Proclaimer Blog
Another question preachers ask
Possibly one of the most vexed questions preachers ask is whether every sermon must go to Christ?
Short answer – in my opinion – yes. The boy Spurgeon agrees. Here are some fruity quotes compiled by Tony Reinke. “The motto of all true servants of God must be, ‘We preach Christ; and him crucified.’ A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.”
Or how about, “The Spirit of God bears no witness to Christless sermons. Leave Jesus out of your preaching, and the Holy Spirit will never come upon you. Why should he? Has he not come on purpose that he may testify of Christ? Did not Jesus say, ‘He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you’? Yes, the subject was Christ, and nothing but Christ, and such is the teaching which the Spirit of God will own. Be it ours never to wander from this central point: may we determine to know nothing among men but Christ and his cross.”
Or even, “Leave Christ out? O my brethren, better leave the pulpit out altogether. If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ’s name in it, it ought to be his last, certainly the last that any Christian ought to go to hear him preach.”
But that needs some qualification. The devil is in the detail – an unfortunate expression if ever there was one. There is preaching Christ and there is preaching Christ. There is a kind of preaching Christ which is dull, predictable, repetitive and monochromatic. I say no to that kind of preaching. There is preaching Christ which is robbed of morality, especially OT preaching. I say no to that kind of preaching too. But there is preaching Christ which does justice to the text and sees in the Bible supremely the message of Jesus, Jesus who needs to be held out to sinners as the only Saviour and to believers as the true Son of God, the exact representation of his being, one who calls us to love, serve and follow him.
Now that is the kind of preaching Christ I like, and we must surely pursue.