Doctrine That Dances

Bringing Doctrinal Preaching and Teaching to Life

Robert Smith

Preaching magazine’s 2008 Book of the Year! The theme of doctrinal preaching and teaching comes to life through the enthusiastic and inspired writing of professor Robert Smith in Doctrine That Dances.

 

Advance Praise:

 

“At a time when so much of the conversation on preaching deals with presentation, Robert Smith has reminded us that effective teaching must also take the theological task seriously. He makes his case so well that his book, Doctrine that Dances, is our Preaching Book of the Year.”

 

Michael Duduit, editor, Preaching magazine

"Away with dull doctrinal sermons! Using the metaphor of music, the author shows us how to blend cogitation and celebration—mind and heart—in our preaching of Bible doctrine. You can benefit from his wide knowledge and experience in traditional western homiletics as well as African American preaching. We have much to learn from each other, and this book is a valuable contribution to the current conversation."

 

Warren W. Wiersbe, former pastor of Moody Church, general director of Back to the Bible, and coauthor of Preaching in Black & White

“A masterful preacher and teacher himself, Smith provides direction for students, young pastors and veteran preachers alike. Pulpits across the land will be strengthened as preachers implement the guidance offered in this volume. Doctrine That Dances will become mandatory reading for a new generation of preachers. It is a joy to recommend this marvelous work.”

David Dockery, president, Union University

“Dr. Robert Smith, Jr. is one of the most compelling voices in American preaching today . . . Doctrine That Dances describes the preacher’s task in a way that is at once personal, passionate, and provocative. This book describes the kind of preaching that is at the heart of the awakening that must come.”

Timothy George, founding dean of Beeson Divinity School and a senior editor at Christianity Today

Chapter One

TOWARD A DEFINITION OF DOCTRINAL PREACHING

The late Jaroslav Pelikan, the celebrated historical theologian, stated, “What the church of Jesus Christ believes, teaches and confesses on the basis of the Word of God: this is Christian doctrine.”¹ Peter Toon, in an insightful treatment of the development of doctrine across the history of the church, explained doctrine as “a historically conditioned response of the Church to questions put to her at a particular time and place by the world or by her members.”² However, we can define doctrine more easily than we can define doctrinal preaching. One of the ways of attempting a definition of doctrinal preaching is to show the relationship that doctrine has to preaching. William J. Carl III provides a clear portrait of the association of doctrine with preaching. He contends that:

Doctrine is not identical with the proclamation of the gospel. Doctrine serves proclamation, enriches and enlarges it, largely in a critical role, as a criterion for determining that what the church proclaims today is in harmony with scripture and its tradition, that it is truly human language about God and not about the latest spiritual trend or social ethical passion.³

In conjunction with doctrine's critical relationship to preaching, like an arbiter or umpire of a baseball game who demands that the game be played according to the rules of the baseball manual, doctrine insists that preaching be carried out in harmony with the regulations of the biblical manual.

Furthermore, Carl discerns the affiliation that the rules of English grammar have with ordinary English conversation in light of the relationship that doctrine has with preaching. He quotes George Lindbeck, who said,“There is a parallel intimate relationship between the rules of English grammar and ordinary American discourse.”⁴ Carl further argues:

Not all discourse that employs Christian vocabulary is proper Christian discourse any more than a sentence using nothing but English terms, such as “He don't do no wrong to nobody,” qualifies as a proper English sentence…. We have come to recognize its impropriety as a result of our mastery of English grammar and our use of these rules to criticize and evaluate the sentence. In much the same way, Christian doctrines should function to criticize discourse that flows from the pulpit…. Preachers need to concern themselves with doctrine, then, in every sermon that they preach, just as authors need to attend to grammatical rules when writing. Just as the rules of subject-verb agreement inform the writing of this paragraph, so the Trinity doctrine must inform the way preachers speak when referring to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, reminding them that their discourse does not imply that Christians believe in three gods.⁵

While preachers know what doctrinal preaching is, it is difficult to articulate succinctly what it is in one descriptive and pregnant sentence. A definition is a limitation. Once something is defined, there is the inevitability of leaving something important out of the definition.

