Gospel-Driven: How?
Is it realistic to say that every sermon should be gospel-driven? What do we do when the text doesn’t seem to be about the gospel at all? Do we just bend it and squeeze it until a gospel presentation oozes out? Does this mean that every message should be evangelistic? Shouldn’t some sermons just teach, exhort, encourage, or comfort?
Let me answer the last question first. By “gospel-driven,” we don’t mean necessarily evangelistic. We do mean that the gospel drives our teaching, our exhortation, our encouragement, and our comfort just as much as it drives our evangelism. The gospel is not just the path to being born again, it is the path upon which we walk every day of our new life!
Now the other questions: Must we force the gospel in every text? Wouldn’t that be less than faithful to the Scriptures? I could, and I will, write many posts in answer to these questions, but as a first step, I’ll suggest four questions that can help us get to the gospel from every text, without doing violence to the meaning of the text itself.
How does this text fit into the “big story” of the Bible? The starting place for finding the path to Christ in any text is to see every text in the context of the grand narrative of the Scriptures. Where does this text occur? In the beginning? In the middle? Toward the end? Use a “google earth” approach in your thinking through the text and sermon: Zoom in to study the details of the text. Then zoom out to see the broader landscape, and find the place of this text in the overall gospel story. From this perspective, you can find the path to Christ.
How does this text reveal human brokenness? We experience the power and wholeness of the gospel only to the extent that we experience the powerlessness and brokenness of our own lives. Ever since God found Adam hiding in the shrubbery of the garden, every true encounter of humanity with God has been a moment of painful realization of our sinfulness before him. Every true encounter with God’s word will confront us at some point of our brokenness. Find this point of brokenness, and you have found the trailhead of the path toward the gospel in any text.
How does this text point to Christ as the answer to human brokenness? As Jesus explained to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, all of the Scriptures are ultimately about him. He is the solution to the problem, the answer to the question, the resolution to the tension. He redeems us in our sin and re-creates us in our brokenness. A sermon that does not point to Christ as the solution to our greatest problem cannot claim to be a Christian sermon. One of the important skills to develop for gospel-driven preaching is the ability to recognize the path to Christ in any text.
How does this text invite us into God’s story? This is the application question. Whatever the place of the text in God’s story, we need to locate our application of it in our place in God’s story — between the accomplishment of redemption in Jesus’ first coming, and the consummation of redemption in his second coming. Always apply the truth of the text and of the sermon in light of what the gospel has accomplished, and in anticipation of where the gospel is leading us.
