Where's Jesus in Our Preaching? (w/ Ken Jones) | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we're going to be discussing

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Jesus in our preaching and what happened and where he went. What is

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Christ -centered preaching? And just giving an invitation or slapping the gospel at the end of a sermon isn't necessarily preaching

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Christ from all of scripture. And we're going to discuss why many oppose it, what it is and what it is not.

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And at the end, we talk about why it is so important that preachers be preaching Christ.

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And if you don't preach Christ, you're really not preaching at all. We're going to have this amazing conversation with a dear friend of ours,

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Ken Jones. We are so excited to have him on the podcast. Stay tuned. We're excited to announce we have a brand new podcast available called

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The Kingsmen Podcast. It's where we are reclaiming biblical manhood by training and equipping men for the work of the kingdom.

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You can find it anywhere you download a podcast. You can also watch it on YouTube. We have new episodes that come out every

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Monday. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a pastoral, confessional and reform perspective.

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If that didn't make any sense, let me explain it to you this way. This is the hope of the podcast. We're going to clarify the gospel.

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We're going to reclaim the purpose of the kingdom. And your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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And I'm John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And Justin, we're excited today.

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Something we've been waiting on for what, four or five weeks now since we scheduled this. At least that many. Yeah. Good dear friend that we've got to know recently.

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He's been loving and caring on us and he's, I would call him the pastor of pastors.

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He's been loving and caring for my heart recently, but we have Ken Jones with us today.

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And if that name sounds familiar, that means some of you probably heard him because he is the original host of the

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White Horse Inn back in the day. How many years, Ken, were you with White Horse Inn? About 20, 21 years.

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You are OG White Horse Inn, man. That's right. You really are. Yeah. And actually,

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I was not one of the original hosts, but I came on within the first year and I was like a professional pinch hitter for about two or three years.

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Mike was finishing up his doctorate at Cambridge. And so I filled in for him.

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Kim was away finishing up his doctorate and I pinch hit for him. Rod was out, so I would pinch hit.

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And then finally, I just came on as late as I could. Finally, they just said, why don't we do this over? This guy's pretty good, so maybe we can just leave him on there.

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If I can say personally, I know you kind of did this too, John, we've gotten to know Ken, you and I have in recent months.

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So Ken, thank you for reaching out. And I have been, every time we speak on the phone,

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I leave the conversation encouraged in Christ, encouraged in pastoral ministry and thankful for you, bro.

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So I'm really glad to have you on today. And I know the listeners are going to be really treated to some good stuff.

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It's great for them to hear other trusted voices and to get different perspectives than mine and John's.

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We're coming at it from maybe different places and different backgrounds, different experiences, but we believe the same things and articulate them slightly differently, and that's useful for the saints.

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So I'm excited about our conversation. I appreciate what you guys do. Yeah, absolutely.

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He's always been very encouraging. So if you want to hear more from Ken, I'd encourage you.

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You can go listen to his podcast he's been doing for, I think, as long, if not longer than Theocast, Satan's Sinners.

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You can find that on anywhere you download a podcast, and you can also go to his church's website. He's been the pastor of Glendale Baptist Church in Florida for the last 13 years.

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We just talked, he was like me, originally born and raised in California, and so knows good Mexican food when he sees it.

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That's right. But if you want to, you can go to GlendaleNBC or NBCChurch .org.

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We'll put all this in the notes. So if you just go to our notes, you'll be able to find Satan's Sinners and also the churches there.

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You can go listen to it. Satan's Sinners Unplugged. Satan's Sinners Unplugged. That's right. That's right. We'll put that all in the notes below so that you can go and listen to some good gospel -reformed covenantal, law gospel distinction, ordinary means of grace, teaching, and podcasting.

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So I encourage you to do that. Well, Justin, I don't want to waste any more time with intros. Let's go ahead and jump into it because today

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I have a feeling we're going to need all the time we need because it's, as our good friend

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Mike Amidroth says, it's going to be a picey one today. A picey one. Today's topic, relevant as always.

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Yeah. We're going to talk about Christ -centered preaching. We've got Ken on. Ken, how long have you been preaching the gospel?

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I've been preaching for, oh boy, I've been pastoring total for 40 years.

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So about 45, 46 years. There you go. You started pastoring when you were 10, right?

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Yeah. There you go. So having Ken on today, who's been preaching the gospel for decades, and then

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John and I are not quite as far along into our ministries, but we've been pastoring churches for some years now and are preaching

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Christ's word week in and week out. What better thing to talk about if you've got three preachers around the microphone than to talk about Christ and the gospel and what it is to preach

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Christ and preach the gospel because gospel -centered is a buzzword these days. Grace -driven, grace -centered is a buzzword these days.

