========================================================================
  HOW GOSPEL CENTERED PREACHING CAN GO WRONG
  by John Piper
========================================================================

Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of expounding the whole
Bible in preaching, focusing on the foundational role of Christ's
crucifixion in every sermon. It challenges the common notion of making a
beeline from every text to the cross, instead urging a deep, thorough
exploration of the text's words and meanings, with Christ's sacrifice as
the underlying basis for all biblical truths and benefits offered to
God's people.

Duration: 49:54 Topics: "Biblical Exposition", "The Centrality of the Cross"
Scripture References: Romans 8:32, 1 Corinthians 2:2, Galatians 6:14, 1 Peter 2:24, 2 Timothy 3:16

------------------------------------------------------------------------
DESCRIPTION
------------------------------------------------------------------------

This sermon emphasizes the importance of expounding the whole Bible in
preaching, focusing on the foundational role of Christ's crucifixion in
every sermon. It challenges the common notion of making a beeline from
every text to the cross, instead urging a deep, thorough exploration of
the text's words and meanings, with Christ's sacrifice as the underlying
basis for all biblical truths and benefits offered to God's people.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENT
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's pray together. Father, my heart's desire now is that Your Word
would be honored, Your name would be magnified, Christ would be exalted
through the preaching of Your Word, not just in this moment, but in the
way I talk about preaching. Would You make preaching more faithful to
Your Word, more magnifying to Jesus, more purifying to Your church, more
powerful in the world? Lord, these are days of extraordinary need in the
midst of a corona virus, and preaching is crucial, it will always be
crucial, and so I am so eager to do what I can to be a part of making
preaching in our pulpits now, and as long as You tarry, as powerful as
it can be for the glory of Jesus, and I ask this in His name now, amen.

So the title I was given for this message was Preaching the Gospel as
Expounding the Whole Bible. It wasn't my title, it was given to me, I
was happy to take it, so let me try to tell you what I think it means.
It assumes, I think, that we should, in our preaching as pastors,
expound the whole Bible.

Now that's a good assumption, because Paul says all Scripture is
profitable, all of it, everywhere in the Bible, anything you draw out
truly is beneficial for God's people, 2nd Timothy 3.16. Then, what, four
verses later, 2nd Timothy 4.2, preach the word, and I take the flow of
thought there to mean the word that was just spoken of, namely, all
Scripture is inspired by God. Preach the word. So the first part of my
assignment is in a title, Expound the Whole Bible.

Great assumption. It doesn't mean, I assume, preach every verse of the
Bible, open every verse of the Bible. You can't do that, you can't do
that in a lifetime, not if you take exposition seriously.

Like, I'm gonna really open what this verse says. It can't be done. So
what does it mean? What does preach the whole Bible mean? I think it
means, in the 40 or 50 years that you're ministering in the You
crisscross the whole Bible, taking text from anywhere and everywhere as
the Spirit leads, and as the times demand, and as your people need,
because it's all inspired, it's all profitable.

The exposition of the whole Bible for the profit of your people is a
hundred times more significant than any ideas you might come up with to
make your own private commentary on religion or politics or culture. So
ransack the Bible and preach God's Word from everywhere in the Bible.
That's the first half of my title.

Or the second half. What about the other half, the first half of the
title? It says, Preaching the Gospel. And then it's connected, the two
halves are connected with as.

Preaching the Gospel as expounding the whole Bible. Which I assume
means, as you expound every text in the Bible from anywhere, you should
be preaching the Gospel. I think that's what they wanted me to talk
about.

How, in expounding every text, do you preach the Gospel? Now I've got a
problem with that assignment, and this whole message is built around my
trying to solve the problem. I don't think that way about preaching.
Week in and week out, when I stood in this pulpit, and this is the one I
stood in for 22 years because this building here was built in 1991, and
I came in 1980, so for 22 years in this pulpit and 11 years in the other
one, that's just not the way I prepared my sermons.

It's not the way I thought about preaching. My mindset was not, as I
came to my text or as I came to the pulpit, how can I preach the Gospel
from this text? I just didn't think that way. I don't think that way now
about preaching.