We live in a communication-crazed community. Words, words, and more words! Left-brained people especially emphasize the value of words. Warren W. Wiersbe asks, “How do you define life and taste? How do you give a definition for the essence of the feeling of being in love?” He cites the poet Walt Whitman, who once listened to a lecture of a learned astronomer who discussed the meticulous matters of the universe and the relationship of the bodily elements of space. After growing weary of this technical, scientific lecture, Whitman went out and looked at the stars!⁶

People want preachers to define everything for them, and they are sometimes disappointed when the preachers tell them that they are unable to do so. Some things are enveloped within the realm of what Rudolf Otto called the mysterium tremendum, or the tremendous mystery. Some things have to be experienced. In a way, doctrinal preaching can only be approached in an effort to define itself because the essence and reality of doctrinal preaching is bigger than any definition. Doctrinal preaching is not a mechanical process governed by a human agent; rather, it is an event that happens under the auspices of the Holy Spirit who reveals the doctrinal truths and testifies of the person of Christ. Consequently, doctrinal preaching is shrouded in mystery. In an attempt to define doctrinal preaching, the mystery cannot be demystified, and the inscrutable cannot be scrutinized.

We can only move toward a definition of doctrinal preaching. We are on the way without any possibility of ever fully arriving! While it is true that we must experience the essence of doctrinal preaching, we must also know what we are experiencing. Among the many qualities of the effectiveness of Paul as a doctrinal preacher was his conviction about what he preached and who he preached about. He reminded Timothy that all Scripture is God breathed and is profitable for doctrine (2 Tim 3:16). Scripture is just as God breathed as the body of Adam that received the breath of God; Scripture is just as God breathed as the corpses in the valley of dry bones that became a resuscitated army when the ruach, or breath of God, was breathed into them. Because Paul had this confidence, he could exclaim, “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim 1:12).

We are challenged by 1 Peter 3:15 to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.” Growing up in the church of my childhood, the Rose Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, the senior choir would sing the choral rendition, “It's Real,” and do so with great passion and confidence. I can still see the streams of tears running down the eyes of those senior saints, and I can still hear both men and women shouting as they waved their hands in personal witness to the truth of the lyrics of the song: “Yes, yes, I know it's real.” I am convinced that these lyrics must undergird the sermonic statements of our doctrinal preaching.

O how well do I remember how I doubted day by day,
For I did not know for certain that my sins were washed away.
When the Spirit tried to tell me, I the truth would not receive;
I endeavored to be happy and to make myself believe.
……………………………………
But at last I tired of living such a life of fear and doubt,
For I wanted God to give me something I would know about;
So the truth would make me happy and the light would clearly shine,
And the Spirit gave assurance that I'm His and He is mine.
So I prayed to God in earnest; and not caring what folks said,
I was hungry for the blessing; my poor soul—it must be fed.
Then at last by faith I touched him and, like sparks from smitten steel,
Just so quick salvation reached me. O bless God I know it's real!

Chorus

It's real, it's real,
O I know it's real
Praise God the doubts are settled
For I know, I know, it's real.⁷

Doctrine has a subservient role to preaching. While doctrine may exist to make preaching as disciplined as it needs to be, doctrine's mission is to be a servant to proclamation. Doctrine's purpose is not merely to be derived, constructed, and formalized and to remain in the archives of academia for scholarly use only. Rather, doctrine is the possession of the church and must be preached. Preaching extracts its communicative strength from the reservoirs of doctrine and draws its riches from the wells of its truths. The doctrine behind and below the sermon gives it stability.

As Narcissus saw his reflection in a pool of water, so doctrine ought to see its image in the face of preaching. It gives the sermon its shape. After the sermon is preached, the hearers may not initially recognize an identifiable doctrine within the sermon because the preacher may have expounded on the doctrine of sanctification without ever using the word sanctification during the preaching event. But the hearer ought to be able to detect the image behind the doctrine and arrive at the intended doctrinal experience. It is better to experience repentance, joy, and justification than merely to learn about them.