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Christ -centered preaching is something that any serious -minded preacher is going to be aspiring to do.

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It's the topic of many pastors' conferences and different meetings of various kinds.

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We're going to get together and we're going to talk about Christ -centered preaching. It's talked about in seminaries. It's talked about all over the place. So today we're going to discuss it from a law gospel perspective, a covenantal perspective, all the things that we typically bring in our theological backpacks.

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But really what we want to do is answer a few questions. What is Christ -centered preaching? Let's start there and then maybe that might shed some light on things that are called

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Christ -centered preaching that humbly the three of us would say, yeah, we're not so sure that it is. Then lastly, for sure, we're going to say some things about application because oftentimes one of the ways that people object to reformed, redemptive, historical

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Christ -centered preaching is that, well, guys, don't we need to apply the text specifically to these various aspects of the

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Christian's life? Are we doing that well if you come at it the way you guys are encouraging us to?

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That is definitely on the table and I trust there's going to be some stuff we talk about that is unplanned and those will probably be your favorite parts of the episode.

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But anyway, we will go ahead and get this thing rolling. Because we like to be gracious hosts and we do like to let our guests talk, believe it or not.

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That would probably be a good idea. We're going to start with Ken. Ken, if I were to ask you, what is

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Christ -centered preaching? How would you begin to answer that question? I'd probably begin by using

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Jesus himself, especially in John chapter 6, where he tells the

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Pharisees, you search the Scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, but the

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Scriptures speak of me. And then later in Luke 24, the resurrected

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Christ encounters the disciples on the road to Emmaus. And it's funny, not ha -ha funny, but it's funny in that these men are sad because they don't recognize

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Jesus. And then he asks them, what's the reason that you're so sad?

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And they say, well, you know, maybe you haven't heard, but this Jesus, whom we thought was the

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Messiah, then we thought he was the one. And then all of a sudden he was killed.

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And, you know, and now come to find out something has happened to his body. We just got word that someone has stolen his body.

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And then Jesus takes them and he begins with the Old Testament or with the Psalms and the law, and he walks them through the

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Scriptures showing, and Luke is clear in making this point, showing how

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Christ must suffer all these things. So he used the Old Testament Scriptures to show that the death of Christ does not mean that he was not the one because they said, we thought he was the one, but oh, he died.

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And then after that, he goes to the other disciples and he meets with them. And again, beginning with the

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Psalms and the law and the prophets, he began to expound them through the lens of him, of himself.

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So I think Christ -centered preaching, therefore, is to understand that the overarching purpose of the

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Scriptures in general is to reveal God's saving grace, power and purpose through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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And that is laid out for us in type and shadow and promise and fulfillment.

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And it's explicit, it's implicit, it's presented in a lot of ways.

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But the overarching purpose of the Scriptures is to reveal God's grace in the person and work of Christ.

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So therefore, Christ -centered preaching is preaching all of the Scriptures through the lens of the person and work of Christ.

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Come on with it, Ken. I mean, I'm here for all of that.

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That's excellent, dude. So one way, I don't want to repeat everything you just said. I think the texts that you pointed out,

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John 5, Luke 24, are as good as any. And I think we could also talk about the hermeneutic of the apostles as well.

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When you survey the book of Acts and we consider how Peter preaches or how Paul preaches in the sermons that are recorded there, and then even the ways that the apostles write their letters to churches, it's very clear the way they interpret the

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Old Testament Scriptures is just what you said. They're taking their cue from Christ. They're seeing that all of Scripture, the law, the writings, the prophets, all of it ultimately, as you said, is a testimony about Christ.

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And it's a testimony about his person and his work. Go for it. That's the beauty of Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost.

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Peter, who was in that meeting in Luke 24, in that second group,

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Peter then begins to expound all of these passages. In fact, he begins with the Joel passage to explain the phenomena of the outpouring of the

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Spirit, which he ties to the day of the Lord and the coming of the Messiah. And then he walks through these different Old Testament passages and even cites the

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Psalms where he says David was a prophet of God.

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We don't typically look at David as being a prophet. He says he couldn't have been talking about himself.

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He's taking these passages and he's saying, now, if David wasn't talking about himself, here is what he was talking about.

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Or since he wasn't talking about himself, here's what his point of reference was. And I love what he says, that it was not possible for death to hold him.