My controlling thought was, what do the words and phrases and clauses
and sentences and connecting links and logic of this text, the flow of
this flow, what does that mean in this text? Or to be more precise, my
controlling thought was, what reality did this inspired writer intend to
communicate to his readers through the words, through the phrases, the
sentences, the logical flow of the thought? What reality did he want me
to see? What did he want me to think? What did he want me to feel? What
did he want me to do in response to the reality he was revealing through
the particular words that he wrote? So my first and controlling thought
as I come to a text in this book or as I come to the pulpit is not, how
can I preach the Gospel from this text? Rather, I'm driven by the
question, how can I see what this author sees? What glimpse of divine
and human reality might he have for me if I linger? If I look and look
and look at his text with earnest prayer that God would help me to see
what's really there, and with heartfelt renunciation of every sin in me
that might distort what is there in the text, or mute it, or misuse it
in some way. And then I come to the people, and week after week in
preaching I try to show them the amazing things that I saw, looking at
words and phrases and sentences and logical flow and connecting links.
What realities did I see? What amazing glories did I see in the text? I
want to show them, and then I want to show them how I saw it.

Because I think the authority of Scripture hangs on your people seeing
how you saw what you saw. Otherwise, you're the authority and not the
Bible. I think that's really important for the sake of honoring God's
Word, to show the very reality that you saw and how you saw it in the
words of Scripture.

Pastor, where are you getting your ideas? I hear your ideas, show me how
you're getting those ideas from these words. I'm looking down, I'm
looking up, they're not matching. I don't see it.

I like your ideas, I just don't see them. Where you're getting them.
There is a kind of preaching that floats above the text, just above the
text, and doesn't land often enough in the very words of text for the
people to see where the ideas of the preacher are coming from.

So I don't think that the controlling question, how can I preach the
gospel from this text, has, over the last 40 years or so, produced the
kind of preaching that makes for strong, Bible-saturated, doctrinally
rich, mature, stable, countercultural churches with a passion for
radical obedience to God's Word. I don't think it has served us well. So
I'm gonna offer you an alternative to those who think that preaching
Christ, or preaching the gospel from every text, means dealing in some
general comments about what the text says, hovering just above the text,
seldom explaining the very words and phrases, and then moving on to the
real concern of making a gospel crescendo with Christ and his atonement
and the forgiveness of sin, so everybody can walk out relieved.

I think that kind of preaching tends to dull the expectations of the
people that they might actually see fresh, new, beautiful, tough, deep,
scary, wonderful things in the text. I think it tends to treat the
actual words and phrases and logic of the inspired text as having minor
significance by giving the impression that they don't need to be treated
with any particular rigor or care, they're just preparations for the
main thing that's coming. I think it tends to train people in bad habits
of how to read their Bibles by diminishing the rigor and earnestness of
meditating on the words of God day and night.

I think it tends to weaken the seriousness of practical biblical
imperatives on how to live the Christian life in all holiness and purity
and love by inserting, inserting the substitutionary atonement at
critical moments when the emphasis should be falling on the urgency of
obedience, because that's the urgency of the text. So, I want to commend
to you an alternative to making every text a pathway to the gospel, to
having the driving question in your sermon preparation be, how can I
preach the gospel from this text? I want to wave a yellow flag in front
of the saying that is so often attributed to Spurgeon, take your text
and make a beeline to the cross. Nobody knows if Spurgeon said that, at
least I can't find any Spurgeon scholars who can show that he did, but
that doesn't matter, it's not the point.

Here's the point. Instead of taking your text and making a beeline to
the cross, I think you should take the cross and make a beeline to your
text. Instead of building your sermon toward the cross, build your
sermon on the cross.

Instead of preaching biblical imperatives as pointers to Christ's
perfection and imputed righteousness, I think we should preach imputed
righteousness as the power to obey biblical imperatives, or to put it
another way, standing on the power and the promises bought for God's
elect by the blood of Jesus, wrestle, wrestle with the words and phrases
and sentences and flow of thought in the text, wrestle with them until
you see the reality that's really there in those words, and then show it
to your people, and show them how you saw it, and then offer it to them.
Offer it to them as a blood-bought gift, urging them with all your might
to see it, and understand it, and embrace it, and be glad in it, and
obey it, and share it. Let the reality of the text be the crescendo of
the sermon.

So how did I come to that conclusion? Let me try to show you from
Scripture how I got here. Let's start here. When I gave my full
attention years ago, and the Lord gave me some wonderful teachers to
push my nose into the text, thank God.

When I gave my full attention and vigorous effort to try to see the
reality a biblical author wanted me to see through the words that he was
writing and the way he wrote them, I realized I could not see the
reality the way he wanted me to see it and the way he wanted me to share
it. I couldn't see that reality if I didn't know more of what was in his
mind than what was in the text. For example, Paul says in Romans 12 13,
just a list of short commands, pursue hospitality.

