Does Your Theology Drive Your Exegesis?
00:00:00.000 | Today we have a preaching question for you, Pastor John.
00:00:08.560 | As you have worked through entire books of the Bible as an expositor, how did you think
00:00:13.080 | about the prominence of Christian hedonism in your sermons?
00:00:17.660 | Did you think of every sermon as an opportunity to make a beeline to joy at some point, as
00:00:22.340 | Spurgeon said of the cross?
00:00:24.640 | Did you try to make connections to joy thematically, like perhaps in texts that dealt with the
00:00:30.640 | nature of personal faith or that spoke of God's glory, even where joy was not explicitly
00:00:37.320 | mentioned in your primary text?
00:00:40.320 | Or did you just wait until texts explicitly used the joy language to let those sermons
00:00:45.400 | become your opportunity to talk Christian hedonism?
00:00:48.680 | How did you approach this?
00:00:50.160 | That's complicated.
00:00:51.160 | Yes, it is.
00:00:53.760 | There are two ways to answer this question.
00:00:56.040 | One is to do a statistical analysis of what I really said in 35 years of messages, and
00:01:05.880 | that would be the most reliable way to answer it.
00:01:08.320 | And of course, it's all there, available for anybody who wants to do that, though I can
00:01:12.760 | think of more profitable things to do with your time.
00:01:18.040 | The other way is to ask me what my intentions were, what were my homiletical strategies
00:01:26.880 | or hermeneutical convictions that governed the way I handled texts, and that's what's
00:01:33.180 | being asked, I think.
00:01:35.860 | And it's not a very reliable way to know, because my memory of how I approached thousands
00:01:42.900 | of texts is not very good.
00:01:46.480 | But I will do my best to say what I think today, and others can judge whether 30 years
00:01:53.400 | ago you actually practiced this.
00:01:57.520 | When a preacher comes to a text, he never deals with it in isolation from what he knows
00:02:08.060 | from that author in other texts or other biblical authors on that same theme.
00:02:16.080 | Texts have deeper and wider meaning and significance the more clearly you see how what it teaches
00:02:26.200 | relates to the rest of what Scripture teaches.
00:02:30.120 | For example, Jesus says in Mark 10 that he did not come to be served, but to serve.
00:02:40.480 | Now, knowing Acts 17.25 at this very point may have a profound impact on how a preacher
00:02:51.880 | deals with Mark 10.45 and vice versa.
00:02:57.920 | Acts 17.25 says God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, but he
00:03:07.320 | gives to all life and breath and everything.
00:03:10.880 | In other words, Christ coming not to be served is an expression of a wider, larger, deeper,
00:03:21.160 | divine trait that God is of such a nature he cannot be served by man.
00:03:28.000 | And taken together, these two texts unleash a river of thoughts about the nature of God
00:03:35.800 | and Christ and salvation and discipleship.
00:03:39.560 | And my point is that to know those things is going to affect the way you preach on either
00:03:45.320 | of those texts.
00:03:47.200 | So the point is that the more connections you know from the Bible, the richer and deeper
00:03:54.680 | you will go with each text.
00:03:58.040 | The trick is to let each text make its real contribution to the whole rather than letting
00:04:07.400 | the whole squash the text into what you already know from other texts.
00:04:15.000 | That's the trick.
00:04:16.000 | That's the catch.
00:04:17.140 | One must be utterly honest with every text, and over time the spiritually discerning people
00:04:24.680 | in our churches will see whether we are honest with every text or whether we're squashing
00:04:31.760 | them all into our little systematic desire, whether it's Christian hedonism or whatever
00:04:37.720 | you happen to love.
00:04:40.360 | So here's how it works with me and Christian hedonism, namely, God is most glorified in
00:04:46.600 | you when you are most satisfied in him.
00:04:49.600 | And I'll put it in three or four principles.
00:04:53.200 | I know that the greatest commandment in the Bible is that we love God with all of our
00:04:59.880 | heart, soul, mind, and strength.
00:05:00.880 | And I know that because Jesus said it's the greatest and because numerous texts on loving
00:05:09.920 | God teach it.
00:05:12.360 | And I also have learned from the Bible that that means, loving God means, treasuring God
00:05:21.760 | above all things, finding him to be our all-satisfying treasure.
00:05:27.280 | Now, that's a piece of Christian hedonism.
00:05:30.320 | In other words, I don't just use the word, "The main commandment in the Bible is to love
00:05:34.600 | God."
00:05:35.600 | I want to know, what do you mean, love God?
00:05:36.600 | What does it mean to love God?
