Application

Defining Application in Preaching

0:03 The following message was delivered at the 1991 Trinity Pastors Conference, held on October 20th through 24th at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:17 Because application lies so much at the heart of any adequate theology of preaching, I judged it to be the part of wisdom to take the remainder of our time this morning and the entirety of the next 50-minute session in order to address this critical issue. Now the axiom appears in your printed notes, 2.5 or 2.6, I'm sorry, is the numbering at the bottom of the right-hand corner, and three-quarters of the way down, axiom number four, that the proclamation, explanation, and application of scriptural truths with specific references to the thinking, behavior patterns, affections, consciences, and wills of your hearers must constitute your continuous practice. Now in that rather lengthy construction of the axiom, since application is found as one of the essential elements of preaching at the beginning of each axiom, proclamation, explanation, and application, I'm indicating that application in preaching must indeed touch the whole spectrum of our hearers.

1:44 And that's why I've piled up these words, their thought patterns, behavior patterns, their affections, their consciences, and their wills. But for the sake of brevity, I will simply refer to all of that, as application in preaching. And in opening up this axiom, we'll do so under four major headings. The headings appear as A, B on that sheet, and over on the next page as C and D.

2:19 And under D, the headings continue all the way to the top third of page 2.8. So you should be able to follow. So without any difficulty.

2:32 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.

3:01 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 established from the Word of God. Application is that aspect of our preaching in which our hearers are made to feel that we are not merely saying true and good things in their hearing, but that we are proclaiming and pressing vital things to their hearts.

4:29 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 truth is the nail and exposition is the tap which sets the nail in the minds of men, then application, is the blow of the hammer which drives it through the mind and into the heart and into the conscience. In all of our preaching, our aim must be to have the truth driven down into the deepest recesses of the heart, whether in conviction, consolation, encouragement,

5:54 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 sleeping, she did not merely place a tent pin on his scalp and tap it enough to loosen his dandruff.

6:58 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 address, what practical instructions it offers them, what practical demands it makes upon them. Sometimes this is effected by means of what are called remarks, that is, certain noticeable matters belonging to or connected with the subject to which attention is now especially directed. These should always be of a very practical character, bearing down upon the feelings and the will. And the applications must not diverge in various directions and become like the untwisted cracker of a whip.

Historical Affirmation of Applicatory Preaching

8:24 You know, that end of the whip that causes the snap? It should not be, he says, like the untwisted, the untwisted crackers of the whip, but should have a common aim and make a combined impression. Now, that this concept of application is not something novel to me, is not something novel to some of us who are convinced that preaching without application is not preaching. I do want to take the time to quote just several, of the old masters.

9:03 I cannot bring you all the quotes I would like to, but I do want to bring several. Again, listen to Broadus. The application in the sermon is not merely an appendage to the discussion, that is, the body of the sermon, or a subordinate part of it, but it is the main thing to be done. Spurgeon says, and here is Broadus, quoting Spurgeon, where the application begins, there the sermon begins.

9:38 End quote. We are not to speak before people, but to them, and must earnestly strive to make them take to themselves what we say. Daniel Webster once said, and repeated it with emphasis, when a man preaches to me, I want him to make it a personal, a personal matter. A personal matter!

10:04 A personal matter! It is our solemn duty thus to address all men, whether they wish it or not. And then in his classic work on the Christian ministry, Charles Bridges, in his excellent chapters dealing with discriminating preaching of the gospel, applicatory preaching of the gospel, listen, to the words of Bridges on page 270, speaking of the great French preacher, Massillon. Massillon's preaching is said to have been so pointed that no one stopped to criticize or admire it.

10:47 Each carried away the arrow fastened to his heart, considering himself to be the person addressed, and having neither time, thought, or inclination to apply it to others. We must not expect our hearers to apply it to us, to apply it to themselves unpalatable truths. So unnatural is this habit of personal application that most will fit the doctrine to anyone but themselves. I've stated it this way.

11:16 There is an area in the remaining sin of the human heart that is Santa Claus personified.

11:24 There is in our remaining sin a Santa Claus in every one of us. And that Santa Claus will put into his bag every single, pointed personal application that belongs to us, and very benevolently parcel it out to everyone else until there's nothing left in the bag to take home and lay down at our own feet. This is what Bridges is acknowledging. And he says, the preacher must make the application himself.

11:56 The goads and nails must not be laid by as if the post would knock them in of their own, but they must, in the language of Ecclesiastes, be fastened by the masters of the assemblies. To insist, therefore, upon general truths without distributive application, or to give important directions without clearing the way for their improvement, this is not, according to the design of our ministry, to lay the truth at every man's door, to press it upon every man's heart, and to give them their portion of meat, in due season. And then he goes on to quote from Job, it will probably only produce the heartless reply that is unapplied preaching, how forcible are right words, but what doth your arguing preprove? This palatable ministry that blunts the edge of the sword of the Spirit in order to avoid the reproach of the cross brings upon the preacher a most tremendous response. Preaching in order to be effective must be reduced from vague generalities to a tangible, individual character coming home to every man's business, even to his own bosom.

