One of my favorite moments in The Office is when the usually cool Jim Halpert is tasked by his new boss, Charles, with creating a “run down”. Jim has no idea what a rundown is but he doesn’t want to disappoint his new boss so he goes through his entire day attempting to figure out what exactly he is supposed to do. (Isn’t there a similar Seinfeld episode?). Jim is eventually told to fax his rundown to his entire “distribution list”. But Jim has no idea what that is either, so he ends up faxing his run down to his father.
The scene is comical because we have all been in similar situations. We’ve all been in that situation when we can tell that someone is communicating something to us that is absolutely vital but we aren’t certain what exactly they want us to do. I fear that many pastors leave their congregation with a similar feeling after Sunday morning. They’ve gotten a ton of great information but they aren’t quite sure what they ought to do with it.
I know in my own preaching that some weeks I wish I’d spent a bit more time ironing out personal application. So, I read with much agreement a recent article by Michael Lawrence published by 9Marks. Lawrence makes a compelling argument that if a preacher has not given application then he hasn’t actually preached—he has just given a lecture. He rightly shows that application is difficult and that many preachers are tempted to forego specific and practical application points. Some, say Lawrence, hide behind empty rhetoric that application is the Spirit’s job.
While I found myself agreeing with most of the article, I do believe the author goes a bit too far. And by doing so I think he takes a valuable tool out of the preacher’s tool belt. It’s not a tool that you use often—but when you need to use it and you use it well it can be very effective.
Lawrence makes the argument that, “avoiding application is also quite simply unbiblical.” He also concludes by saying, “What all of this means, I think, is that a sermon unapplied is no sermon at all, but merely a Bible lecture.” As a general principle I agree. But I do believe there are times and even biblical examples where specific points of application might actually cheapen the sermon.
Consider Job. When God meets Job in the whirlwind an unleashes a storm of questions we don’t see a “therefore” at the end of the list. God doesn’t need to. It would not only seem redundant but also cheapen the power of the questions for God to say, “Now Job, your only fitting response is to repent in dust and ashes”.
Or consider Jonah. This little book is a literary masterpiece but it doesn’t have a “specific and practical” point of application. I would contend that this is part of the beauty of Jonah. The author is making a point that salvation belongs to the Lord. Jonah is all about the different ways we wrestle with that point. The way the book ends with a question from Yahweh has the same impact that his questions to Job have, it forces the reader to respond without spelling out specific points of application.
Again if the preacher uses this as his approach every Sunday then I don’t believe he is being faithful to his task of shepherding. But I do believe there are times when the preacher might need to just step back and declare the excellencies of God and let our astonishment be the point of application.
John Piper makes a similar point in The Supremacy of God in Preaching. He tells of a time when he preached on Isaiah 6:
So I preached on the holiness of God and did my best to display the majesty and glory of such a great and holy God. I gave not one word of application to the lives of our people. Application is essential in the normal course of preaching, but I felt led that day to make a test: Would the passionate portrayal of the greatness of God in and of itself meet the needs of people? (Piper, 14)
As Piper tells the story such a “passionate portrayal” did meet the needs of the people. One of his listeners was a father who had just learned his child was being sexually abused by a close relative. And the thing that sustained him during that time was Piper’s vision of the greatness of God’s holiness.
So I conclude by saying Michael Lawrence is generally correct in what he is saying, but he (and so many other homiletics professors) go a bit too far in my estimation and by doing so take a valuable tool out of the hand of the preacher. Rather than training students to NEVER preach a sermon without specific points of application maybe give a bit of training in how to on occasion do it rightly.
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