“Thus Saith the Lord”… Except He Didn’t
How preachers end up saying what God never said
Some of the worst preaching you will ever hear can come from the most stringent Bible-believing preacher.
The text may be explained well, the outline can be flawless, the doctrine may be sound, but then the preacher arrives at the “application,” everything goes off the rails, destroying everything else that may have been said or intended.
Haddon Robinson, the author of Biblical Preaching, once stated that more heresy is preached in application than in any other part of the sermon.1 While that statement may sound exaggerated, it is difficult to dismiss once you have listened to more than a dozen different preachers.
To be clear, every preacher feels the temptation to make the sermon “land.” But that is exactly where he must be most careful. A man tasked with speaking for God must resist the urge to stop heralding Christ and start managing behavior.
The problem is not that the application is unnecessary; however, the fact that the application is necessary does not mean it is simple. In fact, it may be the most delicate part of preaching, because it is here that the preacher must bring the living Word of God to bear on living people without confusing God’s commands with his own preferences.
Unfortunately, not understanding this, we have trained congregations to think that a sermon is only helpful if it ends with a few concrete steps to implement before next Sunday. We have catechized people into thinking that if they do not leave with a list, or at least are convinced about what they are not doing, then they have not really been preached to.
Binding Consciences
One of the most common ways an application goes wrong is when the preacher slides from what God has commanded to what he believes wise Christians should do in response, without clearly distinguishing the two. This often happens sincerely and with good intentions, which is part of what makes it so dangerous.
The preacher wants to be helpful and to guard people from sin, but in his eagerness to make the sermon useful, he begins to present his own judgments with the tone and force of divine law.
There is a difference between what binds the conscience and what may simply be prudent in a given situation. If those categories are not kept distinct, the preacher begins to function not as a minister of the Word but as a promoter of legalism.
To illustrate this difference, “Do not commit adultery” is the command of God, and the application is simple: “Do not commit adultery.”
“Never have lunch with a woman who is not your wife” may be wise counsel, but it is not the command of God.
“Be not drunk with wine…” is the command of God, and the application is simple: “Do not get drunk.”
“Any Christian who drinks alcohol is in sin” is not what God has said.
Or another, “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel…” and the application is simple: it is a command to spread the gospel.
However, saying that every faithful Christian must go door-knocking every Saturday morning is going beyond the text.
Do you see how quickly it can get away from what God has clearly said to what the preacher thinks is wise or right? These things may be offered as wisdom, but they must not be preached as though they carry the same authority as the Word of God. Once that line is blurred, two things begin to happen.
As Robinson points out, in the short term,
One effect is that you undermine the Scriptures you say you are preaching. Ultimately, people come to believe that anything with a biblical flavor is what God says.2
When man-made applications are delivered as requirements, and people later realize that those requirements were never actually in the text, they do not learn to distinguish more carefully between Scripture and human wisdom. Often, they simply begin distrusting everything.
The preacher may have intended to make people take holiness more seriously, but what he has actually done is train them to suspect that many of the things spoken in God’s name are not, in fact, from God at all. Once that suspicion settles in, it rarely stays neatly confined to the preacher’s applications, but begins to erode confidence in the authority of Scripture itself.
Robinson continues,
The long-term effect is that we preach a mythology. Myth has an element of truth along with a great deal of puff, and people tend to live in the puff. They live with the implications of implications, and then they discover that what they thought God promised, he didn’t promise.3
What may be even more dangerous is that this type of preaching slowly creates in the minds of his people a god who does not exist, because if week after week he speaks with divine force where God has never spoken.
They are being taught to relate to a false version of God, a god who has demands He never made, and expectations He never imposed. In other words, the preacher may still use the name of God, but he is steadily teaching his people into a distorted vision of God. He is not merely misapplying the Bible; worse, He is misrepresenting the Lord.
That is why this issue is far more serious than a mere preaching style problem. It is about whether the preacher is actually helping people hear the voice of the Shepherd or whether he is layering his own voice over it so heavily that the sheep can no longer tell the difference.
The Most Practical Thing a Preacher Can Do
One of the most subtle and dangerous ways an application fails is when the sermon begins with Christ but ends with the hearer focused once again on himself.
The sermon may open with grace, but then in the final movement it quietly turns inward and leaves the believer not with Christ’s sufficiency but with a panic about whether he is serious enough.
Lest I confuse you, this is not to say that we do not give the commands of God. The law must be given, and sin must be named, but the preacher must never leave the hearer there. Faithful application wounds, but it wounds to heal. It strips away false confidence to place the hearer again on the solid ground of Christ for us. And if the application of the sermon does not finally drive the hearer there, then no matter how practical it sounded, it was not truly pastoral.
The most practical thing a preacher can do is not to make Christianity feel manageable; it is to tell the truth. To tell the truth about God, to tell the truth about sin, and to tell the truth about Christ. We must apply that truth in such a way that he neither softens the law nor sidelines the gospel.
What Now?
So how do we keep from falling into the trap of false application? It requires that we have confidence in the ordinary means of grace and to believe that God actually knows how to sanctify His people better than we do.
If we do not fully trust that what Christ proclaimed is actually enough, we will begin turning the application of our sermons into manageable burdens, hoping to produce visible results. But the church does not need more applied law; she needs Christ.
She does not need to hear “go do better,” she needs to hear “believe this!”
Believe that you are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Believe that you have been raised with Christ and your life is hid with Him in God.
Believe that your standing before God rests on His promise.
Believe that Christ is enough.
Believe that the Spirit actually works through the ordinary means God has appointed.
Believe that beholding Christ is the only thing that will truly transform.
Friends, this isn’t less application, it is the only kind that works.
Haddon Robinson, “The Heresy of Application.” Interview by Edward K. Rowell in
Leadership Journal 18: 4 (Fall 1997): 20-27.
Ibid,.
Ibid,.
Excellent. Saving.