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Why? Because of what the Scripture says. And so he just walks through all of these different passages and shows how

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David must have been referencing someone else. That's right. So I wanted to read some

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Scripture where this is a string that's put together. I'll put the article here if you want to read the article later about Christ's interpreting.

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But he strings together all of these passages of how the apostles understood preaching.

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And I think this is important. When they preached, they at the time were writing New Testament, so they had to preach the

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Old Testament. OK, just to be frank here. OK, so listen to this.

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So this is how it starts. This is 1 Corinthians 1 .23. He says, We preach Christ crucified.

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This is 2 Corinthians 1 .19. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy.

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Galatians 1 .16. God was pleased to reveal his Son in me so I might preach him among the

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Gentiles. Grace was given me to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Ephesians 3 .8.

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Christ is preached. Philippians 1 .18. We proclaim him. Colossians 1 .28. Pray that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ.

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Colossians 4 .3. When the apostles preached, they proclaimed what? The ethics of Jesus.

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The ethics of the old law. They were preaching the person and work and finality of who

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Christ is for us. And I think there's something to be said that when the New Testament speaks of preaching specifically, which

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I think is different from teaching, and we'll do a whole other podcast on that, but when they specifically mention preaching, they're always connecting it to Christ and the work of Christ, whether it's preaching the cross, preaching

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Christ as Messiah, preaching the work of Christ. I'm preaching through Romans right now, and you guys know how this is.

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Whatever book you're in as a preacher, you tend to see things through those lenses.

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And it's your favorite book. Sure. I know. Which favorite book is scripture? Whichever one I'm preaching right now.

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And so being in Romans, I'm in the early verses of Romans 5. A couple of comments here, and you guys can humor me and interact however you want.

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The way Paul begins the letter to the Romans is striking when it comes to this whole thing in terms of his hermeneutic, in terms of how he even understands his calling as an apostle.

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He says that he's a servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the

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Holy Scriptures. That's the Old Testament. He's promised the gospel. And the gospel concerns God's son who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power at his resurrection by the spirit.

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And so now the apostles have received grace and their office to bring about what? The obedience of faith.

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That's the purpose of everything that they're doing is to proclaim Christ so that people might trust in him. Then he says that he desires to come to the saints in Rome because he wants to preach the gospel to them.

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And we could talk maybe in a minute about the significance. You just alluded to this, John. So I'm just putting a pin in it for us.

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The plan of God absolutely works through, generally speaking, the vocal proclamation of the gospel.

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Like preaching is a thing. The written word is valuable. And there is also a reason why the

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Lord tells us to preach it. You know, we don't live the gospel. We don't do the gospel. We receive it by faith and we preach it.

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That's what we're supposed to do with it. But then in Romans four, right? So let's think Old Testament.

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How does Paul understand Abraham? I mean, what does he do there? He sees

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Abraham and holds Abraham up as the model of justification by faith apart from works.

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Apart from circumcision, apart from works of the law, Abraham was justified because he believed the promises of God realized in Christ.

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That's Paul's main takeaway from the life of Abraham. And how different is that than when many preachers get in the pulpit and are going to be preaching

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Genesis 12 through 22 -ish, there's going to be all kinds of things said about Abraham that are moral in nature, that we're seeking to apply.

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Like be like Abraham here. Don't be like Abraham there. And then of course there's the flannel board stuff that we all grew up with.

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Many of us grew up with where Abraham is a hero and we look to him in ways like he's just different than the rest of us.

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And in fact, the way the apostles understood him, he had a life that was full of success and failure, ups and downs, just like ours, but primarily what?

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He was a man of faith in that he trusted Christ. He rejoiced to see Jesus' day, right?

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He saw it and he was glad. That's the takeaway of Paul regarding Abraham. And I think we could all learn quite a bit when it comes to preaching the

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Old Testament from the apostles. Well, two things on that. One, Paul also says about Abraham, and he makes this point, that in light of Abraham, it's not given to the one who runs or to works, but it's given to the one who believes, and then

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Abraham becomes his example of that. And the other thing is what you just said,

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Justin, about Abraham and any of the other Old Testament characters. That's why

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I push back against looking at Hebrews presenting us the hall of fame of faith, there is no such thing as a hall of fame of faith.

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I'm a sports fan and you don't get into the hall of fame for being mediocre or being good.

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You get into the hall of fame for doing something your peers couldn't do and didn't do. Those who are listed in the book of Hebrews that we call the hall of fame of faith, they are everything that we are, but they trust it and they trust just like we are.

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And the reason they are singled out is not because of any extraordinary thing that they've done, but because they exercise faith in God's promise in spite of various circumstances.

