The Heart Is the Target

Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

Murray Capill

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781596388420
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Preaching that changes lives must have application for its listeners. Murray Capill equips preachers to explore the living application of any text, while also addressing common pitfalls and challenges preachers face.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Application

Our friendly Beefeater knew his stuff. History oozed out of him. He was obviously telling us only a fraction of what he knew and, as we strolled from site to site, questions would extract more information. So he didn’t tell us everything, and what he did tell us he mixed with humor, friendly asides, riveting stories, and constant threats to the children about their possible execution if they misbehaved. History came alive.

The preacher’s task is not dissimilar. We must seek to bring truth alive. That won’t usually happen if the sermon is a massive information dump. We need to speak selectively and engagingly so as to help people grasp what God has said and is saying. This takes great skill. In the chapters that follow, we will look at the skills required for developing engaging and varied application of God’s Word. But before we come to that, it is helpful to lay a foundation on which to build. Preachers need a working theology of biblical application. They need a sense of what application is, a picture of how the biblical preachers applied God’s Word, convictions concerning the work of the Holy Spirit in application, and a clear grasp of the preacher’s task in developing applicatory messages. These things will be the focus of this chapter—a kind of beginner’s guide to biblical application.

The word apply has many shades of meaning. We speak of applying pressure to get what we want, of suddenly applying the brakes in a car, of applying a coat of varnish to the door, or of applying a principle in a certain situation. We also speak of applying for a job or applying ourselves to our work.20 The root idea behind these uses of the word is that of putting one thing on or against another or of bringing things close together.21 Pressure is put on a person, brakes are put on the wheels, varnish is put on the door. The word also carries the meaning of making use of something or putting it into action. The car brakes are put into action; use is made of a principle in a certain situation. In the words of Jay Adams, “To ‘apply’ is to bring one thing into contact with another in such a way that the two adhere, so that what is applied to something affects that to which it is applied.”22

These shades of meaning make it a valuable term for Bible interpreters and preachers to employ as long as it is understood holistically.23 Preachers take biblical truth and press it against or put it on the lives of people. But they don’t just tell them how to put the truth into action; they actually put it into action in the act of preaching. They must preach so that people experience and appropriate the truth, feeling its sting or tasting its sweetness during the preaching. They need to bring it up close to their hearers so that they are impacted by it. Truth is not handled as something detached and largely irrelevant to those who are listening. It is real and people must sense its import as the preacher consciously presses it against their lives.

Biblical Models

A brief survey of biblical preaching quickly establishes that this pressing of truth against people’s lives is a hallmark of true preaching. We begin with Moses, who took the law delivered at Sinai and preached it to the people of Israel on the plains of Moab as they were about to enter the Promised Land. He didn’t simply repeat the laws verbatim; neither did he merely explain them. He applied them to the lives of those before him. Even though none of them (bar two) had been present forty years earlier when the law was given, he said to them,

The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. (Deut. 5:2–3)

That is a remarkable statement because, on the face of it, it isn’t true. The Lord made a covenant with their forefathers, not with them. But as far as Moses was concerned, what God said then he says now, and the covenant he made with their forefathers he made with them, as if they had been there. So on that basis Moses pleads with them, warning and encouraging them. He sets the law in the context of their recent history, recounting their rebellion, their desert wanderings, their victories, and now their new opportunity to enter the Promised Land. He urges them to listen and to obey.

Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you. (Deut. 4:1–2)

In the great conclusion to his address, he exhorts them to “choose life” and he warns them of the dire consequences that will come on them if they don’t.24

Moses was a passionate, urgent preacher of the Word of God, applying the law powerfully to the situation of his people. And he was not alone in that. All the prophets who followed him did the same. Old Testament prophetic preaching was marked by its robust, fearless, compelling appeal to God’s people. It never presented abstract truth but always applied truth to the lives of God’s people—often God’s erring people, but sometimes, as for example in Haggai, God’s discouraged people; or, in Habakkuk, God’s perplexed people; or, in the latter part of Isaiah, God’s distressed people. Whatever the situation, the prophets spoke powerfully to the present life situation of their hearers.

Zephaniah affords a compelling example of this. Prophesying to the southern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Josiah, about a hundred years after the northern kingdom was exiled, he warned Judah and Jerusalem that they now faced the same fate. They stood on the precipice of the day of the Lord (1:7, 14), which is the theme tune of Zephaniah’s prophecy. He doesn’t begin his sermon with a heartwarming illustration but launches straight into a pulpit-thumping warning of universal judgment (1:2–2:3). God will sweep away everything—man and beast, birds and fish. Why? Because of their great sin. Zephaniah exposes the evils of seventh-century Judah: their idolatry, syncretism, and spiritual complacency. He declares that the Lord is angry and is preparing to make war against his people, so it is urgent that they repent. Perhaps they will find mercy (2:3).

