"Law and Gospel are rightly divided in preaching when the sermon is not primarily didactic, but rather something that claims the listener on God’s behalf… Christ is really present in preaching! Hence, preachers need to be bold enough to give Christ to their hearers. Preachers are tempted to give the text a moral – translating it into our terms or allegorizing it in order to offer us something to do. We miss Luther’s insight that it is the Scripture that interprets us. Preachers need to read the texts so as to allow themselves to be exegeted by them and then preach in a fashion that allows the text to do its deed to the hearers." - -Gerhard O. Forde "The Preached God: Proclamation in Word and Sacrament" (courtesy of Michael Borg)
PREACHING WITH DEPTH
YOU
SHOULD BE WARNED
This article is the companion to the one concerning expository
preaching, and depends upon what was introduced there. If you have not yet read that one, please do
so now. The preacher truly interested in
having depth in his preaching must develop his abilities as an expositor. True and consistent depth is inseparable from
careful exposition. Not all expository
sermons will necessarily qualify as “deep”, but deep sermons proceed from the
kind of exegeses that expository preaching depends upon. Flying high over the text may enable the
preacher to notice the occasional “fortune-cookie saying” that he can rip out
of context to stimulate a fine rant, and satisfy himself that he has delivered
the Word of God. But that approach is
anything but conducive to discovering that which is deep.
A sincere preacher not accustomed to careful exposition may
stumble upon a deep thought from time to time, but consistent depth will evade
him because he has not regularly endeavored to dig down to where the deep
things are found. Meticulous exegesis is the way that things
hidden deeply are excavated from the text.
There may be such a thing as a “deep” sermon that is not anchored in and
driven by the text, but it is not likely.
More probably, any apparent depth was borrowed, and eisegeted. In some cases, it is strictly artificial.
Concerning artificial depth, awareness of the need to be deep, at
least from time to time, has often caused shallow preachers to invent
outlandish interpretations, and even heresies in order to prove they can go
deep too. For example, recent “insights”
into the Lord’s Supper offered by a prominent Independent Baptist pastor in a
desperate attempt to go deep are nothing short of blasphemy. The same is true of some imagined
conversations concerning the plan of redemption that allegedly occurred between
the First and Second Divine Persons.
Such concoctions are not deep, they are a witch’s brew of heresies and
inexcusable eisegesis. A firm
commitment to regular exposition would have yielded something far more
valuable, instead of something blasphemous and positively dangerous.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?
If you are reading this with the expectation that some easy trick
to extracting the deep stuff will be revealed to you, or if you think you will
be handed a skeleton key that unlocks the deep stuff in the Bible, go away now,
and never come back. Deep preaching
demands diligence, patience, and focus to uncover the depth of the Bible and
skill to present it to others.
Many, if not most Christians can identify depth when they hear it,
although the majority still seem to prefer the shallow and less
challenging. Depth is one of those
things that “you know it when you see it,” but nobody seems to have bothered to
define it, at least not in such a way that has given us a widely agreed upon
definition for depth in preaching.
This being the case, then we must look to the dictionary and work
with what we find there. The venerable
1828 edition of Noah Webster’s American
Dictionary of the English Language provides us with eleven possible
meanings, some of which are so inapplicable that they can be dismissed
immediately. The ones that suit the
purpose of this paper are:
·
The abyss; a gulf of infinite
profundity.
·
Abstruseness; obscurity;
that which is not easily explored
·
Unsearchableness;
infinity.
·
The breadth and depth of
the love of Christ, are its vast extent.
·
Profoundness; extent of
penetration, or of the capacity of penetrating; as depth of understanding; depth
of skill.
The first three on that list are offered mostly in jest, because they describe well some potential pitfalls that the preacher desiring to “go deep” may stumble over. A “gulf of infinite profundity” would be a good description for many a failed attempt at depth in preaching. The image comes to mind of the preacher attempting to be profound, but instead, sliding down a steep incline of whimsy into an abyss of abstruseness, tumbling farther and farther away from his audience in a shower of gravel, until an infinite gulf of obscurity renders everything he says unsearchable nonsense. Failed attempts at deep preaching lose the hearers as the preacher goes out farther and farther into esoteric babbling. We will seek to avoid this.
But despite the comical images generated by those first three definitions, they are still helpful in that they point in the direction of the character of deep preaching and the content it does address: the infinitely profound, the not easily explored, the unsearchable and the infinite. Conversely, shallow preaching fails to tackle such matters, dealing only with the mundane, the clichéd, and the superficial instead.
Indeed, the definitions move in the direction we desire, referencing what (or Who) is indeed the subject of deep preaching - Christ – the in-exhaustibleness of His attributes and Being, His ontological infinitude, which is in part accurately knowable, while simultaneously not fully comprehensible to finite beings. The final statement is very helpful. We can now offer both a definition for “preaching with depth” and also identify its goal.