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So when you remove the faith element and you see those individuals in there, you see

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Abraham with his failures, you see David, you see all of these other individuals. A lot. Yes, exactly, a lot.

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I mean, you just have to stop and say, wait a minute, they slipped the harlot in there. How'd that get in there? All that. So this is not a hall of fame.

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We don't. It's not a hall of fame. All of us are hall of losers. The only winner is

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Christ. And so it's being attached to him that makes the difference. And so the message of the gospel and one of the reasons that's important is because we're always looking for role models.

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We're looking for incentives. And our incentive is

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God's promise in Christ. And so therefore, we do have the historical narratives you have and some people and some preachers are very gifted at doing historical overviews and biographical sketches of these

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Old Testament characters. And that's good as long as it doesn't outshine the object of their faith.

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Yes. So these stories are there because Christ who comes in the New Testament comes in the flesh.

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And so the promise is experienced in the flesh and blood life of individuals who look to the promises of God, beginning with Adam and Eve.

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So the proto -Eleon in Genesis 315 is unpacked throughout the rest of the scriptures.

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If you are new to Theocast, we have a free e -book available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

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And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at Theocast .org

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slash Primer. I agree with you on the historical narrative piece, the way, like you said, a lot of guys are gifted to do that.

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And what we all should aspire to do is be good at doing that and handling narrative accounts. But even handle those, as we're saying, if you're preaching, whether it's

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Abraham or Jacob or Joseph or David or whoever, you're preaching through the lens of Christ.

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Because those individuals would be the first to say that they need Christ just as we do.

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They are in the text of Scripture, not because there was something great about them, to your point earlier,

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Ken. They're there to get us to Christ and they're there to point us to Him. And they are in equal need of Him.

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And they, too, like us, were fallen people, lawbreakers, never had kept any of God's commands, really, and still were inclined toward all evil and trusted

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Christ and were justified on account of what Christ would come and do. And the message effectively is if God saved

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Abraham, if God saved David, if God saved Rahab, if God saved whoever, He will save you, too.

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And that's encouraging for the saints to see in the saints of old lives that are just like our own and that God has not changed and that His plan has been, like you said, from the jump.

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It's the promised Redeemer who's coming. And people have always been looking to Him. And that's how God's people from all time have been justified and reconciled to Him.

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Yeah, and look at how Paul interacts with the children of Israel in the wilderness in 1

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Corinthians 10, and he makes a connection to New Testament saints, these

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Gentiles. Yeah. And he's basically saying they ate the same bread that we eat, so they've been baptized to the same thing that we have.

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So there is and because a point of reference and the point of connection is their faith in the promise of God.

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And he's saying that Christ was present for them as He is present with us and in the substance of the

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Lord's table. It's the same Savior. So He who led them in the wilderness leads us right now.

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Amen, brother. See, I've got one thing I know we're going to transition. This was helpful, and I'm not quite sure where I got this.

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I've been doing a lot of study and research on this lately. But the idea of it is when you're thinking about Christ in all of Scripture and you approach it the way in which the apostles did, you could break the

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Bible down in this way. If you're in modern day context and someone walks up to you and goes, hey, for some reason,

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Jesus is super significant in the world, in world history. I don't want to learn more about this guy.

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Well, you could say, well, hey, listen, the Old Testament, this big book, it's the anticipation and explanation of why He matters and why you can trust

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Him. And then when you get to this thing called the Gospels, it's the manifestation of Jesus, like He arrived,

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He's here. And then when you get to the book of Acts, it's the proclamation of how that person spread around the world.

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And then when you get to the epistles, it's the explanation of the significance of who He is in light of all of that.

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And then when you get to Revelation, it's the consummation of all things. We're waiting on that part. And then that's how you approach. It's like the book is a biography of Jesus from beginning to end about all the different parts of His life.

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So, if you're preaching in the book and you're not concluding about Jesus, first of all, I don't think you preach the sermon, which we're going to get to in a second.

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But secondly, you definitely missed the point of the book. Justin, take us to the next point. So, this is kind of part

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B of this first main talking point. So, what is Christ -centered preaching? We're now going to maybe pivot slightly and talk about things that masquerade as Christ -centered preaching that the three of us humbly but directly would say, yeah,

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I don't know that that's Christ -centered preaching. And a couple of comments here. I think you brothers are going to agree.

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The point of Scripture is God's plan of redemption accomplished through Christ effectively.

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I mean, that is what the book is about. And so, we're going to say that any text should be preached in light of that main point and seen through the lens of that main point.

