The book, Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching, is a compilation of essays of various dimensions of preaching. Its contributors represent Baptist, Presbyterian, and other independent traditions, though all were foundational to the ministerial thinking of many in both New and Old Calvinistic strands.

This book is not a manual on preaching in the sense of giving principle of homiletics. With the exception of some elements of Beeke’s chapter on the “experiential” style and the same of Thomas’ chapter covering the lectio continua, this book leaves all that for the next level. Having said that, it is as good an introduction as any for someone who is approaching the role of the preaching and preaching activity for the first time.

Since there are eleven chapters, several of which overlap with others under broader themes, I will divide this review along the general headings of (1) the place of preaching, (2) the substance of preaching, and (3) the targets of preaching. 

The Place of Preaching

To be Reformed at all today is to be conscious of the stark contrast between a word-driven ministry and a culture-driven ministry. In his essay, Albert Mohler speaks of what he calls “product envy.” As products of American culture ourselves, we have been trained to measure success by the immediacy and tangibility of the results. We see the automobile or housing manufacturers pump out model after model, and yet “The preacher is denied that satisfaction ... the pulpit ministry is largely a hidden work in the human heart.”1 

There are other reasons besides consumerism and pragmatism that preaching is hard to find. Postmodernism and more popular forms of subjectivism dethrone authority and objective meaning, so that the demand is for church leadership to be the one responding to where everyone feels themselves to be on their own “journey.” 

Against this, preaching is the declaration of the truths of Scripture and especially the gospel. It is different from teaching in that declarative sense. It involves teaching, but it is more than that. Boice wrote,

“On the basis of 1 Corinthians 1:21, we can say that preaching is that wise means of God by which the wisdom of the world is shown to be foolishness, and the folly of the gospel, as the world conceives it, is shown to be true wisdom.”2 

That preaching is front and center in gathered worship is no coincidence. It is no mere preference. It follows from its authoritative nature. Reflecting upon the astonished reactions to Jesus’ preaching in the Gospels, Don Kistler remarked that “we have far too many scribes and Pharisees in pulpits today.”3 Even where we resist the subjective and the pragmatic, we lack personal acquaintance with the authoritative Christ and so even we “conservative” ministers find ourselves going with the flow. I think Kistler is right in observing, “The people love it when no one is in charge. They love it when the pastor is on the same level as they are.”4 In this way, we make a more subtle peace with the approval of man.

The Substance of Preaching

Nearly everyone would say that the style of preaching they commend is a gospel-centered preaching. But what does this really entail? Against the kind of Hyper-Calvinism that would restrict any “offer,” Alexander cites 2 Corinthians 5:19-20 to say that

“The preaching of the gospel has two elements in it ... One is proclamation ('God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ'). The other is appeal ('as though God were making his appeal through us'). As Stott points out, there must be no proclamation without appeal and no appeal without proclamation.”5

To call true preaching “gospel-heralding” is not to crowd out the place for law. As has been said, we will not go to a doctor or take medicine unless we know we are sick. “Luther would pour over the biblical law,” Sproul wrote, “and he saw the law as a mirror that revealed, on the one hand, the perfect righteousness and holiness of God, and on the other hand, his own lack of righteousness.”6 

In striking the balance between law and gospel, it must be remembered that preaching on the Lord’s Day is predominantly for the saints. Here we must consider the law in all three of its uses: evangelical, civil, and directive. In such a setting especially, Ferguson’s ordering of grace and law makes sense: “Unaided law, imperatives without indicatives, cannot pry open locked hearts. It is grace—and, yes, the preaching of the law in the context of grace, expounding the grace of law, that brings conviction of sin.”7

If Christian preaching is heralding the King’s edicts, then there is no place for an interrogative tone. Sproul touches on this in describing one famous Reformation debate:

“Erasmus preferred to ‘suspend judgment’ and not make assertions. It was Erasmus’ view that the proper academic posture of the scholar, when investigating such issues, is to be very cautious, to reserve judgment, and to hesitate from coming to firm conclusions ... Luther became apoplectic over this position of Erasmus. He said: ‘Nothing is more familiar or characteristic among Christians than assertion. Take away assertions, and you take away Christianity.’ Then, in his passion, Luther said, ‘Away, now, with Skeptics and Academics from the company of us Christians; let us have men who will assert.’”8 

Preaching must not only win the battle for each mind in this way. In making its claim upon the mind, the Word must conquer the whole life of the Christian—in other words, one’s affections and habits. Consequently, as Joel Beeke argues, true preaching must be experiential. This means at least six things, according to Beeke: 1. God’s word is central to it; 2. it is discerning; 3. it explains how things go in the lives of God’s people and how they ought to go; 4. it stresses inward knowledge; 5. it is centered on Jesus Christ; and 6. its aim is to glorify the triune God.9

The Targets of Preaching

While Aristotle’s Rhetoric is never mentioned in this volume, the famous threefold treatment of the truth in itself (logos), the truth felt (pathos), and the truth “incarnated” to one’s audience (ethos) is never out of sight. So Ferguson’s lesson from Paul preaching to the heart through the preacher’s feeling—“something has happened in his own heart; it has been laid bare before God by His Word”10—this is the believability of pathos. 

Beginning with Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:14, we can take note of two extreme ditches to avoid. Sproul rightly emphasizes Paul’s drumbeat from such texts, to the effect that, “the power is in the gospel, not in our presentation of it.”11 This is true and guards against the extreme of “worldly wisdom,” a general heading that can encompass everything from pretentious eloquence to more base gimmicks, stories, and jokes. But the other extreme (the false lesson to take from Paul’s teaching on this) is to phone it in and call that “spiritual.” Making truth plain is its own excellence. Application and illustration are obviously parts of this, but even these are only as good as one has refined all of the details of the passage down to an essential punchline—what Haddon Robinson and Bryan Chapell have called “the big idea,”12 or what the Puritans simply called “the doctrine.” That requires abstract thought both in the pastor’s study and then in the pews. 

______________

1. R. Albert Mohler, “The Primacy of Preaching,” in Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching (Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2008), 4, 5.

2. James Montgomery Boice, “The Foolishness of Preaching,” 21.

3. Don Kistler, “Preaching With Authority,” 117.

4. Kistler, “Preaching With Authority,” 117.

5. Eric Alexander, “Evangelistic Preaching,” 129.

6. R. C. Sproul, “The Teaching Preacher,” 80.

7. Sinclair Ferguson, “Preaching to the Heart,” 112.

8. Sproul, “The Teaching Preacher,” 76.

9. Joel Beeke, “Experiential Preaching,” 59-62.

10. Ferguson, “Preaching to the Heart,” 102.

11. Sproul, “The Teaching Preacher,” 84.

12. cf. Haddon Robinson, Biblical Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: 1980) 31-44; Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005) 45-46.