In the second section of his message (2:4–3:8) he broadens the scope of the Lord’s judgment. He looks west to Philistia, east to Ammon and Moab, south to Egypt and Ethiopia, and north to Assyria and especially Nineveh. To us, they sound like faraway lands. But they weren’t for Israel. They were near neighbors. It was like an Australian hearing a message concerning New Zealand and Indonesia, or an American hearing threats made against Mexico and Canada, or perhaps an Englishman hearing of God’s judgment coming upon Scotland and Wales or Spain and France. But then, in the same breath, Zephaniah points the finger again at Jerusalem because her sins were no different from those of the surrounding nations. They were all the same—proud and arrogant, mocking God and acting as if they owned the world.

Yet although Zephaniah’s words were filled with the most terrible warnings of impending doom, like nearly all the prophets he also brought a word of hope (3:9–20). There would be a remnant who would be purified by God and would bring to him true worship. So the day of the Lord would be not only a day of judgment but also a day of salvation.

Zephaniah’s preaching is undeniably applied preaching. It is direct, pointed, and specific. The “day of the Lord” was not an academic, theological principle that needed to be understood, but a terrible, imminent reality that demanded response. With red-hot zeal, God’s prophet warned, pleaded, and comforted.

Turning to the first pages of the New Testament, we find exactly the same kind of preaching. John the Baptist’s indictment of sin was specific, his call to repentance was powerful, and his foretelling of One to come was humbly winsome. He spoke to the people of his day, addressing the great needs of the moment, albeit in a somewhat bizarre way. We need not take his dress code, diet, or location as a model for contemporary preaching. Camel-skin suits, locust salads, and desert pulpits have never really been my thing. But we do need to note that his preaching was in line with the tenor of all biblical preaching. It was forcefully applied to the lives of those who listened.

No one demonstrates this more clearly than Jesus himself. The master preacher is the master of living application. Whether you think of the stinging attacks he made on the Pharisees (e.g., Matt. 23), or the brilliant twist in the tail of some of his parables (e.g., Luke 15), or the immensely practical counsel about true righteousness given in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6), or the strong warnings given to would-be followers (e.g., Luke 14:26–35), or the gracious comfort ministered to his grieving disciples (John 13–17), the fact is that his preaching always spoke directly and personally to the people to whom he was speaking. It was the scribes and Pharisees who specialized in dull discourses that revolved around quoting dead rabbis and dissecting the minute details of the tradition of the elders. Jesus specialized in cutting to the heart of an issue and speaking to the hearts of his hearers. Little wonder that “the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law” (Matt. 7:28–29). As Michael Quicke has observed, “Jesus Christ seemed to leave no room for neutrality or boredom whenever he preached. From explosive beginnings in Nazareth, he created impact every time.”25

It is not surprising that the apostles, having been trained by Jesus, followed suit. The book of Acts describes the relentless advance of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome. Despite persecution from without, and times of both division and corruption within, the early church grew and expanded with the public preaching of the gospel driving the mission forward. Luke records speeches to both Jews and Gentiles, in settings as diverse as the temple courts, the courts of the Sanhedrin, synagogues, rural towns, and the Areopagus. Not all would qualify as sermons in the way we currently use the term, but all were a kind of preaching in the sense of being public, verbal proclamations of gospel truth.

As with the preaching of Jesus and the prophets, the sermons and speeches of Acts are always directly and pertinently applied to the audience at hand. They are all occasional sermons. The Pentecost sermon, for example, specifically addressed the protest of skeptics who thought that the effect of what was, in reality, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was nothing other than drunken and disorderly behavior. Peter explained that it was not drunkenness but Spirit-fullness as foretold by the prophet Joel. But it was not enough that they understood this as the fulfillment of prophecy. They needed to understand the potentially devastating implications. It meant Jesus, whom they had crucified, was alive. The one they had tried to dispose of was, in fact, reigning as Lord and Christ and had poured out his Spirit as he had promised. There is no doubt that Peter was driving at exactly the Spirit-enabled response that came: “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ ” (Acts 2:37).

In his address to the Sanhedrin, Stephen similarly drove at heart conviction. Although much of the speech recounted Israel’s history, it did so with an agenda. Stephen was making a case throughout that built to the climax: “You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!” (Acts 7:51). That’s probably not the best way to win friends and influence people when you’re on trial, but it was the best way to bring God’s Word to bear on an apostate generation facing the imminent wrath of God. They needed to hear that truth stacked up against them and hear that they were guilty before the God of heaven. As far as God was concerned, it was not Stephen who was in the dock, but the Jewish nation.

Paul’s speeches in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch, in Lystra, and in the Areopagus also provide fascinating cameos of audience-targeted preaching. Each message was directed to p...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: What’s Preaching All About?
• 1. A Beginner’s Guide to Application
• Part 1: The Living Application Preaching Process
• Part 2: Putting Living Application into Practice
• Concluding Thoughts
• Living Application Tools
• Bibliography