Now I may have an idea about the meaning of the word hospitality, I
might have an idea about the meaning of the word pursue, but there are a
dozen ways that I could pursue hospitality that are defective and that
Paul would disapprove of. Right? I could pursue hospitality for fear of
what others would think if I don't. Or I could pursue hospitality
because I hope to be invited back.

I could pursue hospitality because I'm so legalistic I got to try and to
gain my right standing with God by being hospitable because the Bible
said I should. And Paul would shake his head and say, I didn't mean
that. He would consider every one of those defective, but you can only
know that.

You can only know what he intends, what he wants to happen. In those two
words, if you know something from elsewhere in Paul about what's in his
head, as he says, practice hospitality. You got to know something about
the cross and about grace and about the Holy Spirit and about faith and
sin and the glory of God.

The reality that Paul has in his mind that he wants us to know and
embrace and obey, pursue hospitality is more than can be put into those
two words. So now what? I asked what aspects of Paul's mental world,
what aspects of Paul's mental world, his all- encompassing reality, what
aspects of it must I see so that I won't mishandle what he says in
particular sentences and clauses? So I posed the question, are there
truths, realities, in an author's worldview, Paul in particular here,
are there particular realities that are so pervasive, so all-
encompassing, that they are relevant to everything he says? Are there
truths in his worldview that if we ignore them, will always cause us to
mishandle what particular sentences mean? Are there such sweeping
realities in an author's mind that if we ignore them, we will not be
able to respond to particular text the way he intends for us to respond?
And my answer is yes. Let me name three of them.

I think these are the three most important, the ones that should guide
all preaching. I'll only deal with one of them, but I'll mention the
others. When Paul says in 1st Corinthians 1031, whether you eat or drink
or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God, backed up by dozens and
dozens of biblical passages that make clear God does everything for his
own glory, when you see that, then you realize every text that Paul
wrote, indeed all the biblical writers wrote, I would argue, were
written ultimately to the end that God would be seen and savored as
glorious, shown to be glorious.

That's one of the pervasive truths. Whether you eat or drink or write a
biblical text or preach a sermon, do all, do all to the glory of God. If
you don't pay attention to and bring every text into connection with
that truth, the biblical writers would say, you didn't get all my
intention here.

But to defend that would require another message. Here's the second
sweeping, all-encompassing truth that I think we have to know in order
not to misuse Paul's text, indeed all texts. Romans 14.23 says, whatever
does not proceed from faith is sin.

Hebrews 11.6 says, without faith it is impossible to please God. So I
infer that this truth is one of those pervasive truths, those all-
encompassing realities for Paul, for the writer of the Hebrews, I think
we could argue for all the biblical writers. Which means that if you're
going to handle a biblical text in a way that accords with the overall
intention of the writer, which of course is always that God be pleased
and that we not sin, then you have to bring every text somehow into
relationship to faith.

No faith, everything is sin. Without faith, no pleasing of God. Every
sermon would abort if it didn't deal with faith.

And that would take another sermon to defend. But here's the one I want
to talk about because it's totally fixed and relevant on my assignment.
Does Paul tell us that there is something about the cross, something
about Christ crucified that is so sweeping, so all-encompassing, that
every benefit in every sermon offered to God's people must be related to
it? Should we aim to preach the gospel from every text is one way to ask
that question.

I don't think it's the most helpful one. So I want to ask, does Paul say
anything about the death of Christ, about the atonement for sin, in
relation to everything he preaches? And the answer is yes, in two places
he does, at least. 1st Corinthians chapter 2 verse 1, When I came to
you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God
with lofty speech or wisdom.

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. Nothing among you. I decided to know nothing, nothing among
you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Or Galatians 6 14, Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our
Lord Jesus. I'm not going to boast in anything except the cross of the
Lord Jesus. So, taken at face value, those two passages say Paul doesn't
preach anything.

He says, I don't know anything except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
And Paul doesn't boast in anything except the cross of the Lord Jesus.
What does that mean? What does it mean for our preaching? Somebody might
say, well, don't over apply that, because he's probably just addressing
a particular Corinthian situation and a particular Galatian situation,
and so you can't generalize about that statement.

I don't think that's right for two reasons. Number one, even in the
Corinthian situation, you've got the problem, right? He says, I don't
intend to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified,
and then he proceeds to talk about church divisions and church
discipline and sexual immorality and lawsuits and marriage and
singleness and food offered to idols and head coverings and spiritual
gifts and more. You don't have to say, oh yeah, but today we have to
talk about marriage.