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And that's going to be really helpful when it comes to how, as a preacher, you prepare a sermon or when it comes to the delivery of the message and we all are under the preached word.

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When we think about a text and how we should understand it together, if we have that main point in view and everything's done through the lens of that main point, we're on the right track.

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That said, Ken, we want to throw it to you first. Again, brother, what are some observations that you've made over decades now?

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Because you've heard a lot of talk about Christ -centered preaching, right? And observations from you about things that are called

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Christ -centered preaching or approaches to Christ -centered preaching that are less than helpful and maybe are not preaching

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Christ quite like they think they are. Yeah, no, that was a problem.

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I remember a number of years back when there was a groundswell that seemed to be of support for what people were calling

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Christ -centered preaching. And there was a tendency, and perhaps this comes from those who discover the doctrines of grace, who have come to faith outside of a covenantal reformed tradition.

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So they just come from either independent Bible churches, Baptist churches or whatever, and then they discover these reformed categories.

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And so they say, OK, yeah, now we got to do Christ -centered preaching. And what they have a tendency to do is to shoehorn

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Christ into every passage. That's one. So everything becomes a symbol rather than a real articulation of a particular truth.

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So you have all of these symbolic references and sort of vague, esoteric things that lead you to Christ.

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And then sometimes people think that by overlaying your sermon, whatever it is, by concluding with the summary of He lived for your righteousness, or we don't usually get to live for your righteousness, but He died for your sin.

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Jesus died for your sin. So that becomes Christ -centered preaching or just forcing

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Him, like you said, forcing Him in these narratives or forcing Him from narratives that it may not be specifically about the person and work of Christ, but because they don't have the covenantal framework and because they're not working from presuppositions that make this a healthy endeavor, it's just scattered.

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And so it becomes and therefore it kind of caused some pushback from those who were within Reformed circles, because especially us

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Baptists, we've always gotten a bad rap, even from Reformed people.

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It's like, this is why we don't like you Baptists, because it is forcing things from the text and thinking.

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And the other thing is the language of expository preaching.

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So there was a discovery, a rediscovery of expository preaching. So now what that means, what it ends up meaning without a

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Christ -centered grid, what it ends up meaning is exegesis.

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So you're just exegeting a particular passage. And that's one of the reasons you've had some pushback against it, because you say, well,

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I preach Christ where He's present. Well, Jesus preached Himself from all of the Old Testament.

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So I think the worst of it is people trying to find

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Christ from Old Testament passages without covenantal framework, without understanding the signs and seals of that covenant, without understanding the types and shadows representing it.

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And so since they don't have that framework, a lot of unintended damage is done to any given particular text.

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Yeah, I think some observations I've made over the years, similar to some of the things that you've said, I think a lot of guys that aim to do

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Christ -centered preaching, which is a great aim. It's a great endeavor. We trust the motivations are good, right?

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I mean, of course we do. But what guys often do, a few different approaches. You talked about this, where we feel the need to preach

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Christ from every text, but we're not quite sure how to get to Him because, again, we don't have these covenantal, redemptive, historical law and gospel lenses on.

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And so the Bible, we've said this before, the Bible effectively becomes this like where's Waldo book, and Jesus is Waldo, and we've got to try to find

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Him on every page. And we really artificially try to manufacture something to say that makes some sense to us.

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And we get there through any number of ways. Sometimes we overly allegorize the text, like you said. Sometimes we use systematic doctrinal categories like, all right, well,

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I'm preaching on the holiness of God here. And then I'm going to kind of trampoline off of this and be able to insert the fact that God saves us through Christ, because obviously we're lawbreakers.

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And that's better than some. But a lot of times what happens too, I've found, is that guys will, like you said, exegete the text because of expository preaching, lectio continua.

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You know, this has become a thing which we're all in favor of. But what guys do is they say a lot of good things about the text.

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It's almost kind of like a running commentary. On the passage. And they say some good things historically.

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They say some good things, you know, maybe about the original authorial intent and all this kind of stuff. But then, you know, in a 45 minute sermon, we've gotten 35, 40 minutes of that stuff.

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And then at some point, because we're Christ -centered preachers, we need to insert the plan of salvation.

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You know, God, man, Christ response, some kind of formula there. Or we need to talk about the metanarrative of scripture to kind of get us to the plan of salvation.

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And we call upon sinners to trust Jesus. And we call that a Christ -centered sermon. We call that a gospel -centered sermon.

