Last year, I wrote three Whetstone articles on the biblical importance of application. In those articles, I sought to lay the theological foundation for application (please email me if you’d like me to send these to you directly).[1] This spring I interrupted that series with three articles on separation. I anticipate devoting another Whetstone to separation, but I’d like to resume the series on application. Please note, the platform severely adjusted my article's layout, particularly in the bulleted lists, but hopefully you can make sense of it.
Please notice an important word in my title: “discovering.” As expositors, we do not determine applications; we simply discover the God-intended applications for our time and culture.
To discover the applications God intended for our culture, you should strive to do three things:
• Exegete the tone of the text
• Evaluate your listeners
• Connect the text to your listeners’ lives
Exegete the Tone of the Text
Valid application requires discovery of the timeless truths of the text (or texts, in the case of a topical expository sermon). You, as an expository teacher, want to uncover not only what it meant at the time of writing, but what it always means. Correct application is based on correct interpretation. We won’t reach the right application without a right understanding of what the passage says.
While exegeting the text, you must stay alert for the “applicatory intent” of the passage. Capill explains: “So we can ask of any text, ‘What is this text doing?’ Is it teaching, training, rebuking, warning, convicting, testing, comforting, encouraging, strengthening?”[2] Each Bible passage communicates a “dominant tone,” reflecting the purposes for its writing.[3] The major applications of your message should reflect this dominant tone. If the text seeks to encourage, most of your applications should accomplish the same purpose. A message on Psalm 23, for example, should leave the congregation with a sense of peace and rest. If your applications batter and bruise them, you have missed the dominant tone of Psalm 23. The feel of the applications generally ought to match the feel of the text. A text may rebuke, warn, evaluate, teach, comfort, or any combination of these.
Evaluate Your Listeners
After evaluating the biblical text, evaluate your prospective listeners. Think about their:
• Spiritual condition
. Unsaved and unconcerned
. Unsaved but concerned
. Saved but immature
. Saved and mature
• Relational status
. Single, married, divorced, divorced and remarried
. Newly married
. Husbands, fathers, sons
. Wives, mothers, daughters
• Life circumstances
. Young or adult
. Citizen or immigrant
. Working or retired
. Employer or employee
. Homeowner or renter
. Rich, middle-class, or poor
. Healthy or sick
. Persecuted
. Temptations
Spiritual conditions, relational status, and life situations of the audience only become evident to teachers who spend time with people. Practical teachers know their audience; thus, their applications ring true to their listeners’ lives.
Connect the Text to Your Listener’s Life
A teacher who knows the biblical text as well as his listeners is poised to bring the two together. The practical teacher asks, “Given the timeless truths of this text and the life situations of my hearers, what would be necessary responses for my audience if they are to obey God?”
Six diagnostic questions will help you as you seek to discover relevant application:
• What should my listeners believe and acknowledge as true?
. Right view of God
• Believing Satan’s lies?
• Doubting God’s goodness or knowledge?
. Right view of themselves
. Right view of their circumstances
• How should they respond to God?
. Bow in worship and thanksgiving
. Confess sinful habits
. Renew mind with Scripture
. Replace sinful habits with godly virtues
• What will this look like in day-to-day life?
. Where will they need to do it?
. When will they need to do it?
• Specificity is crucial because concrete situations help correlate the text to everyday life.[4]
• Strive to use applications covering both the cataclysmic (rare crises, tragedies) and mundane (every day, ordinary) events of life. You want to touch every part of your hearers’ lives. Applicational illustrations dealing with the ordinary events of daily life remind the congregation of God’s care for even the smaller aspects of their lives. If you only share dramatic illustrations of significant crises (e.g. death, terminal illness, financial ruin), you may unwittingly communicate that the Bible is only applicable in tragedies. Blending applications and illustrations of both the mundane and the unique events of life is the truer to life route.
• Why should they obey?
. Persuasion is critical, so call to mind the ways their response to God will harm them or help them. Potential motivations for obedience include the blessing of God, the chastening of God (sin’s high cost), the love of God (Christ’s constraining love), and their love for God.
• Lead your listeners to evaluate how their response to the text will affect them, their family, and their church.
. At times, the motivation for obedience is detailed in the text (e.g. Mark 5:19). When the motivation is not directly stated in the text or immediate context, you should consider mentioning a motivation emphasized in the broader context of Scripture (such as the blessing of God, the chastening of God, the love of God, or the believer’s love for God).
• How can they obey God in this area?
. Knowing what to do and why to do it may only serve to frustrate believers unless they are also told how they can.[5]
. The crucial factor in sanctification is God’s strengthening grace. Scripture describes four ways a believer can access God’s sanctifying grace: humility, the Word, prayer, and fellowship.
. In your applications, learn to make much of God’s grace. This is a preventative for externalism and legalism.
• How can they know if they are succeeding?
. On occasion during your messages, you should provide practical tests so that your hearers can analyze their success or failure to obey.
. For example, how would a believer test for bitterness in his or her life? A teacher could suggest, “When you think about a particular person, do you find yourself emotionally worked up? Do you find it hard to forgive them? Do you try to avoid seeing them at church?”
. Questions like these encourage self-evaluation by the listeners during the message.
. My dad, Tony Miller, is proficient at providing these self-tests during sermons, and consequently, his sermons have a practical slant that many people find helpful. For instance, in preaching on Christ’s preeminence, he will encourage his listeners to answer three diagnostic questions:
• In your free time, what do you think about the most?
• What do you anticipate the most in a week?
• What influences your present decisions and future plans the most?
The effective expositor is constantly suggesting practical applications to spur the listeners to continue the process on their own by analyzing how the text speaks to their lives and choices.
To connect the text to your listeners, take time to think about the experiences of life. After you have completed your exegesis, take time to think about how it applies to your life. If you look at how the text rebukes, encourages, and comforts you, you should get an idea of how the congregation needs the text. Your experiences are not unique (1 Cor. 10:13); their hearts are like yours. On more than one occasion I have had illustrations, applications, or even outline wording come to me when I was walking or jogging.
True expository preaching goes after the heart. Notice that these six application questions address every area of the heart:
• Mind --> know
• Emotions --> treasure
• Will --> choose
Targeting the heart should prevent us from veering into externalism.
Conclusion
Application is not making the Bible relevant. Application is discovering its relevance to daily life. Application answers the question your listeners are asking, “Now what? What are we supposed to do with what God has revealed in this passage?” Application is uncovering where the Bible and their choices intersect.
If you spark thoughtful reflection in your hearers, you have done them a meaningful service as their teacher. Let’s recommit to discovering God’s intended applications for our time and place; let’s preach for the heart!
[1] My email is pastormichael.fbc@gmail.com.
[2] Murray Capill, The Heart is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2014), 72. Capill’s book is quite helpful. I would encourage you to purchase and read it.
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Unless the listeners get a mental picture of some real-life situation, the biblical truth remains an abstraction.” Donald Sunukjian, Biblical Preaching: Proclaiming Truth with Clarity and Relevance (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007), 106.
[5] Jack Kuhatschek observes that “knowing what to do is not the same as knowing how to do it.” Applying the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 36.
