problem. I'm preaching through, I forgot
one of the Gospels, and he said, I just find it. I'm just running
out of applications, and if my applications are flat, what shall
I do? I said, are you using Matthew,
Henry, and Ryle's expository thoughts? He said, I haven't
been using them. I said, well, that's the doctor's
prescription. I said, I'm not going to ask
you to do any more than that. Well, then he began to notice there
was a new freshness, and the people began to notice it. Old
Matthew Henry and Bishop Ryle stood him in good stead. Dear
people, don't ever get to where you outgrow Matthew Henry and
Bishop Ryle in Spurgeon. Let the smart alecks in the seminaries
say those guys don't know from nothing that you feed your hungry
sheep, finding in those storehouses rich materials. for the true
people of God. I could care less about the experts
sitting in their classrooms who've never held a congregation for
a month with their preaching telling me how to preach. The only, quote, profession that
even tolerates it is the ministry. Let a young man be prepared for
the medical profession in this church and when he did his residency
in obstetrics and then in general surgery He did every area under
the masters in that field. He wasn't taught how to open
a man up and take out his appendix and his gallbladder by someone
who'd never stuck a scalpel in blood spurt. He sat under the
man who had done it hundreds of times and did it the best. And it is a wretched, abominable
practice To have these men who have never preached telling men
how to preach. There is nowhere in the Word
of God where any man was ever given a stewardship to train
others to preach who himself was not a preacher. And it's time some of us had
the moral courage to rise up and back on our hind legs and
say, enough is enough. I'm not saying there is no place
for graduate schools of biblical studies, but let's call them
that. And if we would have preachers, let them learn from preachers,
both living and dead, how to preach. And old Bishop Ryle,
with all his learning, could hold the commoners in Liverpool
year in and year out, hanging upon his words. And Spurgeon
had everything from the gentry to the costumongers and to housemaids. 5,000 morning and evening for
30 years. He must have been doing something
right. He didn't have any banjos and tambourines. He even had
some strong things to say about an organ. He said, fill up those
pipes with concrete. That's what he said. God's given
us a more glorious pipe with which to praise Him. So brethren,
when applications are hard in coming, consult the proven masters. And don't overlook Calvin's sermons. He was always a pastor. That's
why I love his expositions. Always the pastor. Fourthly,
don't expect a uniform density of application in every sermon. Don't expect uniform density.
When preaching through a book, sometimes it may be that half
the sermon, time-wise, is taken up with applications. Next week,
only five minutes. Don't put yourself in bondage.
Be Christ's free man. Don't expect uniform density
of application in every sermon. Five, avoid a stereotyped and
predictable structure in the general framework. If you always
apply at the same place and almost at the same time, 12.08 is application
time, the human heart is perverse enough to learn how to pull down
some insulating material at 12.07. But as someone has said, surprise
your people. Out of bright blue sky, when
their eyes, mental eyes, are just gazing at the beauty of
that sky, drop on them a thunderbolt of searching application when
they least expect it. Don't become stereotyped and
predictable in the general framework of your application. Six, make
judicious use of searching questions in your application. I'll never
forget, when I first began to read the Puritans, Allain's alarm
to the unconverted and Baxter's call to the unconverted, and
it just overwhelmed me how these men used strings of question
to force people to reflect on their true spiritual state. You
see, when you press a question upon your hearers and look them
straight in the eyeballs back to the retina and say, now my
hearer, my hearer, listen to me. I have a question I want
to ask. In the light of this passage, can you say that? Now answer, not out audibly.
Don't answer so the person... but I want you to answer right
now, in your own mind, And answer as honestly as you'll be forced
to answer in the day of judgment. And then you press the question.
You see, a question is a marvelous device to force people to reflect
upon the issue that we are pressing in application. This is where
reading the Old Masters will help you, and you'll learn by
example and Osmos 7. Pray for and expect the aid of
the Spirit in suggesting additional applications in the act of preaching. Any preacher who knows anything
of the help of the Holy Spirit knows whereof I'm speaking. You've labored in the study,
you've come prepared to make certifications, but you've also
come and prayed, and I find it helpful at times to write next
to my notes in some of the white spaces on the notes, Oh God,
choose my arrows! And in the actual heat of preaching,
when you're making applications, God makes your mind fertile,
and unthought of applications will come. And at times it's
amazing when people will come and say, Pastor, you know that
application? Yes, that was as though you were describing my
situation. God came to me with such comfort
as you made that application. God came to me with such conviction
as you made that application. Brethren, this may sound like
wild-eyed fanaticism to men for whom preaching is nothing but
an intellectual and rhetorical exercise, but for those of us
to whom the Holy Ghost, the living, present reality, this is not
fanaticism. Pray for and expect the aid of
the Spirit. Counsel number eight, be prepared
to pay the price of consistent, close application. You want to
keep the conscience of your people sensitive to God? They will not
be kept sensitive if the applicatory element is absent. But it means the people who don't
want to walk in the light, those who either with pockets of remaining
sin or because of reigning sin will not come to the light lest
their deed should be reproved. John 3, oh what an amazing array
of designations they can give to the preacher who is determined
that they will confront God in the preach. Be prepared to pay
the price of consistent close application, and finally, be
Christ's free man to make Christ's legitimate applications whenever
you preach. Don't let any theory or school
of preaching put you into bondage. You may wish to make applications
in your introduction, but if they're sensible and they're
connected with Scripture, you have every right to do so. Don't
become anything other than what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7.23,
you have been bought with a price. Be not the slaves of men. Well, may God help us, brethren,
to be Bible preachers who in all of our proclamation and exposition
of the Word of God, labor at making application to the lives,
the consciences, the patterns of life, of our hearers, both
for conviction, for consolation, for direction in the things of
God. Let us pray. Oh, our Father, we feel again
how much we need your grace if we are to preach as we ought
to preach. May your Holy Spirit take the
things we've considered this morning, and whatever has been
true to the mind of Spirit, rivet them to our hearts, give us grace
to implement them in our lives, to the end that the unconverted
would be saved through our labors, the saints of God instructed,
comforted, built up, strengthened, to have a sensitively honed conscience
by the Word of God. O Lord, may Christ Himself come
in all of His power to our people by means of our poor efforts
to proclaim His truth. Hear us and bless in the ongoing
fellows of this day, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.