Proclaimer Blog
So what?
I’m enjoying Bryan Chappell at our ministers’ conference teaching on application. This is a contentious issue for some Christians. Too much, too little, and all kinds of practical and spiritual objections. He told the story of how he was himself taught preaching by Dr Robert Rayburn, an ex-army Colonel chaplain who had parachuted into Korea behind enemy lines with the men to whom he ministered. This man stood for no nonsense.
He told his students, ‘Men, I don’t care how famous you get, or how big your churches are, or how good a preacher you are, but I want you to imagine that after every sermon I’m sitting in the back row and you have to walk past me every time you preach. I have my arms folded and I have a frown on my face and one question that needs answering, “So what?”’
‘Stephen saw heaven opened?’ ‘So what?’
‘The Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years.’ ‘So what?’
‘Justification is by faith alone?’ ‘So what?’
For, Chappell argues, we cannot really say we understand a text unless we have understood its significance. Take justification by faith. We might think we understand it, but if we believe that the way to get right with God is by, say, reading our Bibles more, we have not really understood the text. It’s only when we have grasped its significance that we can truly say we’ve understood a text.
In other words, application counts.