Preaching for a Verdict

Recovering the Role of Exhortation

Josh Smith, J. Josh Smith

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781462781232
• eBook ISBN: 9781462781249
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Those who preach have been called to deliver the truth, and must do so with a conviction that every truth demands a response. J. Josh Smith aims to start a conversation about the role of exhortation in preaching. With emphasis on the biblical and theological foundation for exhortation, and attention to how exhortation is used in both Old and New Testaments, Smith makes a compelling argument that preaching must include both explanation and exhortation. Preaching for a Verdict also provides practical steps to implement effective exhortation in preaching, and offers a variety of biblical models of exhortation to equip the reader to deliver the message of Christ with authority. Text-driven preaching demands text-driven exhortation.

CHAPTER 1

WHAT HAPPENED TO EXHORTATION?

James, the brother of Jesus, had certainly been exposed to great preaching. He heard Jesus preach during his earthly ministry, heard Peter preach at Pentecost, and heard the leaders of the early church preach as the church rapidly expanded. Besides the formal sermons, James spent much of his life hearing the proclamation of God’s Word. He grew up with Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, the Word incarnate. When it came to preaching, James had done a lot of hearing.

It should be no surprise then, that James, in his book of Christ-centered wisdom, instructs the church about the responsibility that comes with hearing the Word of God. James says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (1:22). In making this statement, James is in no way diminishing the need for hearing God’s Word. As Douglas Moo observes, “It is not listening to the word that James opposes or diminishes, but merely listening.”¹

James is primarily concerned with those who hear yet do not respond. He gives this warning because he knows how tempting and dangerous it is to hear and not respond. Those who only hear the Word receive no real benefit from it and are actually “deceiving” themselves.

This familiar verse contains massive implications for the hearer of the Word. James makes clear that the hearer’s responsibility does not end at the comprehension of biblical truth. The hearer’s responsibility is to hear the truth and respond to that truth. Therefore, the hearer of the Word must be diligent to take the time to understand the truth of the text, discover the response the text demands, and respond in faith-fueled, Spirit-empowered obedience. According to James, anything short of hearing and responding is disobedience.

The greater implication of this text is James’s assumption that every Scripture does, in fact, demand some kind of response. If the hearer of the Word is expected to respond, then it must be true that the Word always calls for a response. That response might not always be overtly stated in every text, but a call to respond is imbedded somewhere in the text and made clear by the Spirit. The truth that God’s Word always demands a response from God’s people is significant.

This truth has implications not only for the one who hears the Word, but also for the one who proclaims the Word. For those who are called to preach, this text brings up vital questions. If every text demands a response, does the preacher of the Word have any responsibility to call the people to respond? Does the preacher’s responsibility end at the communication of the meaning of the text or does it go beyond the meaning to exhort his hearers to obedience? Should the preacher feel a responsibility for the hearers’ obedience to the text and make part of his aim the exhortation to obedience? Certainly the clear responsibility from Jas 1:22 rests on the hearer, but does any responsibility rest also on the preacher? In other words, should preaching call for a verdict?

The scriptural admonitions and examples for preaching indicate that the preacher does, in fact, have a responsibility to call people to obedience. When Paul encourages Timothy in his preaching, he not only encourages him to preach the Word, but also to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort” (2 Tim 4:2). When Paul admonishes Titus to preach, he tells him not only to declare the truth but also to “exhort and rebuke with all authority” (Titus 2:15). Paul certainly understands the preacher is not just one who communicates the truth, but one who exhorts people to respond to the truth. Preaching is calling for a verdict.

Preaching for a verdict is preaching that exhorts. The call to exhort is the call to speak to the will of the hearer, not just to inform the mind of the hearer. It is pleading, persuading, and strongly urging the hearer to respond in obedience to the Word of God. It moves beyond suggested application into a definitive call to respond. While application might explain what the text demands, exhortation pleads with the hearer to respond to its demands. Exhortation speaks directly to the will.

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology defines “exhort” as a “means to exert influence upon the will and the decision of another with the object of guiding him into a general accepted code of behavior or of encouraging him to observe certain instructions. . . . To exhort is to address the whole man. Originally at least knowledge, emotion, and will are all involved.”² The preacher who understands the authority of God’s Word will, for the glory of God and the good of the hearer, authoritatively exhort the hearer to respond to it. The apostle Paul strongly exhorts the Corinthians to respond, saying, “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20).

