Application

The point: Continuously practice the proclamation, explanation, and application of scriptural truths with specific references to the thinking, behavior patterns, affections, consciences, and wills of your hearers.

Application is described as the 'highway from the head to the heart,' emphasizing its role in moving intellectual understanding to emotional and volitional engagement.

We begin then with what is most crucial, namely a description and definition of application in preaching. When we speak of application in preaching, what are we talking about? One has accurately written that application in preaching is the highway from the head to the heart in our preaching. Of the Word of God.

2:32 - 3:01 Read in full sermon

The point: Ensure applications have a common aim and make a combined impression, rather than diverging in various directions.

Application is likened to a 'bridge from correct notions of biblical truth to proper affections and righteous volitions,' highlighting its function in translating knowledge into life.

To use another analogy, we should think of application as the bridge from correct notions of biblical truth to proper affections and righteous volitions giving birth to righteous actions in the light of that truth perceived by the illuminated understanding. Or to state it another way, if in our exposition we establish what men are to know of God's truth, then in our application we answer the question, in the light of what I know, so what, as far as my thinking, my willing, my feeling, my choosing, my living. Application addresses the question, so what. With reference to the teaching we have es...

3:01 - 4:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Ensure applications have a common aim and make a combined impression, rather than diverging in various directions.

A quote about Philip Henry, Matthew Henry's father, states he shot the arrow of the Word 'into their hearts in close and lively application,' illustrating effective, penetrating preaching.

And there's a world of teaching, and there's a difference between those two things. It was said of Philip Henry, father of the famous Matthew Henry, who really tutored his son and was the great instrument in the hands of God to prepare him for that great legacy that he has left to the Christian church in terms of his commentary that sits on so many of our shelves. He did not shoot the arrow of the Word over the heads of his audience. In flourishes of affected rhetoric, nor under their feet by coarse expressions, but into their hearts in close and lively application. To use another analogy, if ...

4:29 - 5:53 Read in full sermon

The point: Ensure applications have a common aim and make a combined impression, rather than diverging in various directions.

Truth is the nail, exposition is the tap, and application is the 'blow of the hammer which drives it through the mind and into the heart and into the conscience,' emphasizing the forceful, penetrating nature of application.

And there's a world of teaching, and there's a difference between those two things. It was said of Philip Henry, father of the famous Matthew Henry, who really tutored his son and was the great instrument in the hands of God to prepare him for that great legacy that he has left to the Christian church in terms of his commentary that sits on so many of our shelves. He did not shoot the arrow of the Word over the heads of his audience. In flourishes of affected rhetoric, nor under their feet by coarse expressions, but into their hearts in close and lively application. To use another analogy, if ...

4:29 - 5:53 Read in full sermon

The point: Ensure applications have a common aim and make a combined impression, rather than diverging in various directions.

The story of Jael driving a tent pin through Sisera's temple is used to illustrate that preaching should not merely 'loosen a little religious dandruff' but drive truth 'clean through into the deep chambers of the heart.'

or motivation to do deep. But it is never, the outer vestibule of the ear at which we aim in preaching, or even the inner chambers of the mind, that marvelously constructed computer that receives the programming by words spoken. But we are always concerned with the deep inner chambers of the heart, where conscience stands as a monitor between a man and his God, and his actions, his feelings, his thinking in the light of the claims of that God. To use an analogy from Scripture, we need to seek to do in our preaching what Jael, wife of Heber, did when Sisera came into her tent. While he was slee...

5:54 - 6:57 Read in full sermon

The point: Ensure applications have a common aim and make a combined impression, rather than diverging in various directions.

Broadus's analogy of application not being like the 'untwisted cracker of a whip' but having a common aim, illustrates the need for focused, combined impression rather than diverging applications.

She placed the tent pin on his head, She placed the tent pin on his head, she placed the tent pin on his temple and it says, drove it clean through till it stuck fast in the earth. Brethren, that's what we need to seek to do in our preaching. Not merely bring the truth to the scalp of men and tap it enough to loosen a little religious dandruff, but drive it clean through under the blessing of God into the deep chambers of the heart. Broadus has accurately stated, Application in the strict sense is that part or those parts of the sermon in which we show how the subject applies to the person's a...