13:21 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.

13:52 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.

14:31 Similar remarks, in volume 1 of Brooks, pages 438 and 439, and I could quote from Spurgeon and Dabney and all of the recognized masters in Israel, and what is the summary of all that we consider? Well, it is this, that by application we are referring to that element in our preaching in which we make a conscious effort to bring home to each of us and to bring home to each of our hearers' consciences the spiritual, moral, and practical implications, consolations, and demands of the truth proclaimed and explained in the body of the sermon. That's what we mean by application. A conscious effort on our part to bring home to each hearer's conscience the spiritual, moral, and practical implications, consolations, and demands of the truths proclaimed and explained in the body of the sermon. Now before moving to our next head, let me give a word of qualification.

Qualification: The Spirit's Work in Application

15:50 And that word of qualification is that I am not asserting, nor were these other men, that God only makes applications at the precise points that we need to make. Under the preaching of the Word and the Spirit of God operating by and with His own Word can make applications in a thousand areas that we never articulate and in ways that to us seem relatively unconnected with what we're preaching. And that's one of the great mysteries of the Word of God turned loose. God can and does do things that far exceed anything we could conceive of.

16:33 Or that we could legitimately work in to the applicatory elements of our sermons. And therefore I am not suggesting in the least that our conscious efforts at application will be the measure of the application made by the Holy Ghost in the act of preaching. God is greater and bigger than our purposes and His work, bless His name, exceeds our ability and our efforts. However, the field of our concern is not to open up what God is free in His sovereignty to do, what in the exercise of His sovereignty He actually does, but we're concerned with what our responsibility is as preachers. And our responsibility is to labor in our preaching to make sure that with our proclamation and explanation there is application of scriptural truth with specific references to the thinking, behavior patterns, affections, consciences, and wills of our hearers. And then we shall leave to God to do what we could never imagine He would do, but to expect Him to do that work while we do not labor

18:01 towards that end, and, and, and, and, is gross presumption and reflects either moral cowardice or a defective view of preaching. And I have found, alas, both in many who preach. Well, having given a description and definition of application in preaching with that caveat at the end, we come now to letter B, a demonstration of the scriptural basis of application in preaching. And, brethren, if I cannot persuade your conscience from Scripture that this is your duty, then my whole case falls to the ground and it ought to fall.

Scriptural Basis: 2 Timothy 3:16-4:2

18:45 For I am not giving you my personal theory of preaching. I'm attempting to give a theology of preaching hammered out of the Word of God itself. And I'm amazed at how many people don't even assume that maybe the Bible that teaches us that preaching is central in the purposes of God, just might contain the materials to construct a theology of how we ought to preach.

19:13 And I've approached the whole subject with that conviction of the sufficiency of Scripture. So then, I would seek to lay before you what I have called in your notes a scriptural case for applicatory preaching. And the first line of evidence is what I am called to do. I am calling the most crucial passage, which in reality is the locus classicus on the subject of application in preaching, namely 2 Timothy 3.16 through chapter 4 and verse 2. And you'll notice in your notes that I have listed that as number one. Having told Timothy that from a child or from a nursing babe he had known the Scriptures which are able to make one wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus, he goes on to say that all Scripture is God-breathed and is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction or discipline or training which is in righteousness that the man of God may be complete,

20:36 furnished, completely unto every good work. God-breathed Scripture is not only sufficient to teach us all we need to know about ourselves as those who need God's salvation, but all we need to know about that salvation as it has come to us in space, time, history and the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he says, Timothy, Scripture is also inspired of God and adequate to furnish you completely unto every good work and it will do that as you personally experience its profit in teaching. That is, enlarging your mind in an understanding of the revelation of God's mind with respect to everything concerning which he speaks in Scripture. That's teaching. It is profitable for teaching, but not only for teaching, but also for reproof, for pointing out those areas wherein your thinking, in your patterns of life, in your speech, in your attitudes, you are walking contrary to the salvation that you possess in Jesus Christ.

21:58 Scripture is profitable for not only teaching, but for reproof and then for correction, not only pointing out the wrongs, but then marking out the proper way in which to walk so as to please God and also for discipline or training in the realm of righteousness. What does it mean to think righteously, to feel righteously, to act righteously in all the relationships of life? And now to the man of God who himself is being continually equipped and gradually furnished by the impact of Scripture upon the totality of his own redeemed humanity. He then says, I charge you in the sight of God and of Christ Jesus, preach the Word, be urgent in season, out of season, reproof,

23:01 exhort with all suffering and teaching. Timothy, you are, with that Word which continually makes its impact upon your own heart, with a disposition of patience, you are to open up its truth, its doctrines in the manner of teaching, but you are not simply to leave the teaching our people will take to itself, to themselves, its legitimate rebukes, reproofs, encouragements, incentives to action, but with that Word you are to reprove as well as to comfort and seek to incite with biblical motivation to godly action. And therefore when people say in that trite little old semi-humorous shop-worn terminology, well, he really left preaching and went to meddling, there's no way you can handle the Word of God right without meddling. You've not preached until you've meddled, because the very nature of Scripture demands meddling,

24:26 training in righteousness. And Paul does not envision Timothy, his faithful spiritual son, engaging in a ministry of proclaiming the Word of God. There being in that proclamation the solid substance of apostolic teaching at its foundation, he is not to be carried away with Jewish favor, he is not to be carried away by the pressure that will rise around him of those who turn away from the truth. No, he is to cling to the Word of truth, he is to hold to the pattern of sound word.