Preaching with depth takes the listener on a mental journey to levels of greater and more skillful penetration into and analysis of those things in Scripture dealing with the person and work of Christ that are infinitely profound and not easily explored.
The goal of deep preaching
is to mentally lead the hearers into the person and work of Christ that they
would never have thought their way to on their own.
It should be self-evident that before one can preach with depth,
he must study deeply and think deeply about what he has found while studying,
and then labor deliberately to put it into comprehensible words and logical
order. That is all the formula there is. There is no short cut to depth. Yes, there is a way to frequent deep places,
but it is time-consuming.
Now the probability of the preacher suffering from “Saturday Night
Fever”, strip-mining the Bible for a heretofore unnoticed aphorism to jump out
at him and provide the springboard for a deep sermon is zero. By the undeserved grace of God, Who isn’t
inclined to let His people starve despite the incompetence of His preachers, a
thought, or maybe even an entire verse will probably “jump out” and engender
yet another “Five S’s” or “Five P’s” sort of outline – not really a new sermon
at all, but a new text to use to preach the same old thing.
The congregation will at least hear a verse or two, and be
reminded yet again that they need to be saved, surrendered, separated,
sanctified, and steadfast; or that they have been purchased, are precious,
should present themselves a living sacrifice, be prepared for the rapture, and
please the man of God; all of which will be supported by personal anecdotes and
overused clichés. Hopefully, there will
be enough of Jesus in it to keep them from dying, at least for a little while
longer. And that brings us to this:
STOP
TALKING ABOUT YOU, STOP TALKING ABOUT ME, START TALKING ABOUT JESUS!
The goal of preaching ought to be to enable the risen Christ to walk in the midst of His Churches (Rev. 1:13-20)
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye
eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in
you. (John 6:53)
Jesus said something revolutionary there (cp. 6:33, 48, 50, 51,
54-57). We understand that this is a
spiritual eating rather than a physical.
There is no argument being made for transubstantiation or
consubstantiation. But it is vital that
you see this; Jesus said that you either
eat Him or you die. That eating is
not a one-time thing. It is a life-time
thing. The preacher’s duty is to prepare
a nourishing meal of Jesus, put it on
a plate, and serve it to the congregation.
The real spiritual vitality of people is directly tied to the amount of
Jesus they ingest on a regular basis.
The whip-lashing and pep-talking that pass for preaching may keep
self-righteous or intimidated people busy in religious activity for a long
time. But they will be starving for the
good news and the Christ that it speaks of.
They may indeed have been saved by “eating” Him once, way back
when. But unless you are feeding them
with Him week after week, they are starving under your care.
To preach deep is to preach Christ. He is woven throughout the entirety of the
Bible. He Himself told us so. So much of value could be said about this,
but in the scope of a pamphlet there is not nearly enough space. But consider this. Jesus Himself said:
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and
they are they which testify of me. (John 5:39)
On the road to Emmaus,
… beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in
all the scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:27)
Look up those verses, read the cross-references, and their cross
references, and discover for yourself that the entire Bible really is about
Christ, and until you have understood the passage before you with Him in mind,
you have not gone deep enough. You may
moralize very convincingly and thunder away about everything but Jesus. But you haven’t presented Him. You can’t unless you know where He is in the
text.
Do you want to know how to interpret the Old Testament? Do you want to know how to really understand
the deep stuff in there? Then follow the
example that Jesus provided in Luke 24.
Heed His admonition in John 5.
Did you ever notice the approach taken by the writer of Hebrews? Over and over again, as He points to Old
Testament persons and practices, he essentially says, over and over again, “Do
you see that? That’s about Jesus!”
LECTIO
CONTIUA
Finally, the only way to really go deep, and stay deep, is to do
so a little at a time, pushing down a little more every week. Don’t expect to plunge down to the bottom of
the mine at 9:00 on Saturday night. It
simply won’t happen. But if you will
select a book, any book in the Bible, find North, establish your control[1],
begin at the beginning, and study thoroughly each segment (by the paragraph is
best) until you really know what it says and how it points to Christ[2],
you will not only have a new message every week, you will be going deeper and
deeper, week after week.
By the time you
have reached the middle of the book, after diligently working up to that point,
you will be able to see things that will amaze and delight both you and your
listeners – things that you could never have discovered in one session of even
several hours. But approaching it this
way, you will have spent accumulated hundreds of hours studying in preparation
for opening up the next paragraph.
And that is the only way to really “go deep”. May God richly bless your endeavors and
reward you and your congregation with delightful and nourishing spiritual
meals, week after week, year after year.
