Is it a Christ-Centered Sermon? Part Six

Most of the Tim Keller quotations from this blog-series come from his D. Min. course syllabus entitled Preaching the Gospel in a Post-Modern World. The entire syllabus is approximately two-hundred single-spaced pages (8x11) of material where he seeks to flesh out gospel-centered preaching. I have found it very helpful. In the section of the syllabus below, Tim discusses the structure a gospel-centered sermon might take. He suggests a foundational outline for structuring a sermon’s argument from a gospel-centered perspective. Even if you are not a preacher / teacher, this section is very helpful in understanding how the human heart functions.

In ever text of Scripture there is somewhere a moral principle. It may grow out of what it shows us about the character of God or Christ, or out of either the good or bad example of characters in the text, or out of explicit commands, promises, and warnings. This moral principle must be distilled clearly. But then a crisis is created in the hearers as the preacher shows that this moral principle creates insurmountable problems. The sermon shows how this practical and moral obligation is impossible to meet. The hearers are led to a seemingly dead end. Then a hidden door opens and light comes in. The sermon moves both into worship and into Christ-application when it shows how only Jesus Christ has fulfilled this….Finally, [the preacher] shows how our inability to live as we ought stems from our rejection of Christ as the Way, Truth, and Life (or whatever the theme is). The sermon points out how to repent and rejoice in Christ in such a way that we can live as we ought.

Tim then illustrates how we might structure a gospel-centered topical sermon on honesty:

If I preached a sermon on ‘honesty’, I could show the forms of dishonesty and how harmful it is, and how we need to ask God to help us be honest. But if I stopped there (and merely called people to ask forgiveness for lying and try harder to be honest), I would only be playing to the heart’s natural self-righteousness. I would be essentially supporting the growth of ‘common morality’ in the people. Those who would be convicted by the sermon would feel guilty and burdened. Those who has not lied lately would be smug. I should admit that nearly every sermon I ever preached on honesty / lying in my first 15 years of ministry was like this! Even though I knew (via Ed Clowney) that I had to preach Christ and not moralism from every text, I really just made Jesus an ‘add-on.’ I didn’t apply him as Savior to the actual sin of lying, but to the aftermath only. My sermon would go something like this:

I. Here are all the ways we lie, and why they are forbidden.
II. We should not lie, because Jesus told the truth and kept his promises.
III. If we do lie, Jesus will forgive us and help us do better (Jesus as God-of-gaps)

In other words, I used Jesus as an example, and then as someone who forgives us when, though we try very hard, we sometimes fail. This essentially tells people to sanctify themselves. It implicitly appeals to fear and / or pride as motives for honesty.

But in the gospel analysis we ask the question: ‘why do we lie in a particular situation?’ The usual reason we lie is because there is something we feel that we simply must have (besides Jesus) to survive and be truly happy, and so we lie. It is usually a good reputation, or saving face, or approval, or some other thing. I first came to understand this when I realized that my wife and I tend to ‘fudge’ the truth in very different circumstances. I realized that the underlying reason that I lied / deceived was a fear of people’s disapproval.

I was trusting in the approval of people rather than in Christ as my functional trust, as my main hope. But anything you add to Jesus Christ as a requirement for a happy life is a functional salvation, a pseudo-lord, and it is controlling you, whether it be power, approval, comfort or control. So the only way to change your habit of lying is not to just try harder but to apply the gospel—to repent of your failure to believe the gospel, and see that you are not saved by pursuing this thing (which you are lying to get), but through the grace of Jesus Christ (pp. 78-79).

More to come in part seven.

(Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Five)

*Also, check out this blogger's posts on Gospel-Centered Preaching, here and here.