25:10 That teaching is to be the basis of all of his ministerial exercises, but he is to have a concern to do something more than merely give the objective teaching. With that teaching he is to reprove, he is to rebuke, he is to exhort in all of the breadth of the meaning of that word exhort with consolation, encouragement, with seeking to press people with gospel motivations to action. As you know, if you've ever done a word study of the verb parakaleo or the noun paraklesis, you know that it involves the full spectrum of everything from consolation to mild rest. To reproof, to encouragement, seeking to impel to action. Timothy, you are not out there with a long-bring and patient heart in spite of declension all around you. Preach the Word when you feel like it and when you don't feel like it. And in your preaching the Word conscience, you've given the teaching and you leave the applications to the Holy Ghost.

26:30 Timothy, you reprove.

26:35 Do it with long-suffering. Do it with patience. Do it with patience. But do it.

26:42 Do it! Timothy, you are to do it. And so I say this is the locus classicus with regard to the Biblical case for applicatory preaching. But then secondly, the recorded sermons of the prophets, apostles, and our Lord are all of them fundamentally applicatory in their very nature and substance.

Scriptural Basis: Recorded Sermons of Prophets, Apostles, and Christ

27:12 When we read the recorded sermons of the prophets, the apostles, and our Lord, we see the applicatory element as a dominant and an essential ingredient in their preaching. For example,

27:30 any denunciations of sin were specific and they related to the concrete realities of the specific sins of the specific people to whom they were speaking. In Isaiah 1, you have the formalism of Judah in that day dealt with in the most concrete, vivid, graphic, forceful language imaginable. Jehovah says, what unto me feast and your new moons and your sabbaths. I cannot away with it.

28:10 I'm sick and tired of the whole thing. When you make me I won't hear you. That's not some generic statement. God is concerned about the purity of this worship.

28:22 Don't you think you ought to go home and reflect upon that and see if in some way or another it does not have some relevance to your present patterns of life.

28:42 Think of our Lord Jesus. After warning his own disciples about the painful influence of the scribes and the Pharisees, he turns to them and in those horrible woes he describes with an incisiveness and with a vividness of imagery and even with a grotesqueness of simile and metaphor their specific sins in ways that they must have gnashed their teeth.

29:10 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 take your draft your camel gets loose from behind your tent and he stands in your cup and you gulp down your wine with the whole camel you strain out a gnat and you swallow a camel that's not flattering that's not generic that was specific it was grotesque illustration to show how utterly their moral sensitivity had become while they were nitpicking at ceremonial gnats they were swallowing down gross vagaries and gross departures from the moral law of God and then when we turn to the epistles because here I take exaltation

30:38 to some who oppose applicatory preaching they say when you're addressing the redeemed community you are to address them for what they are in their profession and never assume they are anything other than that is that so Paul had no trouble addressing the letter to the Corinthians in this kind of language in the opening chapter and here brethren if I have a little edge on what I say forgive me I trust I'm not sinning with the edge Paul called the apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God and Sosthenes our brother to the church of God which is at Corinth even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus called saints with all that call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in every place their Lord and ours and then in verse 4 he tells them the things for which he gives thanks he gives he does address them as a community but does that mean he has no right to call them to searching of heart to blasting away by specific applicatory writing to them that there may be some self-deceived and hypocrites among them turn to chapter 6 and what do I read

32:06 verse 9 to a people all right in Christ Jesus called saints know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God don't within the Christian community be deceived neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with men nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God he says that to a Christian community and then he goes on to say such were some of you but if you're you have come under the dynamics of redemptive grace that lifestyle has been left behind definitively radically pervasively but he recognized that there might be some in the assembly who having experienced something less than a true work of grace were on the verge of self-deception that they could put in the realm of the struggle with remaining sin patterns of idolatry of the adultery

33:36 homosexuality and he says don't eat whatever sins may be consistent with the dethroning of reigning sin and the vile actions of remaining sin no patterns of these sins is consistent with being in a state of grace don't be deceived and you see in doing that he didn't simply say now don't be deceived any gross pattern of continuous involvement in naughty things you won't enter the kingdom I'll leave to you to make the application he got specific and he got specific with the sins that were most likely to be the manifestations of reigning sin there at you find it in 2nd Corinthians 12 he says I have fears about you I have fears about you I fear verse 20 of 2nd Corinthians 12 I fear lest by any means when I come I should find you not such as I would and you should myself be found of you such as you would not lest by any means and then he gets specific there should be strife