This conviction to make exhortation a part of text-driven preaching is clear from the biblical examples of preaching. Exhortation is central in the preaching of the patriarchs, the preaching of the prophets, the preaching of Jesus, and the preaching of the apostles. Those called by God to speak the Word of God were not just called to communicate information, but also to call for transformation. Since the preacher is the voice of God to the people of God, and since James indicates that the Word of God demands a response, the preacher must both proclaim the Word of God and exhort obedience from his hearers.

The implications of this truth are especially significant for those who are committed to text-driven preaching. Text-driven preaching is preaching that allows the text to drive every aspect of the sermon. It is preaching that views the text not as merely a resource for the sermon, but as the source of the sermon. The sermon that is truly driven by the text “not only uses a text of Scripture but also should be derived from a text of Scripture and should develop a text of Scripture.”³ It is a sermon that “stays true to the substance of the text, the structure of the text, and the spirit of the text.”⁴

If the goal of text-driven preaching is to allow the text to drive every aspect of the sermon, and if every text contains a call to respond, then the truly text-driven sermon must drive toward exhortation. Exhortation is not an addition to exposition; faithful exposition demands exhortation. Exhortation is not adding anything to the text; rather, it is preaching the emotion of the text and calling for the response that is imbedded within the text. Without exhortation, the sermon is not truly driven by the text and falls short of God’s intended purpose.

Exhortation: The Forgotten Element of Preaching

For generations, preachers have been taught three essential elements to good preaching: explanation of the text, illustration of the text, and application of the text. Text-driven preaching itself has been defined as “a sermon that develops a text by explaining, illustrating, and applying its meaning.”⁵ Although every aspect of this trilogy is essential, it misses the element of exhortation. If the sermon ends with application, yet does not include exhortation, it fails to take seriously both the hearer’s responsibility to obey and the preacher’s responsibility to call for obedience. Application without exhortation makes proclamation more like a suggestion.

In 2011, Michael Duduit, founder and executive editor of Preaching magazine, wrote an article titled, “The 25 Most Influential Preaching Books of the Past 25 Years.”⁶ A survey of those twenty-five books reveals an incredible deficiency in the area of exhortation. Classics such as those by James Stewart, John Stott, James Cox, Jerry Vines, Graeme Goldsworthy, and Haddon Robinson do not address the issue of exhortation at all. Apart from the books on that list, classic works on preaching by Wayne McDill and John Broadus say the sermon should include explanation, illustration, argumentation, and application, but they don’t say a word about exhortation.⁷ Although argumentation is added to the basic trilogy, nothing is mentioned about the role of exhortation. John MacArthur’s extensive work on preaching gives almost no time to the role of exhortation, but instead says that preaching is “first and foremost a service to the mind.”⁸ He not only neglects the role of exhortation, he diminishes the very idea of speaking to the will of the hearer.

Bryan Chapell does a wonderful job of demonstrating the role of exhortation in the record of biblical preaching. He notes that the best example of exposition in the Old Testament is Nehemiah 8, as the people of God, returning from exile in Babylon, are reacquainted with God’s Word. From this text, he notes that exposition involves three elements: presentation of the Word, explanation of the Word, and exhortation based on the Word. He then says “these three elements consistently reappear in the New Testament practice.”⁹ He is exactly correct. But then, three pages later he continues on to teach that the three basic elements of exposition are explanation, illustration, and application.¹⁰ Exhortation is then mentioned only two other times in the rest of the 280 pages of the book. It appears that Chapell, like many others, has made application synonymous with exhortation.

Seeing application as synonymous with exhortation would explain why so few books mention the role of exhortation in preaching. Looking at various definitions of application in recent preaching books makes this lack of distinction clear. Jay E. Adams defines application as “the word currently used to denote that process by which preachers make scriptural truths so pertinent to members of their congregations that they not only understand how those truths should effect changes in their lives but also feel obligated and perhaps even eager to implement those changes.”¹¹ Adams continues by saying,

To explain the uses to which a passage may be put, again, does not mean t...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. What Happened to Exhortation?
• Chapter 2. A Theological Foundation for Exhortation
• Chapter 3. The Biblical Foundation for Exhortation
• Chapter 4. Exhortation in the Preaching of the Old Testament
• Chapter 5. Exhortation in the Preaching of the New Testament
• Chapter 6. Exhortation in Praxis
• Chapter 7. Models of Exhortation
• Chapter 8. Three Ingredients for Effective Exhortation
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Name and Subject Index
• Scripture Index