Paul spoke about marriage right after saying, I only talk about Christ
crucified. Or, if you go to Galatians and say, that's a special
situation, that won't work, because it's not a special situation the way
he expresses it. He says in chapter 6 verse 14, far be it from me to
boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus.

He's speaking about a fundamental conviction that he has about reality,
and you can see that by the way he grounds verse 14 in verse 15, which
is why paying attention to the text is so absolutely crucial. He says,
because neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision,
but a new creation, that's the ground for saying, I only boast in Jesus.
That's not a situationally limited ground.

Yet, Paul uses that same word for boast when he says this, we boast in
the hope of the glory of God, Romans 5 too. We boast in our
tribulations, Romans 5 3. We most gladly boast about our weaknesses, 2nd
Corinthians 12 9. Who is our boast except you, the fellow Christians?
And so he says, I only boast in the cross. And then he boasts in the
church, and he boasts in tribulations, and he boasts in hope, and in
God.

So here's what we have. 1st Corinthians 2 verse 2, Paul says that he
intends to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
And then he speaks in detail about eight other issues.

And in Galatians 6 14, he says, I don't boast except in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And then elsewhere, he boasts in the glory of God,
and tribulations, and weaknesses, and fellow believers. So what does he
mean? Paul's not confused.

What does he mean when he says, I only know the crucified, I only boast
in the cross? I think he means this. In everything else that I know and
preach, I know it and I preach it on the basis of the crucified one, on
the foundation of the crucified one. Everything else in which I boast, I
boast on the basis of the cross, on the foundation of the cross.

Now the application for our preaching would be every biblical topic,
every text that we take up and worshipfully explain and offer to our
people for their profit is based on the cross, the crucified one. It's
underneath it. It's holding it up.

It could never be true without it. What's the basis for saying that?
Romans 8 32 is the basis. He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him
up for us all, how will he not then also with him graciously give us all
things? I think that's just about the most important sentence in the
Bible.

So important for life, so important for preaching. This is the glorious
link between the Father's sacrifice of Jesus and all things that come to
God's people forever and now. This is the link.

The logic goes like this. If God did the hardest thing, not sparing his
own Son, but giving him for us, then he will not fail to do the easier
thing. Namely, give us everything forever.

That's the logic. So what does all things include? Christ dies. The
Father doesn't spare his Son.

Result on that foundation, everything comes to us. What does that
include? It's not prosperity preaching. And we know that because four
verses later, that was verse 32 of Romans 8, four verses later, Paul is
listing the all things.

And they include this, we are being killed all day long. But no, we are
not being separated by death from his love. We are more than conquerors.

So the all things that is purchased by the blood of Jesus in the Father
not sacrificing his Son is death and triumph through death with Christ
forever, more than conquerors over death. So, the meaning of Romans 8 32
is this. For God's elect, the predestined, the called, the justified,
Romans 8 30, for God's elect, every good thing and every bad thing that
God turns for good was secured for us by the cross of Christ.

Every heaven-bound breath that a believer takes was bought by the blood
of Christ. John Flavel, Mark Deverell will like this, he wrote a book
about this. John Flavel, I don't even know if I'm pronouncing it right.

Flavel? I think it's Flavel. I like Flavel. John Flavel, the British
Puritan 300 years ago, called the sweet dropper, commented on Romans 8
32 with these beautiful words, and they are so right.

Surely, he said, surely if God would not spare his own son one stroke,
one tear, one groan, one sigh, one circumstance of misery, it can never
be imagined that he should after this deny or withhold from his people
for whose sake all this was suffered any mercies, any comforts, any
privilege, spiritual or temporal, which is good for us. Does anybody
wonder why we love the Puritans? It's absolutely right. And here's the
implication for preaching.

There simply can be no benefits offered to us as God's dear children
apart from the cross of Christ. None. But every sermon offers a benefit
to God's children, doesn't it? Every sermon.

All Scripture is inspired and is profitable, beneficial. Every sermon is
a gift, is a benefit, is profit for God's people. And the only way that
anything profitable or beneficial can come to fallen, sinful, hell-
deserving elect is Christ crucified.

That's the only hope that anything helpful might come to sinners like
us. Therefore, every profit, every benefit, every blessing, every gift,
every promise in the Bible, every gracious warning, every precious
teaching, every solid doctrine, every transforming glimpse of the glory
of God, in every sermon is blood bought. No exceptions.

Therefore, the cross, Christ crucified, is the foundation, the basis of
every biblical sermon. Jesus died to purchase the miracle of obedience
to texts. He paid his blood to purchase faithful exposition to texts.

