How Much of Preaching Should Be Interpretation and How Much Application?

We know we’re supposed to “preach the Word.”  However, I believe one of the major problems for fundamentalists through the years has been preaching an application that is detached from the Word.  As a result, the folks in the fundamentalist pews have found a lot to be doing without knowing what the Bible says.  They’re doing a lot that they think the Bible teaches without connecting it to what the Bible teaches.  That’s not all.  In the rush to application, a lot of fundamentalist preaching has given the hearers the wrong meaning of Scripture.  In certain revivalist circles of fundamentalism, that’s been fine, because “the Holy Spirit told them to preach that.”  So these “preachers” have perverted and added to the Bible and then blamed it on the Holy Spirit.  This common practice has shattered the discernment of a sizable chunk of fundamentalism and also created a generation of mind-numbed ignoramuses.   This has dawned on some of the victims, so they have gone looking for something more.  They’re converted and really do want God’s Word, so they go looking for it and find it with evangelical expositors and Calvinists.  Granted these don’t use the King James Version, but they also often preach more actual Words of Scripture than those who defend the King James.

Often fundamentalists have attacked biblical preaching that emphasizes the interpretation of scripture by calling it “word only” preaching.   Then eisegetic extrapolations can count as demonstrations of power and the Holy Ghost and short term effects will stand as evidence for the latter without proving the former.  Jack Hyles used to scare his adherents away from exposition by calling this ‘treating the Bible like a math book.’  I heard someone else call it “worse by worse.”  Clever.

Scripture is its meaning. You aren’t preaching the Bible when you don’t preach what it means.  The words can’t somehow circumvent the missed interpretation to find their right way in someone’s heart.   If preaching is the Bible, which it is, then telling people what it says is the only necessity in a sermon.  If you miss that, you haven’t even preached.

The primary term for “preach,” kerusso,  means “to herald.”  The New Testament audience understood the kerux to be a representative of the king who did nothing other than proclaim the king’s message.  He spoke for the king in the king’s words.  I compare his job to a waiter.  The waiter just serves the food.  He won’t add or take away from the food or rearrange it to his liking.  Within the analogy, God is the chef.  He wants the meal to get to the table as He intended it.  Often what is called “application” or “practical sermons” is nothing more than playing with the food on the way to the table or perhaps even better, eating it and then regurgitating it back onto the plate before it gets to its recipient.

Unless someone understands what Scripture means, he can’t even make an application of it.   It’s not practical not to know what the Bible is saying because you can’t practice what you don’t know.  And if you know it, then it’s already practical.  That’s what 1 Timothy 3:16-17 say, that all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for righteousness.

The primacy of interpretation in preaching  exalts God’s authorship of Scripture.  It says, “He did a good job.” And, “This is fine like it is.”  Or, “If people know this, they’re going to be OK.”  Or even, “I like what He said better than what I think.”  God is the actual authority.  If what comes out of our mouths isn’t what He said, then we replace God in this.  We, of course, can’t replace God as an authority, but if we don’t care if we do or not, we’re verging on, if not committing, a kind of idolatrous practice.

One irony in this is that the “word only” preaching is the preaching that is our words, not His.  His Words do come with power and the Holy Ghost.  They can’t but do that.  Someone may say, “But I seem to get more results and I’ve found that people seem to like it more when I’m more practical, you know.”  It might be true that you might arouse more of the passions of your hearers with preaching that majors on personal application.  However, this is where what we do in this regard must be a matter of faith.  Faith is what pleases God.  And glorifying Him must be our purpose.

The preeminence of application also causes a lot of wrenching of passages from their original intention.  Texts of scripture get shoehorned into a “good sermon.”   When the audience becomes sovereign, the actual teaching of the Bible often becomes mangled beyond recognition.  The hearers might leave with an appreciated bump to their self-esteem or an incentive for more good Christian activity or a clue for an improved personal relationship, but the path to achievement doesn’t honor God nor likely will the performance itself.  God wants and deserves all the credit for the right outcome.  He’ll only get it when that right outcome springs from the divine source, the words that He inspired.

The license men give themselves with their preaching proceeds from their own doubts about the effectiveness of Scripture.   Preaching has taken on the nature of a sales pitch.  However, it isn’t so much that the Bible doesn’t “work.”  It’s just that most people don’t like what it says.  You really don’t have the option of changing Scripture, and yet that’s still what occurs.   You could call it “outcome based preaching.”  You find a message within acceptable parameters that will still meet your desired outcome.  In this way, you adjust your pitch to your target audience to produce the preferred result.  What happens here is that when the Bible doesn’t succeed like the speaker wants, he just changes the Bible.   It’s called “application of the Bible” though.

In John 21 Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep.  That’s what Jesus wants His shepherds to do.  Later in 2 Peter 3:2 we see that Peter understood this to be the “words which were spoken before by the holy prophets” and “the commandment of . . . the apostles of the Lord.”  Let’s make sure that’s what we’re doing, you know, that thing we say we’re doing.