00:05:38.640 | Does it mean work for him because he's a needy God, or does it mean find him all-satisfying
00:05:44.960 | supreme treasure?
00:05:47.920 | And I conclude the latter, which means that this goal, bringing people to obey the greatest
00:05:54.760 | commandment every Sunday, because it's the greatest commandment, you want people to do
00:05:59.080 | it and you want them to be pointed toward that greatest commandment in everything you
00:06:03.200 | say, that will inevitably cause me to lean toward displaying God as all-satisfying, displaying
00:06:11.560 | God as the greatest treasure in the world, under, in, behind every text.
00:06:18.640 | If it's explicit, I hope I can make that plain.
00:06:21.880 | If it's not explicit, I hope the sermon will have that flavor, and the people will have
00:06:26.460 | to judge whether I'm succeeding in imposing or inferring.
00:06:34.040 | Here's the second one.
00:06:35.040 | "I know from 1 Corinthians 10:31 that God aims for us to glorify him in everything,
00:06:40.320 | everything, from the moment this sermon is over till people show up again, everything
00:06:45.520 | they do is to be done for the glory of God.
00:06:48.560 | And I know from years of reading the Bible and study that this is God's supreme passion,
00:06:54.160 | not just mine or Paul's.
00:06:57.320 | I have also learned that God is not so much glorified in people and their attitudes if
00:07:06.040 | they are not satisfied in him, if they don't find pleasure in him, if he's not their supreme
00:07:12.040 | treasure.
00:07:14.520 | So very close, beneath or behind every sermon is the aim to help people delight in God all
00:07:23.080 | the time, including horrible times, because glorifying God is supremely important in the
00:07:31.320 | Bible, and that's the way we do it."
00:07:34.880 | Here's third.
00:07:35.880 | "I have learned that the gospel of Christ's death and resurrection is both the supreme
00:07:44.320 | demonstration of the gift of God's glory"—it's the gospel of the glory of God in the face
00:07:51.400 | of Christ—"and the death of Christ is the price paid so that we could have that
00:07:58.680 | glory, see that glory, receive that gift.
00:08:02.840 | And therefore, I have tried in recent decades especially to keep the cross close, beneath,
00:08:10.680 | behind all preaching because the cross is the price that was paid for God's glory
00:08:16.760 | and the ultimate presentation of God's glory for our everlasting enjoyment."
00:08:23.440 | And here's the fourth and last thing.
00:08:25.400 | "I am deathly afraid of imposing alien meanings on texts."
00:08:31.600 | I think imposing alien meanings from outside of text, even other texts, you know, God's
00:08:41.560 | word, imposing alien meanings on text is the death knell of authority in preaching.
00:08:49.640 | I think it's the death knell of trustworthiness as a preacher.
00:08:54.680 | I think it's the death knell of being interesting as a preacher year in and year out.
00:09:01.720 | And I think it's the death knell of growing in our understanding of the Bible.
00:09:08.080 | So my aim in preaching has always been, "Show the people what's in the text, what is really
00:09:16.400 | there.
00:09:17.400 | I want them to see what's really there.
00:09:20.600 | And if there's more than meets the eye regarding the glory of God, loving God, cross of Christ,
00:09:28.440 | Christian hedonism, if there's more than meets the eye, then it better be really visible
00:09:37.520 | to people when you're done."
00:09:40.520 | It needs to grow out of the text organically rather than being imposed on it.
00:09:46.360 | If the people don't see the bigger points organically growing out of the text, they
00:09:54.880 | will start to feel, "This guy can't really be trusted with the Bible."
00:10:00.760 | And they'll start to be bored because they can expect what's coming every week.
00:10:05.260 | So that's my goal and whether I succeeded, others will have to judge.
00:10:11.640 | Very good.
00:10:12.640 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:13.640 | And it reminds me of a question I asked a while back, "How do you prepare your sermons?"
00:10:17.680 | That was episode number 229 in the podcast archive for those leaders out there who are
00:10:22.200 | interested in learning about how you write sermons, Pastor John.
00:10:25.980 | And speaking of the archive, you can search all of our over 500 episodes to date.
00:10:30.160 | We have free apps for Apple and Android devices for this, of course.
00:10:33.600 | And now we have a landing page on our website as well.
00:10:36.640 | Go to DesiringGod.org at the top of the page and click "More" and then click on "Ask
00:10:41.640 | Pastor John."
00:10:42.640 | And you can search there by the title and episode number.
00:10:46.600 | Tomorrow we return and John Piper will explain how you can make a difference in this world
00:10:51.880 | or how not to waste your life.
00:10:55.320 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:10:56.320 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:10:58.640 | [end]
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