35:04 jealousies raths factions backbiting whisperings swellings tumults lest again when I come my God should humble me before you and I should mourn for many of you that many of them that have sinned heretofore and repented not of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they committed he didn't deal in broad generalities brethren he said I fear lest when I come my heart will be broken and instead of you finding me as you would a loving spiritual father you'll find me coming with the rob of correction and sternness what will ye that I come in love or with a rob you'd love to have me come and stroke you with gospel consolations but I may not come in the way you would like me to come because I may find you to be not as I desire to find you to be and he didn't deal in vague generalities I wonder what Paul meant about that cryptic statement he hopes that maybe he can come and he'll not be grieved and we'll not be grieved I wonder what he meant by that he didn't say well I'll give them the principle and let the Holy Ghost apply it he got

36:19 and then after all of that he says in chapter 13 in verse 5 you people putting me on trial I'm not on trial my as a servant of God and of Christ and an apostle has no just grounds to be questioned rather he says try your own selves whether you are in the faith prove your own selves put your own selves know ye not as to your own selves that Jesus Christ is in you unless in deed ye be reprobate oh you mean he assumed there might be some such within the pale of the church yes he did now those that clearly manifested a pattern of sin inconsistent with being in a state of grace he very clearly dealt with in chapter 5 and said the next time you gather together wicked man but he had no notions that excommunicating that blatantly immoral man was the end of the problem of the possibility of unconverted people within the church so you see the denunciations of the prophets of our lord and of the apostles are found to be consistently specific and applicatory in their nature now we'll

Scriptural Basis: Consolations and Attributes of God

37:49 break right there and then we'll pick right up because I said I plan to stick with this through the next hour and trying to show some sensitivity to our dear ladies we'll break at this point and God willing come back and take up and illustrate that the consolations are just as specific and the announcements of God's attributes and purposes take the same flavor as well alright well brethren taking our outlines and seeking to pick up the thread of thought where I'm seeking to demonstrate the biblical case for application as an essential and vital element of all true preaching we are opening up number two at the top of page 2.7 the recorded sermons of the prophets apostles and our Lord and I sought to demonstrate that the denunciations of sin were thundered forth in the concrete realities of the specific sins under which the or which the hearers were guilty or of which they were guilty but the same is true also with the consolations of the distressed and we find in the preaching recorded as done by the apostles

39:18 the prophets and our Lord when it was consolatory in nature it was also distinctly applicatory for example the upper room discourse our Lord recognizing that the hearts of his own were troubled because he had announced that he was to leave them he gives them one consolation after another tailor made to the very circumstances of their present grief against the backdrop of his announced departure likewise in revelation two and three surely Jesus ought to know how to preach to his churches and in revelation two and three we find in beginning every one of the messages to those seven churches in Asia minor with the words I know thy works and where commendation was in order he gave commendation but not in generic terms he gave commendation in terms of the specific and the concrete manifestations of their fidelity to Christ and the cause of the gospel in their circumstances when he points out sin he does not do it generically say I have something against you and the Holy Spirit will cause you to know what it is no he says I have this against you

40:47 you've left your first love I have this against you you suffer that woman Jezebel to teach my servants to commit fornication this is what concerns me you have a name that you're alive but you are dead and so both the consolations given the exposing of sin takes the particular and you find that in the epistles for example first Thessalonians four verses fourteen and following the apostle Paul did not simply say I understand there are some of you grieving because your loved ones have died and because you have unclear views about the second coming of the come you're distressed take my word for it everything will turn out all right no he gives specific doctrinal instruction fleshing out their understanding of the relationship of the second coming particularly to dead and living saints because that was the peculiar problem that was causing their distress then he says at the end wherefore comfort one another with these words not generic words about the second coming but the specific details of that coming as they relate to dead saints and living saints that's why he says that we who are alive will not have a first class

42:17 entrance into heaven rather the Lord is going to take care of his sleeping ones first the dead in Christ will rise first right down to the numerical not so that jokers could have charts and the people at Thessalonica could have comfort particular question that was burning within their breasts at that time and likewise even the pronouncements of God's attributes and purposes they take their shape and their form from the peculiar setting and circumstances of the people of God we love to quote and rightly so as a good proof text for God's absolute sovereignty Daniel 4 35 that great statement from the lips of Nebuchadnezzar concerning God doing according to His will among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay His hand but God didn't just dump that generic statement of His sovereignty into a vacuum but it grows out of a situation in which that element of divine sovereignty is set forth in a unique aptly setting and we can go through the scriptures it almost seems like trying to prove

43:46 that words are words it's so patent in the recorded sermons of prophets apostles and our Lord so in summary let me say that what is said of our Lord's preaching should be true of us we read in Matthew 21 45 they perceived that He spake of them they did not stand back and admire and say isn't that a marvelous sermon for somewhere at some time in some place under God's heaven they said that is a word directed to us in these circumstances on this particular occasion and I would urge you if it's been a while since you've read the section in Charles Bridges on applicatory preaching to read it again page 271 he has a wonderful distillation of the entire witness scripture with reference to this matter of applicatory preaching but I do want to say a word very quickly regarding the witness of church history we've looked at the what I believe to be the watershed text the recorded sermons of prophets apostles and our Lord and if our perception is right then there ought to be the quality control and the validating voice of the

