A Timely and Encouraging but Awful Sermon

Recently I heard a sermon which I continue to think about. Based on a section of Psalm 119, the visiting speaker did a decent job moving through the passage verse by verse and exhorted the congregation to focus on Scripture, make it central to your life, meditate on it, and so forth. So far so good.

And given that the congregation is not normally privy to such sermons it was timely. By this I mean it was simple and a case of good solid application. The people there need to engage Scripture more seriously and the exhortation undoubtedly did them good. The preaching they normally receive is utterly lacking in practicality and remains on a kind of ivory tower level. The pastor focuses on grammatic structures and textual minutiae and never steps back to help the congregation to see the big picture. In keeping with the canons of textual criticism and the academy, Old Testament passages are dealt with in isolation and not closely related to or interpreted by the New Testament. Functionally Christ is obscured and thus many of the legal or historical passages are reduced to tedious accounts and lists of commands. And given the lack of Scriptural literacy in the congregation, they are languishing under such preaching which is also lost in the weeds.

This message (by way of contrast) was simple and certainly filled with energy and exhortation, but at the same time – the Psalm was not dealt with redemptive-historically. The preacher dropped more than a few hints of Theonomic predilection and tendencies in his thinking and as such there was great focus on the Mosaic Law. Christ was not mentioned. He was assumed to be sure and always present in the background but the Psalm was read as a Jew would read it. In other words, the sermon could have been given by a rabbi.

The fact that the Scriptures primarily testify of Christ (as He taught) was missed. The fact that the prophet-Psalmist anticipated and indeed by means of the Spirit spoke with the voice of the pre-incarnate Christ was missed. The fact that the Scriptures – the Word, cannot be separated from the revelation of Christ was omitted.

I was glad the congregation received a simple message that was bound to stir them. But as I said in the car on the way home if I was a theology or homiletics professor in a seminary I might have given him an 'F', a failed grade as he did not engage the passage in a Christian manner.

It is pointless to read Leviticus apart from Christ just as the Psalms lose their lustre when Christ is left out. By all means read and immerse yourself in the Scriptures but if you're not seeing Christ on every page – then you've missed the central element and you will certainly go astray.