I’m actually not here to chime in on the technicalities of the doctrinal discussion – far better minds than my own are already doing that well enough. I want to address the discussion from the perspective of the pulpit. That is to say, from a practical and pastoral perspective relative to the week in and week out work of the minister of the Word.

And here I have only two points I’d like to make.

First, justification by faith alone must never become assumed, but must remain explicit in our preaching. With zeal to build up the holiness of the congregation, many pastors go on to a practical series of sermons where he addresses the nuts and bolts of the Christian life. Here he speaks to Christians, or to those he assumes are Christians. It seems that here justification by faith alone is not relevant. After all, so it seems, that doctrine is for converting unbelievers, not for the saints. What the saints need is teaching on what to do, not on what is done for them in Christ’s work of justifying the ungodly. The result of this can be two-fold. First, it may lead a congregation to forget the fact that they are still – in and of themselves – ungodly. And all they need are tips for better living. They come to church to get some good life advice on how to live the Christian life. Or, on the other hand, after hearing a series of sermons on what they should be doing, they become honest with themselves and discover that they aren’t living the Christian life as they should. The end result of this is despair. They get a bunch of good and biblical dos and don’ts, but because justification by faith alone is assumed rather than explicitly taught, they forget who they are in Christ no matter how much they fall short of God’s law.

Secondly, preaching from indicative to imperative is not enough. I think everyone in the current debate agrees that we must preach the imperatives as they are grounded in the great indicatives of the Gospel. And if we did this, my first point above wouldn’t really be a problem. But another problem arises if we preach in a linear why from the indicatives to the imperatives and stop there. The problem is we leave off on a legal note. We leave off with man. We leave off with what I am supposed to do. And our people go out from church, all charged up to change the world, and then horribly fall short on Monday morning. OK, if the sermon was really good, maybe they make it until Tuesday. And once again, they are driven to despair. Or, they fool themselves – or otherwise excuse themselves – and convince themselves that they are keeping the law they heard on Sunday. Therefore, we must also remind our people that even their sanctification – their gifted sanctification which flows from Christ himself – will be imperfect. Therefore, and I often tell my congregation this, Christ’s justifying grace redeems me not only from my past sins of open rebellion, but it also pays for my “good works” as well. If it is true that not even the most sanctified of believers in this life approach perfect obedience, and if our best of works are really as filthy rags in the sight of God, then Christ’s justification is not only a reality which became mine “back then” at my conversion. But we must remind our people that their justification is a continual and abiding reality, even and especially when I am living a holy life. Even when I say no to sin, and turn from it, that act was itself so mingled with sin that I praise God I am forgiven of even the imperfection found in that good work. I think that much preaching in Reformed pulpits can lead people to think that they come in and out of a state of justification. But we must remind our people that if they are really in union with Jesus Christ by a sincere faith, no matter how bad they fail in their sanctification throughout the course of the week, they are no less justified as they were when they were first converted. To say otherwise is to lead people to think that they are justified by their sanctification.

The beauty of the doctrine of the duplex gratia is how justification and sanctification are co-terminus benefits in the life of the believer. Even while I am being sanctified, I am at the same time justified in Christ. And as one who is justified in Christ, I am also being sanctified. We can never leave one or the other out of our pulpits.

[T]he secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.  Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what – these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.  And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank.

William Zinsser, On Writing Well (Collins, 2006), 6-7.

Google Wave provides the platform for the ultimate community worship service.  Gone are the days when your pastor preaches to you.  With Google Wave, you can contribute to his words!  First, the congregation should be equipped with laptops or smartphones.  Second, the worship service needs to be blanketed with WiFi so everyone can be equally connected – in spirit and in ethernet.

The next big step is to place a computer with a fairly large monitor on the pulpit.  You can hide this eye soar with a bit of skilled carpentry.  The pastor is now prepared to visualize the hive-mind.  Throughout the week, the pastor should write his sermon in a Google wave.  This allows the congregation to watch and even participate as he writes.  Come Sunday, the people can even interact with the sermon text while the pastor delivers it.  Is the sermon’s application too pointed?  Change it.  Don’t think the sermon is funny enough?  Add some jokes – or better yet, a YouTube clip.  Remember, everyone’s connected so the congregation will see and hear it.

Don’t forget the back channel.  Feel free to comment on the pastor’s delivery or that goofy tie he’s wearing.  Schedule a lunch with friends for after the service and queue up your favorite U2 tracks to sing instead of hymns.  And after the sermon concludes, don’t forget to tweet your praise.  This is dialogical, communal worship for the digital age.  Regulative principle, schmegulative principle.

But we might ask How does Moses’ word have any power? God says that he has pardoned the people according to Moses’ word. Does Moses have authority over the LORD? How is this possible? This is the difficulty that open theists relish in.  Let me propose that to understand this passage we need to consider Moses’ relation to our ultimate intercessor Jesus Christ.

Though Moses’ work had a unique, historical significance, he ultimately points us to the work of Christ. Just as Moses led God’s people out of slavery from Egypt and then on a path through the wilderness to inhabit the promised land, Jesus Christ has led his people out of the slavery of sin, through the wilderness of our struggles in this world toward our ultimate rest in the new heavens and new earth.