Historical Witness and Refutation of Objections

45:16 history of the church and surely when we look at the history of preaching particularly as we are able to trace it much more fully in reformation and post reformation preaching though some light can be given from such men as Chrysostom however you pronounce it and some of the other great preachers of the early post apostolic church history what we learn from the reformation onwards speaks with one voice that whenever God has blessed his church with powerful preaching in the widespread conversion of sinners in the building up of a community of vigorously godly useful saints biblical applicatory preaching has been at the heart of those movements of God in his very helpful work Dr. Packer's work a quest for godliness which is really a collection of essays done over the years in reference to puritanism he has a wonderful statement with respect to this element in puritan preaching on page 286 he says puritan preaching was piercing in its applications over and above applicatory generalizations the preachers trained their homiletical searchlights

46:44 on specific states of spiritual need and spoke to these in a precise and detailed way earlier we noted how Perkins in his classic work the art of prophesying distinguished the different classes of people that the preacher could expect to be addressing in any ordinary congregation the ignorant and unteachable who needed the equivalent of a bomb under their seats the ignorant but teachable who needed orderly instruction in what Christianity is all about the knowledgeable but unhumbled who needed to be given a sense of sin the humbled and desperate who needed to be grounded in the truth of the gospel believers going on with God who needed to be built up believers who had fallen into error intellectual or moral and who needed correction other subcategories spring to mind once one starts thinking of the congregation in these terms such as the discouraged the hurting or the depressed this is what the Puritans described as melancholy and then he goes on to make reference to what I want to make reference to and that is the directory for public worship and in the directory of public worship which is included in the versions of the

48:14 Westminster Confession of Faith and the larger and shorter catechisms that we have available in our own bookstore in that directory for public worship which the ministers were to take seriously we find the following statement the preacher is not to rest in general doctrine although never so much cleared and confirmed but to bring it home especially to the spiritual use by application to his hearers which albeit it prove a work of great difficulty to himself requiring much prudence zeal and meditation and to the natural and corrupt man will be very unpleasant yet he is to endeavor to perform it in such a manner that his hearers may feel may feel that the word of God is quick and powerful and a discernment of the thoughts and intents of the heart and that if any unbeliever or ignorant person be present he may have the secret of his heart made manifest and give glory to God an illusion to 1 Corinthians 14 and I believe it's verse 25 it is also sometimes requisite to give some notes of trial which is very profitable especially when performed by able and experienced ministers with circumspection and prudence and the signs

49:42 clearly grounded on the Holy Scripture whereby the hearers may be able to examine themselves whether they have attained those graces and performed those duties to which he exhorted or to be guilty of the sin reprehended and in danger of the judgments threatened etc. etc. in other words these men regarded the application of the word of God as an essential aspect of the proper preaching of the scriptures and even those whose views of preaching have not been known to produce searching applicatory preachers there is recognition of the necessity of application it's very interesting that in Dr. Edmund Clowney's book On Call to the Ministry he writes on page 60 this leads to the third aspect of preaching reflected in a third group of New Testament terms preaching means application the preacher exhorts comforts reproves rebukes warns and censures 2nd Timothy 3.16 2nd Timothy 4.2 Titus 1.9

51:03 the requirement for an elder he must be able to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers preachers preaching today requires apostolic practicality as well as apostolic orthodoxy Dr. Clowney who's been known to greatly advance the cause of a view of preaching against which I have spoken when it is a dominant view and becomes a straight jacket nonetheless recognize in dealing with the word of God with integrity that there's a whole block of biblical terms that viability that cannot in any way be related to preaching if the concept of application is absent and so though we could give you many other quotes of the confirming voice of history let me conclude this heading by dealing briefly number four with a refutation of the objection that application is a work of the Holy Spirit now there are those who say I am simply to open the text and I am to leave to the Holy Spirit to make the application to the hearts of men now we concede the fact that only the Holy Spirit can make the most carefully thought out most penetrating searching application

52:32 morally effectual that is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit just as the most painstaking careful clear teaching can only be understood by the illuminating ministry of the Spirit so the most painstaking deterring application can only be made effectual in the conscience by the Holy Spirit granted the Spirit can illuminate and tell us as to how we preach that would lead to the view that preaching is nothing but reading the text explanation position not to speak also of application no the Holy Spirit alone can illuminate in the knowledge of the truth he alone can make effectual the pressure of the truth upon the affections the judgment the conscience and the will just as we are to labor to make the word of God clear and plain to our people we are to labor in the matter of pointed specific applications trusting to the Holy Spirit to bring it home with power for example when Peter