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When in reality, go ahead. No, no. I was going to say, you used a phrase that I think is very helpful, and if not necessary, in order to establish a pattern for Christ -centered preaching.

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And that is, there is a metanarrative. And it goes back to something that we said initially, that the whole purpose,

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I think what John says at the end of his gospel, that Jesus did a whole lot of other things that I could have written about, but I didn't write about them.

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But what I have written, I've written so that you would know that Jesus is the Christ, and in knowing that you would believe and have everlasting life.

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But what he says about his intent in writing his gospel could be superimposed on the whole of scripture.

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That's right. And what God has revealed to us in scripture is so that we would know that Jesus is the

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Christ, and in knowing we would believe and have everlasting life.

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So the metanarrative is important. If Christ -centered preaching is to understand there's one particular message that is being told through all of these different genres of literature, all of these different epochs of time, there's still one particular message, and that is that one message of salvation by God through Christ.

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So if we don't have that metanarrative, that's when you will isolate particular passages and something else that you mentioned about authorial intent, and you hear that, well, we need to know the author's intent.

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Well, if we as Christians believe that God is the ultimate author, then regardless of what the human author's intent is, and we do want to recognize it, there is a divine author.

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What is the intent of the divine author, and how he uses the human author to reveal or to write the message that he wants.

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That's right. I mean, the human author's... Go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say, when we don't approach it as...

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It's almost like every writer in the Bible is a team member that plays and does his part to advance what it is that we need to advance, which is

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Christ. But, you know, bad metaphor for God, but God being the coach who directs it all, right, he's the one who is guiding this thing.

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And so we don't think of it in that way. When we sit down and we read something, we can get so far down into the weeds and the details that we missed the point of what this man is doing.

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We missed the greater goal and purpose. And I think it's disheartening to me to when

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I go into a sermon and I hear all of the data, but you didn't do your job.

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Like when you think about it, Paul doesn't say, I am preaching to you to all of the facts and the truths that I have been handed.

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He doesn't say that, right? He says, I'm preaching to you the culmination of those facts and truths down to where they apply, which is your heart.

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I'm preaching to you, Christ, because it's Christ in your faith that matters. It's not the data and facts that's in your brain.

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It's Christ in faith that matters. And that's what I'm proclaiming. Sorry, Justin, go ahead. No, you're good.

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I was just going to make the observation that the authors of Scripture had a true knowledge of what they were writing, but their knowledge was not exhaustive in particular when we're talking about the

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Old Testament saints, right? So if we're limiting ourselves to what Moses or David or whoever understood, then we're not going to be able to preach full orbed sermons because what we want to do is use

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Jesus and the apostles as our cue from them in terms of how we interpret the Scripture. The best interpreter of the

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Old Testament is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the New, and so we want to understand all of the

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Bible that way and preach that way. I think if we approach the text from this perspective, it helps us in preaching

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Christ -centered sermons because Jesus is the lenses on our eyes, and so it's not going to be artificial.

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It's going to be, no, we're just going to preach this from a redemptive historical perspective with Christ as the focus of everything that we're doing, and we've got a chance to say some edifying things, then they will actually be to the benefit of the hearts and minds of our listeners.

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I think sometimes guys, when they sit down to prep sermons, they'll ask the question, you know, how am I going to preach

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Jesus from this text? I don't think that's the best question. I think a better question is where does this text stand in light of Christ, and then we're going to preach a better sermon, right?

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And I think one other observation before we maybe briefly discuss application to close out the regular portion of the show, sometimes

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I get frustrated by this, and I'm not trying to geek out and nerd out on this at all, but I think this is useful to discuss for a second.

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Sometimes I see guys pit what would be called a grammatical historical approach to the text over and against a redemptive historical approach to the text.

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I think that's a false dichotomy because the argument is, like you said it, Ken, you said it a minute ago, well,

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I preach Christ where he's present. I'm tethered to the words on the page, to which we would say, well, amen to that.

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We are too. We're going to not just hover over the words. We're going to be in the words. We're going to look at the words, but we understand that Christ is underneath and he undergirds every passage of scripture.

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Like you said, Christ interpreted the entire Old Testament in light of himself, and we want to do the same thing.

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So in being grammatical historical guys looking at the words on the page and taking into consideration history, we are redemptive historical guys also so that we are understanding that underneath, in, around, on, all of that is

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Christ, regardless of what text, what genre, what Testament we're in. Let me just underline that, and you know why that's the case?

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Because we're not just biblical preachers. We are gospel preachers.

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Amen. We proclaim him. Yes, and the gospel is good news, and Jesus is the essence of that good news.