1 Timothy 2:5 is very clear that there is one mediator between God and man and that is Jesus Christ. But insofar as Moses was a true mediator, his mediation was founded upon the true mediation of Jesus Christ. Moses was a mediator because Christ would be the mediator. So how does the LORD pardon his people according to Moses’ word? It’s because Moses was a priest who through God’s power spoke and mediated in the power of the coming Messiah.

In a somewhat Klinian sense, Moses’ office is sacramental of Christ’s office as our great high priest.  Moses’ words and actions have authority insofar as they are congruent with and anticipate the words and actions of Jesus Christ.  I’m inclined to think that this line of thinking could be developed toward a better understanding of the authority of the church’s ordained officers and particularly, the authority of the preached word.  Granted, we no longer have [earthly] priests who intercede for us, but I do believe we could learn a lesson on the source of ministerial authority from Numbers 14.

R. L. Dabney has something to say about this single-sermon phenomenon in his Evangelical Eloquence.  In addressing a similar concern, Dabney discusses why sermons should not attempt to be complete syllabi in theology.

These two results would then be inevitable: that there could be but one sermon in substance, and that this one sermon must remain for ever a bare syllabus.  The hearers would therefore never gain a full and impressive view of any one point of Christian theology; they could never receive more than a barren smattering of sacred knowledge (112).

If every sermon was a complete doctrinal syllabi then each sermon would be the same, bare treatment.  Dabney argues that in order for the hearers to be taught the whole counsel of God in its manifold richness, each sermon must bear the text’s distinctive focus.  I think Dabney is exactly right.

I also think that the perennial criticism of redemptive-historical preaching is not altogether accurate.  Granted, RH preachers tend to start in the garden.  RH preachers are also quick to show how Christ fulfilled the types and promises of the Old Testament.  But is that such a bad thing?  Shouldn’t Christ, his work and its organic relation to all of Scripture be proclaimed in every sermon?

I’m no advocate of lazy preaching.  Younger RH preachers, especially, have the tendency to write each sermon as the same sweeping view of the entire Bible.  RH preachers need to be careful to demonstrate each passage’s unique place in the history of special revelation.  This, however, does not necessitate that RH preachers eschew Christological connections.  All preachers are duty-bound to proclaim Christ in all of Scripture.  I’m convinced that failure to do so is failure to honor God in preaching.

The relationship is a one-way relationship.  We always begin with the indicative and only then do we move to the imperative.  Reversing the order results in neo-nomianism and semi-Pelagian thinking.  As a knee-jerk reaction against moralistic preaching, the tendency can be to overstress the indicative.  But is this even possible?  Can the person and work of Christ take too prominent a role in preaching?  Perhaps it can if it leads to an exclusion of the imperative.  But let me suggest a way of thing about the relation of the indicative and imperative elements of Scripture in preaching.

Paul spends the first ten verses of Titus 2 describing how various groups of people are to live.  Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.  Older women, likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine…  Younger men are to be self-controlled.  Slaves are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative.

But after he delineates the marks of Christian living in various situations, Paul explains why one should live this way in verse 11.  “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people…”  This section introduces the indicative.  He continues on again by further describing how one is to live by grace.  This grace that has appeared trains us “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.”  Living by grace also involves “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

This is an interesting move regarding the indicative/imperative.  In 2:11a he begins with indicative – laying it as the necessary foundation for the imperative elements we read in 11b-13.  But just as quickly as Paul describes the imperative, he shifts right back to the indicative.  We are to live “waiting for our blessed hope.”  This is an imperative-tinged statement.  But the blessed hope is the “appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

The movement in Titus 2:11-14 is indicative > imperative > indicative.  Let me suggest that in our preaching we should consider how the imperative once again reminds Paul of the glorious person and work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who provides the foundation for living a life in His service.  As we lay the indicative foundation and move to the imperative, let us close with the proclamation of the person and work of Christ once again.

In the introductory lecture, Dabney describes the art of preaching.  First, he reminds us that the sacred calling of preaching is not above the study of rhetoric.

The assumption that the preacher’s sacred attitude is above rhetoric reveals ignorance of the nature of true art.  Let us then, at the outset, seek a correct conception of it.  And we may be led to this idea by considering the distinction between art and artifice.  Art is but the rational adjustment of means to an end.  Art is adaptation; it employs proper means for a worthy end; it is but wisdom in application (15-16).

He builds upon this definition by stating that because of the nature of the activity and message, preachers not only have a suggestion to study rhetoric, but a duty.

But I assert none the less that, since this duty is to convey gospel truth effectively to other souls, and since there are adapted means by which this end may be the better accomplished, there is a true art of preaching, which is not only lawful and honest, but sacredly obligatory… Art, I repeat, is but a well-adapted method, and the real option which we have is not between art and nature, but only between art wise and art foolish, art skilful [sic], or art clumsy (16-17).

Let all ministers of the gospel be concerned not only with the integrity and weight of their message, but with delivering that message well with the skill that honors it.