6:58 - 8:24 Read in full sermon

The point: The preacher must make the application himself, not expecting hearers to apply unpalatable truths to themselves.

The 'Santa Claus' in the remaining sin of the human heart is a metaphor for people's tendency to apply unpalatable truths to everyone else but themselves, highlighting the need for the preacher to make specific applications.

There is an area in the remaining sin of the human heart that is Santa Claus personified.

11:16 - 11:22 Read in full sermon

The point: The preacher must make the application himself, not expecting hearers to apply unpalatable truths to themselves.

Brooks's analogy that 'a general doctrine not applied is as a sword without an edge' illustrates the ineffectiveness of preaching without specific application.

And then I want to give you a couple of choice quotes from Brooks. This one comes from Volume 4, his treatise on Hebrews 12, and verse 4, Hebrews 12, 12, 14, Follow holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. And on page 23 he says, Doctrine is but the drawing of the bow, application is the hitting of the mark. How many are wise in generalities, but vain in their practical inferences.

13:21 - 13:52 Read in full sermon

The point: The preacher must make the application himself, not expecting hearers to apply unpalatable truths to themselves.

Brooks's analogy that 'a garment fitted for all bodies is fit for nobody' illustrates that general preaching is taken as spoken to none, emphasizing the need for specificity.

A general doctrine not applied is as a sword without an edge, not in itself, but to others, or as a whole loaf set out, not before children that will do them no good. A garment fitted for all bodies is fit for nobody. And so that which is spoken to all is taken as though it were spoken to none. And then he goes on on page 218, to amplify this matter in a most convincing way, I commend it to you for your careful consideration.

13:52 - 14:31 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He demonstrates that denunciations of sin in the Bible (Isaiah, Jesus' woes, Paul to Corinthians) were consistently specific and applicatory, not generic, even when addressing…

Jesus' illustration of the Pharisees straining out gnats and swallowing camels is used as an example of specific, grotesque, and unflattering application of truth to expose hypocrisy.

You silly Pharisees. You're like the man that goes out there and when he takes his cup of wine since some fleas may have dropped into the open hewn out stone wine vat where they pressed it out with their feet and then it was placed into the wine skin and you drop into the wine skin and you drop into the wine skin drawing out your cup of wine from the wine skin you put your muzzle in over that leg that's opened up to make sure that you strain out any little gnats that might get into your wine and he said when you've strained out all the gnats and set your wine cup down just as you're about to t...

29:10 - 30:38 Read in full sermon

The point: When applications are hard in coming, consult the proven masters like Matthew Henry, John Calvin, the Puritans, Spurgeon, and Ryle.

A story about a former student struggling with flat applications who found renewed freshness by consulting Matthew Henry and Bishop Ryle, illustrating the value of learning from proven masters.

There's a man sitting here who'll bear witness to this. There's a man sitting here who'll bear witness to this. There's a man sitting here who'll bear witness to this fact. He called me, one of our former students some months ago, and he said, Pastor, I'm having a problem. I'm preaching through, I forgot one of the gospels, and he said, I just find it. I'm just running out of applications, and my applications are flat. What shall I do? I said, are you using Matthew Henry and Ryle's expository thoughts? He said, I haven't been using them. I said, well, that's the doctor's prescription. I said, ...

71:38 - 72:12 Read in full sermon

The point: When applications are hard in coming, consult the proven masters like Matthew Henry, John Calvin, the Puritans, Spurgeon, and Ryle.

The analogy of a medical resident learning surgery under masters, not from someone who has never performed it, is used to argue that preachers should learn from experienced preachers, not just academics.

Let a young man be prepared for the medical profession in this church, and when he did his residency in obstetrics and then in general surgery, he did every area under the masters in that field. He wasn't taught how to open a man up and take out his appendix and his gallbladder and say, by someone who'd never stuck a scalpel in his blood spurt.

72:53 - 73:18 Read in full sermon