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So if you've just given grammatical historical overview, and you've not grounded it in the person and work of Christ, then you've not preached the gospel.

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Amen. That's right. Yeah. I'm going into application, Justin, and I'll kind of take this here.

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Yeah. Well, one of the things, thankfully, Ken and I had a conversation yesterday, which was amazing, and we were talking about this very thing, this kind of preparation for today, but one of the things

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I was thinking about, like when I'm preaching Ezekiel, which in my opinion might be one of the top 10 hardest books to preach in the

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Bible, it's complicated, but when I drop into there, I feel very comforted, and I don't feel lost because there is something that's grounding my initial thought.

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People say, well, you should never read anything into the text. Well, let me throw something back on you. Do you ever read the

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Bible from a non -Trinitarian perspective? Because if you do, you'd be a heretic, and you're probably going to come out with heresy, where you might be in some sections that sound like, oh, wait, man, there is only one

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God, that's what it sounds like in sections of the Old Testament, or maybe Jesus was born because that's kind of what it says over here.

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No, we have to use the guidance of Trinitarian theology to push us through. Well, if you understand the point of the

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Bible, which is Christ, Him, crucified, resurrection, and the glory and restoration of all things, then all of that helps you filter when you're reading in a text, right?

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So biblical theology, covenant theology, ecclesiology, eschatology, all of this helps you when you go into a text realizing that, well,

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I know the end, and I know how it started and fell apart, and I know all the promises, and so this is all going to help me, whatever passage

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I'm in, it's going to help me get to the point of this author and the point of,

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I've got to apply this to the heart of the people, because if they don't believe it, as John says, right, if they don't believe this, then what's the point?

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Head knowledge is not our goal, right? We want them to be built up in knowledge, it's true, but if they don't believe it, so we proclaim

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Christ, and you have to understand something, like even the word proclaim, right? Karuk, it was a military term where they would run in from city to city saying the good news of what was happening so that people would hear it, believe it, and then respond either in, like, it's time to take action, we're going into war, or, hey, good news, the war is over, you can relax.

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That's exactly, this is the good news of Jesus, right? There's something to be done with that, and that is believe what you are hearing.

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So that's just, when I think about Christ -centered preaching, and guys say, well, I just deal with the text that's in front of me, first of all, you don't, you are reading something into the text, you just have to ask yourself, are you reading the right thing into the text, or maybe your structure is wrong, and we need to rethink your structure in general.

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Yeah. So, Ken, what would you say to people that would push back against some of the things we're advocating for today?

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This, a redemptive, historical, covenantal perspective, Christ at the center, preaching every text in light of Jesus, and this is what we want to mainly do as preachers, is to herald

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Christ for our people, week in and week out. What to the person that says, all right, yeah, guys, but don't we need to be applying the text, the truths of the text to specific areas of people's lives?

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What would you say? Well, I'm going to hear, I'm hearing that two ways.

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One, how would I answer those who are pushing back against the concept of Christ -centered preaching, and my pushback on that is what we've been talking about, the many biblical examples of the

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New Testament writers, beginning with Jesus, by the way, that he understood the

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Old Testament scriptures pointing to him. So if Jesus is the one, then who are we to argue?

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And certainly that is the pattern that's followed by Peter on the day of Pentecost, and that is the model of apostolic preaching.

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In fact, that is what the apostle's doctrine is. The apostle's doctrine, as referenced in the book of Acts, the apostle's doctrine is nothing more than the apostles articulating the

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Old Testament scriptures through the filter and lens of the person and work of Christ, and saying that all of this has been fulfilled in him, and his death and resurrection is a confirmation of everything that the scripture says about him.

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So I'd push back against those in that way, but the whole idea of application, application means a lot of things to a lot of different people.

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So basically what we mean by that is, okay, what does this mean? Now, how do

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I use it? And I think as preachers, we have to be careful of hard line, how to use it.

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Because one thing, you guys are preachers, you know, and you've probably all experienced someone coming up to you after you preach a sermon, you have a particular point of emphasis, and they will tell you how it ministered to them in ways that you've never conceived.

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And they will come to you and say, it's like you were overhearing my conversation with someone, and you never intended it that way.

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So I think if we present Christ properly from whatever text we're using, we have to trust that the

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Holy Spirit will give people ears to hear and the ability to integrate that truth into their particular situations.

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Now, I do think that we can explain, and sometimes in explaining and illustrating, we don't want to confuse that with application because if people are not grounded in the message of the gospel, application becomes unintentional interpretation.