53:59 stands before his hearers in an evangelistic setting and in Acts chapter 2 is preaching he does not say now there were some people at a certain point in history that did some naughty things to Jesus go home and think about it and I'll go home and pray that if you were in any way involved in that God will convict you now when they heard this they were stabbed as with a dab and who did that the Holy Ghost but what did Peter do he didn't traffic in vague generalities certain things happened in Jerusalem a few days ago that were despicable some of you might be implicated and since I would not usurp the office of the Holy Spirit you go home and what nonsense and I'm convinced that the heart of it is moral reading of the scriptures for himself

Guidelines for Cultivating Applicatory Aptitude

55:28 therefore I trust you are persuaded from the scriptures that applicatory preaching is of the very essence of biblical preaching now I must hasten to let her see some guidelines for cultivating aptitude in application and brethren I've chosen my words carefully guidelines I didn't say rules they're guidelines and it's a set of guidelines to cultivate this is a process to cultivate aptitude I didn't say perfection or the most unique gift and facility I hope the statement is reasonable guidelines for cultivating aptitude in application and I have before you four of them number one there must be continual engagements in the disciplines of personal piety one of the emphases that the men in the academy get and if they reject it I feel my hands are clean that it isn't because they didn't hear it enough and that is in the language of the old writer the life of a minister is the life of his ministry and the greatest task of any

56:56 minister has nothing to do with his outward ministerial duties it has to Proverbs 4 23 guard thy heart above all that thou guardest for out of it are the issues of life that my greatest responsibility with reference to the word of God is not my public treatment of it but its treatment of me in secret that it's when I take the posture of the disciple who he has his own ear wakened morning by morning as one that is taught only then can I speak with the tongue of the learned and if I'm to be an applicatory preacher it will grow out of the matrix of my own devotional disciplines when day after day I'm coming to the word of God preaching every statement every syllable every paragraph every segment of narrative my own heart not merely reading to refresh myself in my general acquaintance with the content of scripture to be a better preacher though that is a secondary purpose but primarily reading with a view that God may do what teach me prove me correct me and , train me in righteousness for the script is given to perfect me into being the man of God I ought to be and it's

58:26 when you are diving into your own heart under the present ministry the word and the spirit in the secret place that you will begin to be equipped to dive into the hearts of others in the sanctuary with the word of God and under the power and unction of the Holy Spirit you see the relationship of 2nd Timothy 3 16 and 17 to chapter 4 and verse 2 if Timothy would preach the word reprove rebuke and exhort others he must first of all have scripture reproving rebuking and exhorting him and here again I'm convinced brethren that over the long haul richness in application can only come with an ever growing richness of inner spiritual experience stale location is usually the mirror of stales of heart interaction with God in the secret place guidelines to cultivate aptitude and application there must be continual engagement in the disciplines of personal piety and then there must be we must experience the continual engagements of pastoral intimacy and you see it is obvious

59:55 that much of what is found in the gospels of the recorded discourses of our Lord and in the epistles of the apostolic directives to the churches grew out of pastoral intimacy with men when our Lord knows that some are vying for position he brings a sermon on humility when he knows that the hearts of the disciples are fearful and unedled he comforts them in the upper room discourse when Paul's Paul learns from the household of Chloe that there are divisions at current he takes three chapters to address the subject and even tells who the tackler was it has been reported to me of the household of Chloe that there are divisions among you you see his real awareness of Timothy's temperament his physical condition which gives shape and form and subtle nuances to his letter grew out of his intimate personal pastoral acquaintance with Timothy and so must it be thus if the truth expounded is to find its mark in applications applications which are related to our people where they are at this time then we must continually engage in those disciplines of pastoral intimacy get out of touch with your people and your preaching will be out of touch with your people

61:24 that's one of the most tragic things when a man reacting against shallow simplistic views of preaching becomes convinced that he must study long and study hard and must become weary at his desk allows his books and his desk to isolate him from his people it is amazing how much you can learn just by being among your people both individually and in their corporate gatherings when you move among them and you keep your ears open you keep your eyes open you see patterns you see relationships you see and feel dynamics that without in any way using the pulpit as a coward's nest from which to shoot at issues that you ought to have the moral courage to deal with one to one you pick up patterns that are the legitimate focus of pastoral application again I resist the temptation to quote some of the old masters who saw this all clearly and who wrote so forcefully upon it but then thirdly there must be continual engagement in intellectual

62:53 industry I said yesterday that preaching in great measure is imitative and if we are to be good applicatory preachers we must be reading those sermons and treatises which are examples of good applicatory preaching and as we do there is a conditioning of the mind there is the cultivation of an applicatory mindset we do not read good applicatory preachers necessarily to extract the applications and to give them to our people in a totally different setting and in a totally different context but we begin to develop a mindset of an applicatory preacher we see how the preacher makes the bridge from the exposition to the application and as we expose our own minds and spirits to such ministries both in books and in living preachers that can sit under or listened to by tape there is by this intellectual industry atoning and a conditioning of our own preachers mind and disposition with reference to the matter of application in preaching and then I would say in the fourth place there must be continual engagements in the