He went to the cross to turn texts into Christ-exalting, beautiful
holiness. Anything that minimizes the obedience, the exposition, the
holiness, in the name of preaching the gospel from every text is
contrary to the will of God. Consider an example.

1 Peter chapter 4, verses 7-9. 1 Peter 4, 7-9. The end of all things is
at hand.

Therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your
prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers
a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Now, what should be the driving question as you come to this text? Will
you make a few general comments about self-control and sober-mindedness
and loving others and showing hospitality and without grumbling? Will
you hover just above the text so that you never get down into the nitty-
gritty of, what is self-control? I thought we were supposed to be
controlled by the Holy Spirit. What's this self stuff? Help me, Pastor.
I thought that sober-mindedness had to do with something, but now it has
to do with prayer.

What might endless entertainment in my house have to do with the undoing
of sober-mindedness in my prayer? Help me, Pastor. Come down here with
me into these nitty-gritty questions. How exactly is my love supposed to
cover her sin? And if it covers her sin, should she be rebuked? And if
she's rebuked, won't that uncover the sin? Help me, Pastor.

These are complicated, difficult things that are being said here. And
what about how to get rid of my grumbling spirit? And then having just
floated above all those questions and never gotten into the nitty-
gritty, time-consuming, hard, exegetical, practical, beautiful labor of
helping people with all those kinds of questions in the particularities
of the text. Do you then pass on? Do you then pass on to the great
crescendo? Behold Christ, the perfect incarnation of self-control on the
way to Calvary.

Behold Christ, sober in prayer in Gethsemane, sweating blood. Behold
Christ in His love by which He covered a multitude of sins. Behold
Christ outstretched arms with cosmic hospitality on the cross.

Not a word of grumbling on the way to Golgotha. That's not exposition.
That's imposition.

That's not a declaration of God's Word. It's a diminishing, perhaps a
silencing of God's Word. That's not a faithful dealing.

With the beauty of holiness in this text, it's a distraction from the
very beauty Jesus died to make possible. Yes, it is possible to
inadvertently use Jesus to obscure what he died to obtain. Christ died
so that we would make a beeline from the cross to the text.

That we would spend hours and hours wrestling with the questions,
perplexities, sacrifices, beauties of self-control and sober-mindedness
and prayer and love and the covering of sin and the sweetness and
courage of hospitality and the miracle of life free from grumbling. He
died so that He and His cross would come up under like a mighty wave
carrying the beauties of all that obedience into the world for the glory
of His name. He died for that.

He died for this text to be seen and known and loved and obeyed and
shown to the world. You make a beeline from the cross to the text, and
the crescendo is the beauty of holiness. What did Peter say? What did
Peter say? In chapter 2 verse 24, he said, Christ Himself bore our sins
in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to
righteousness.

He died for self-control. He died for sober-mindedness. He died for
prayer.

He died for our love covering our friends and families' sin. He died for
hospitality. He died for deliverance from grumbling.

Peter says God is making, God is making a beeline from the cross to the
text, from the cross to prayer, from the cross to love, from the cross
to covering sins, from the cross to hospitality, from the cross to being
free from grumbling. God is making that line. He's flying from cross to
the beauty of holiness, not the other way around.

Don't tell your people that the beauty of the flower of righteousness is
really the bloody root. That's not what flowers are for. So where do we
stand now as we close? Where do we stand in regard to the title of this
message? Preaching the gospel as expounding the whole Bible, or the
implicit question, how do I preach the gospel from every text? Or the
catchy way of asking it, how can I make a beeline from this text, every
text, to the cross? And my response is, don't think that way.

Don't make that your controlling question as you come to the text and
prepare your message. Instead, rivet the attention of your whole soul on
the words and phrases and clauses and sentences and connections in your
text. Push on them.

Pull on them. Squeeze them. Luther said, bang your head against them if
you must, until you have wrung from them all the beauty that they
contain.

And then, show your people what you've seen. Show them how you saw it,
and how precious it must be if Christ would die to make people beautiful
like that. Let's pray.

Father, we want to honor your Word. It is all God-breathed. Forbid that
we would ever misuse the Word of God for some homiletical commitment
that does not find in the text what you have put there.

Grant, I pray that Jesus Christ would be exalted, crucified, and risen,
not as the crescendo of every sermon, but as the foundation of every
sermon, producing a kind of church that in the world makes Jesus look
beautiful. I ask this in his name, amen.

========================================================================
Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/Y-8j_74jQHU.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/john-piper/how-gospel-centered-preaching-can-go-wrong/
========================================================================