I do not have in mind the lessening of the importance of knowing doctrine; I just want to remind preachers constantly that doctrinal preaching not only informs our learning but also influences our living. We can never “fully know” during our terrestrial trek. Paul was right, “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now we know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known” (1 Cor 13:12). But then! When the terrestrial trek is terminated and the celestial course is initiated, the “now-ness” of time will, in the words of the inimitable Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, fall exhausted at the feet of the “then-ness” of eternity. Not only will we have “no less days to sing God's praise,” but we will also have no less days to learn more fully about the One to whom doctrine points.

We have heard about the love of God over the years, but after being in the presence of the Lord for a million years, we will only know just a little bit more of what the unconditional love of God really is. We have studied about the atonement for sin for a long period of time, but after staring at the nail prints in the Lord's hands for a billion years and gazing at the Lamb that was slain for our redemption, we will know only a smidgen of what the atonement really means. We have thought long and hard about the holiness of God, and reminded our congregants, “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16). But after a trillion years we will know only a fraction about the holiness of God that causes angels to cover their feet and faces and to fly away as they sing a song that reverberates throughout the corridors of heaven, earth, and hell: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa 6:3).

Consider a scene where a seagull is dispatched every year and flies to the Rock of Gibraltar, where it brushes its beak against that granite rock formation and flies away only to return a thousand years later. If that process is repeated every thousand years until the Rock of Gibraltar is reduced to sea level, in comparison, we would have only been in heaven for a day. There will never be a moment in time or eternity in which we will fully comprehend the doctrines of the Bible that we preach. What Phillips Brooks told students at Yale still holds true: “Preach doctrine, preach all the doctrine you know, and learn forever more and more; but preach it always, not that men may believe it, but that men may be saved by believing it.”⁸ Exegesis must be combined with experience, deeds must be merged with doctrine, lips must be linked to lives, and beliefs must be integrated with behavior.

Charles Bugg referred to Phillips Brooks' assertion, which compared the Bible to a telescope. The telescope is not designed to look at but to look through, to see that which is beyond us.⁹ Additionally, Bugg cited the comment of Robert McCracken, who, while senior minister of the Riverside Church in New York City, was asked by someone why people kept coming to Riverside to hear his sermons. McCracken replied, “They keep coming hoping to hear a word from beyond themselves.”¹⁰

Dr. Greg Thornbury, a professor at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, interviewed Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, founding editor of Christianity Today, shortly before Henry died. Thornbury asked him what was the most profound question he had ever put to his students. Dr. Henry bypassed the conundrum of catechesis, the intricacies of systematic theology, and the profundity of doctrinal explanation and stated, “The most profound question I have ever asked my students is, ‘Have you ever met the risen Lord?’”¹¹ This question goes beyond the mere recitation of a creed, the explanation of a doctrine, or the clarification of a biblical regulation. It points to a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. Doctrinal preaching must move from merely learning biblical regulations, or the indication that we cannot live holy, as God requires. It must move toward gospel revelation, for Christ enables us to do what we cannot do—to live holy! Ultimately it must move to forging a relationship with Christ. For Dr. Henry it was not just a matter of testing a student on the historical claims of the resurrection of Jesus; his ultimate concern was whether the student had an experiential encounter with the Lord.

Job did not give a lecture on the person of the Redeemer; instead he declar...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: Dr. James Earl Massey
• Introduction: Is There Any Word from the Lord?
• Chapter One: Toward a Definition of Doctrinal Preaching
• Chapter Two: A Metaphorical Rationale for Doctrinal Preaching
• Chapter Three: Lord of the Dance and the Escort
• Chapter Four: The Preacher as an Exegetical Escort
• Chapter Five: The Preacher as a Doxological Dancer
• Chapter Six: Maintaining Doctrinal Balance
• Chapter Seven: The Jazz of Doctrinal Preaching
• Epilogue
• Sermon 1 “The Other Side of Grace” Text: 2 Corinthians 12:1-10
• Sermon 2 “Living on the Edge of Whatever Happens” Text: Philippians 1:1-2, 12-13, 19, 27
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index