64:21 disciplines of homiletical sedulity and I only use that fancy word so we have piety intimacy industry and sedulity but it's a good word sedulous is that which has the quality of working hard working steadily plodding on and so it is a good word and there must be homiletical sedulity why do I say that because there are some passages of scripture there are some individual texts of scripture which virtually cry out for a vast array of applications and the moment you begin to study them you find that you must start whacking away with the discipline of exclusion in order to restrain all of the applicatory data that begins to spill out from that amazing creation of God called the human brain however there are other passages in other sections of scripture where the exposition is not relatively difficult but how to make the bridge when the people have heard what we say and are asking so what the answer is not so simple and we don't want to be artificial and we don't want to be forced and we don't want to make illegitimate and unwarranted applications because you see they won't carry the conscience of an intelligent people a people trained by that example of the responsible

65:50 handling of the word of God when you make a leap from the text to an application in which no one no one even Solomon could not find the umbilical cord of logical connection you're discerning people won't feel the pressure of that application because you are not bringing the word of God to bear upon that application to the conscience you're hanging that application on the sky and so there are some passages where we must think and labor and pray and pray and think and labor long there must be the discipline of homiletical sedulity now then letter D some concluding observations and counsels about application in preaching and I have listed for nine of them alright tighten your seatbelt and we're going to make our way through them God helping us first make this aspect of your sermon preparation a matter of earnest prayer not only do we need to pray oh God undress my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law help me to ascertain the mind of the spirit in the text in the passage in the theme that I'm going to open up from the scriptures but oh God make me sensitive to its legitimate applications to the people who will be

Concluding Observations and Counsels

67:19 before me we must cry to God for that wisdom promise to those who ask him we must plead specifically that the Lord would grant us help in this area then kinkly remember and consider the real and diverse categories of people who are attending upon your ministry I try to carry my congregation into my study and when my mind is not engaged in direct mental disciplines that would exclude it try to have the congregation there before you as you're preparing that sermon think of them who are they well there's that family where they've just had the third child all of them five years old and under there's that family that's just put a loved one into a nursing home there's a family where the man has just lost a job you seek to bring near at the study and at the desk the congregation in the real and diverse categories of those who are attending upon your ministry to be specific letter a remember the three main divisions of mankind to some degree present in every service the church and the world the people of god gathered but unconverted

68:49 gather with them the faithful and the hypocrites who are members of the church in any well ordered church the only ones on the membership should be true believers and clever hypocrites true believers who manifest at least the minimal marks of grace and clever hypocrites. That's it. But remember, there are clever hypocrites. And though we should not preach week after week as though three quarters of the members are clever hypocrites, that would be an imbalanced history to preach as though there's no possibility that you have a Judas in your ranks is to betray your trust. Remember, there are the faithful and the hypocrites, and then thirdly there are the various stages of spiritual growth within the church. John was conscious of that. I run to you fathers. I write unto you young men. I write unto you little born

69:46 ones. He was conscious of those divisions. The writer to the Hebrews was conscious that there in the Hebrew believing community there were some who were full grown men who by reason of use had their senses exercised to discern good and evil. But there were also those who were relatives.

70:04 The same is true in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 where Paul is conscious of those various stages of spiritual growth within the church. Then remember the chronological divisions of the congregation. You've got people who are struggling with the problems of old age and my dear brethren, you'll soon be in that category. Some of us know that we're on the borders of it. There was a time when we could pop out of bed and we could go to bed and head straight to the study to pray. We didn't need caffeine to hit our brain. We didn't need to loosen up the arthritic conditions from surgical procedures on backs and knees. And we're very, very conscious that we're heading to our graves. Well, remember the

70:58 age differences, the children, the little ones, the age, the infirmed. Remember the occupational differences, the temptations, the struggles. The concerns of the man bearing burden of executive responsibility and the temptations that are peculiarly his and different from the man working on the construction crew.

71:21 Those differences are there. Thirdly, when applications are hard in coming, here's my third general counsel, consult the proven matters. Matthew Henry, John Calvin, the Puritans, Spurgeon and Add, Bishop Ryle. There's a man sitting here who'll bear witness to this.

71:38 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, I'm not going to ask you to do any more than that. Well, then he began to notice there was a new freshness, and the people began to notice. Oh, Matthew Henry and Bishop Ryle stood him in good stead.

72:15 Dear people, don't ever get to where you outgrow Matthew Henry and Bishop Ryle in Spurgeon. Let the smart alecks in the seminaries say those guys don't know from nothing that you feed your hungry sheep, finding in those storehouses rich materials for the true people of God. I could care less about the experts sitting in their classrooms who've never held a congregation for a month with their preaching, telling me how to preach.

72:47 The only, quote, profession that even tolerates it is the ministry.

72:53 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.

73:20 He sat under the man who had done it hundreds of times and did it the best.

73:27 And it is a wretched, abominable man how to preach.

73:39 There is nowhere in the Word of God where any man was ever given a stewardship to train others to preach who himself was not a preacher.