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So when you say, okay, so this is, if you've done all your work, this is what the passage says, this is what it means in light of Christ, and now here's how you use it, then it's hard.

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Unless you're talking about people who are already growing up in a particular tradition of the right categories, they will be able to hear that.

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But oftentimes when people are transitioning into a new theological formulation, when they hear you say, even though you don't mean it, that this is what the passage means, when they hear you tell them how to use it, they will go back to that passage and think that's what it means.

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And there is a distinction between application and interpretation. Application, how you make use of it in any given situation, interpretation is what it means.

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Yeah, I think one of the things we've said here before is that the first and greatest application of any text of scripture is to believe upon the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Here's who He is, here's what He did, and believe this, receive it, trust it, rest in Him.

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If we're not doing that, then what in the world are we doing trying to apply the text in other ways? We were talking before we recorded though,

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Ken, and I think that you've said part of what you said earlier, just now.

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And do you want to maybe give for people the kind of grocery store illustration that you gave in thinking about some of this and how what we're doing effectively is we're preaching

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Christ to the hearts and minds of our people, and then we're trusting that individuals and families are able to then take that and apply it to their situations?

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Well, the example that I give is oftentimes, and I understand what people mean by this, I feel the same way.

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When you hear a good sermon, it's like eating a good meal. Yeah, it's your food spiritually. The ministry of the word, the corporate ministry of the word for the church, the regular preaching and teaching of God's word, rather than coming to church or coming to worship and receiving a meal, what you're actually receiving, it's like coming to church is more like going to a grocery store.

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And when you go to the grocery store, if the church is a grocery store, then we are presenting the person and work of Christ in all of the types, shadows, etc.

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We're presenting the whole thing. That's what's on display. So when people come to church and this grocery store, they're going down the aisles, they're receiving all of this

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Christ -centered content, and then they will take it home and prepare the meal that's suitable for their family.

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Because essentially what we're doing in preaching and through the regular ministry of the word, we're not just preaching a good sermon.

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We are grounding people, husbands, fathers, how to be the priest of your household.

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Husbands, learning what it means to love your wife as Christ has loved the church. Wives, learning what it means to love your husband or submit to your husband as unto the

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Lord. So we're establishing the very foundation that establishes good

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Christian homes. So therefore, what is needed in my home, I know. And so if you give me the right material, then

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I will trust again that the Holy Spirit will enable me to take the material that you've given me because I've gotten it from my church, these doctrines.

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I've got all of these things for my church. And now in my time of crisis, as I'm dealing with sickness, as I'm dealing with death, as I'm dealing with rebellion, as I'm dealing with my own sins,

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I can go to the cabinet. I go to the place that I have gotten this grace from the church that feeds me and I'm able to integrate it into that given moment.

45:37

Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. I mean, as Paul says in Romans chapter five, that we are offering people hope and that hope will not put us to shame.

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And so we need a good, steady diet and closet, as you're saying, full of hope that we can pull from for every situation we find ourselves in.

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Yeah, so you can go to your refrigerator, you can go to your cabinet. I've got it. It's right here, you know, you know what it means to catechize your children because you've got it shopping at your church.

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Yeah. I mean, how does the New Testament put it? We can be ready to give an answer to every man, right, of the hope that lies within you.

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Not of the data, not of the right truth and facts of the hope and who's connected to the hope.

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And that is Christ. That's so good. Well, we definitely have more to talk about. I think we might even get into the segment of what may be some favorite preachers that can like to read and listen to in the past.

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I know Justin and I have some and we'll talk about some of that. I know we're teasing you guys, but hey, we only have 45 minutes.

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Technically, it's supposed to be 30. So we added in some more and we went way over. But we do a second podcast and it's fun.

46:42

It's for our members, for those who like to support Theocast on a monthly basis called Simple Reformanda. And it's a private podcast that we do.

46:49

And it's a lot of fun. Justin and I encourage talking with people there. And then we carry the conversation over into our private app that we have.

46:56

We can download the app and interact with Justin and I. And then we have something called Theocast U, where there's online classes that Justin and I have taught and are providing more for that.

47:05

There's a lot of information that's in there. You can just go to Theocast .org and learn and just look for Simple Reformanda and you can join that there.

47:13

And we've got some new podcasts. There's a lot of new stuff coming your way. But I want to say, first of all, thank you,

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Ken, for taking the time to spend with us and to encourage to, as you have been doing for years in my ears, you've been influencing my theology and I'm glad that we got to do it together.

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And stay tuned next week, Lord willing, we're going to have Ken on again to talk about a fun topic.