73:51 And it's time some of us had the moral courage to rise up and back on our hind legs and say, enough is enough.

74:00 I'm not saying there is no place for graduate schools of biblical studies, but let's call them that. And if we would have preachers, let them learn from preachers, both living and dead, how to preach. And old Bishop Ryle, with all his learning, could hold the commoners in Liverpool year in and year out, hanging upon his words. And Spurgeon had everything from the gentry to the costermongers and to housemaids.

74:29 Five thousand, morning and evening for thirty years. He must have been doing something right. He didn't have any banjos and tambourines and he even had some strong things to say about an organ. He said, fill up those pipes with concrete.

74:47 That's what he said. God's given us a more glorious pipe with which to praise him. So brethren, when applications are hard in coming, consult the proven masters. And don't overlook Calvin's book, The Ten Thousand Sermons.

75:05 He was always a pastor. That's why I love his expositions. Always the pastor. Fourthly, don't expect a uniform density of application in every sermon.

75:16 Don't expect uniform density. When preaching through a book, sometimes it may be that half the sermon, time-wise, is taken up with applications. Next week, only five minutes. Don't put yourself in bondage.

75:30 Be Christ's free man. Don't expect uniform density of application in every sermon. Five, avoid a stereotyped and predictable structure in the general framework. If you always apply at the same place and almost at the same time, 12.08 is application time, the human heart is perverse enough to learn how to pull down some insulating material at 12.07. But as someone has said, surprise your people. Out of bright blue sky, when their eyes, mental eyes, are just gazing at the beauty of that sky, drop on them a thunderbolt of searching application when they least expect it.

76:12 Don't become stereotyped and predictable in the general framework of your application. Six, make judicious use of searching questions in your application. I'll never forget when I first began to read the Puritans, Aaliyah's Alarm to the Unconverted, and Baxter's Call to the Unconverted. And it just overwhelmed me how these men used strings of questions to force people to reflect on their true spiritual state.

76:44 You see, when you press a question upon your hearers and look them straight in the eyeballs back to the retina and say, now my hearer, my hearer, listen to me. I have a question I want to ask. In the light of this passage, can you say that? Now answer, not out audibly.

77:03 Don't answer so the person, but I want you to answer right now in your own mind and answer as honestly as you'll be forced to answer in the day of judgment. And then you press the question. You see, a question is a marvelous device to force people to reflect upon the issue that we are pressing in application. This is where reading the Old Masters will help you and you'll learn by example and osmosis.

77:31 Seven, pray for and expect the aid of the Spirit in suggesting additional applications in the act of preaching. Any preacher who knows anything of the help of the Holy Spirit knows whereof I'm speaking. You've labored in the study. You've come prepared to make certain applications.

77:50 But you've also come and prayed. And I find it helpful at times to write next to my notes in some of the white spaces on the notes, Oh, God, choose my arrows. And in the actual heat of preaching, when you're making applications, God makes your mind hurtle and unthought of applications will come. And at times it's amazing when people will come and say, Pastor, you know that application?

78:16 Yes. That was as though you were describing my situation. God came to me with such comfort as you made that application. God came to me with such conviction as you made that application.

78:29 Brethren, this may sound like wild-eyed fanaticism to men for whom preaching is nothing but an intellectual and rhetorical exercise, but for those of us to whom the Holy Ghost, the living, present reality, this is not fanaticism. Pray for and expect the aid of the Spirit. Counsel number eight, be prepared to pay the price of consistent, close application. You want to keep the conscience of your prayer?

79:02 Are your people sensitive to God? They will not be kept sensitive if the applicatory element is absent. But it means the people who don't want to walk in the light, those who either with pockets of remaining sin or because of reigning sin will not come to the light lest their deeds should be reproved. John 3.

79:27 Oh, what an amazing array of designations they can give to the preacher who's determined that they will confront God in the preaching. Be prepared to pay the price of consistent, close application. And finally, be Christ's free man to make Christ's legitimate applications whenever you preach. Don't let any theory or school of preaching put you into bondage.

80:01 You may wish to make applications in your introduction, but if they're sensible and they're connected with Scripture, you have every right to do so. Don't become anything other than what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7.23, you have been bought with a price. Be not the slaves of men.

80:25 Well, may God help us, brethren, to be Bible preachers who in all of our proclamation and explanation of the Word of God labor at making application to the lives, the consciences, the patterns of life of our hearers, both for conviction, for consolation, for direction in the things of God. Let us pray. Oh, our Father, we feel again how much we need Your grace if we are to preach as we ought to preach. May Your Holy Spirit take the things we've considered this morning and whatever has been true to the mind of spirit, rivet them to our hearts, give us grace to implement them in our lives to the end that the unconverted would be saved through our labors, the saints of God instructed, comforted, built up, strengthened to have a sensitively honed conscience by the Word of God. Oh, Lord, may Christ Himself come in all of His power to our people by means of our poor efforts to proclaim His truth. Hear us and bless in the ongoing fellowship of this day, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.