Preaching—Tim Keller

INTRODUCTION

In an age when the value of preaching is questioned from outside and inside the church, Dr. Timothy Keller writes Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism to argue for the centrality of preaching in the work of God. He does more than defend preaching. He envisions and explains preaching that changes lives, helping the minister understand his audience and the transformative work God intends through His Word. Through Dr. Tim Keller’s life and ministry, God used him to make a lasting impact on the evangelical church in America. By God’s Grace, Keller was graciously enabled to grow a church that engages its urban professional audience weekly with the Gospel in midtown Manhattan. Dr. Keller has been instrumental in strengthening marriages, shaping the Christian’s view of vocation, engaging the secular mind with biblical truth, and helping preachers.

To reach people, gospel preachers must challenge the culture’s story at points of confrontation and finally retell the culture’s story, as it were, revealing how its deepest aspirations for good can be fulfilled only in Christ.

Keller’s book, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism, stands out in the homiletic writing genre. If you spend enough time reading books on preaching—as a Dmin student, I have—most books share considerable overlap. Authors may vary in emphasis and explanations, but the similarity in the content of their writing is easily noted. However, Keller’s book is unique and has a depth of understanding not replicated by many authors.

His contributions to preaching are, in part, philosophical. Keller is a great thinker, and his thoughts are profound. He has an exceptional ability to get behind things and expose root issues and primary needs. For example, while exploring evangelistic preaching in chapters four and five, Keller investigates the mind of secular culture and gives an apologetic (presuppositional apologetic) take on preaching. His presuppositional apologetic encourages the preacher to enter the secular worldview of many of his unsaved congregants and affirm the good their worldview shares with God’s ideals. Dr. Keller believes the culture’s deepest longing can only be fulfilled in Christ (17-18). Therefore, he suggests preaching to the secular mind requires the preacher to expose the secular worldview’s inability to answer societal concerns (i.e., inequity, injustice, etc). He encourages the preacher to offer Jesus as the better answer to this failure. He states, “To reach people, gospel preachers must challenge the culture’s story at points of confrontation and finally retell the culture’s story, as it were, revealing how its deepest aspirations for good can be fulfilled only in Christ” (20). By acknowledging and respecting the secular audience, the author encourages a culturally aware and winsome explanation of the Gospel that tears down false saviors and shares the true Savior.

The goal of the sermon cannot be merely to make the truth clear and understandable to the mind, but must also be to make it gripping and real to the heart.

Regarding discipleship in preaching, Keller encourages Gospel ministers to preach Christ, not moralism. Many authors provide beneficial insight on how to find Christ in every text. Keller goes beyond identifying Christ by encouraging Christ-centered applications in every sermon. He says that preaching a life-changing sermon “is not merely to talk about Christ but to show him, to ‘demonstrate’ his greatness, and to reveal him as worthy of praise and adoration. If we do that, the Spirit will help us because that is his great mission in the world” (17-18). The author, again, demonstrates his ability to expose the root need—the ongoing work of Christ alone—for discipleship in preaching.

In the reviewer’s opinion, Chapter Six, Preaching Christ to the Heart, is the most helpful chapter in the book. Here, Tim Keller helps preachers understand how to preach Christ to affect the heart and transform lives successfully. After defining the heart “as the seat of the mind will, and emotions,” the author states, “The goal of the sermon cannot be merely to make the truth clear and understandable to the mind, but must also be to make it gripping and real to the heart. Change happens not just by giving the mind new arguments but also by feeding the imagination with new beauties” (158-159). Therefore, life change comes through forming new affections enraptured with Jesus. Worship is essential for transformation, and worship proceeds from a knowledge-based exposure to the perfection and grace of God in Christ. “A sermon that just informs the mind can give people things to do after they go home, but a sermon that moves the heart from loving career or acclaim or one’s own independence to loving God and his Son changes listeners on the spot” (165). Preaching that changes the heart, according to the author, must be affectionate (from the heart), imaginative (engaging the heart through illustration), wonderous (overwhelmed by God’s grace), memorable (thoroughly researched and intentionally delivered), Christocentric (presenting Jesus as the hero of the text and spiritual growth), and practical (more than data delivery but essential for life and Godliness) (166-187). Keller advocates for exposition that induces worship, and he resources preachers with a vision for how to do so. His advice is less a formula and more an encouragement for the preacher to worship before, during, and out of the glorious revelation of Christ in the text he preaches. If the preacher is enraptured with Christ, his preaching will be.

A sermon that moves the heart from loving career or acclaim or one’s own independence to loving God and his Son changes listeners on the spot.

Critically, the subtitle, “Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism,” only partially covers the book’s content and fails to adequately describe the book’s thesis. Keller’s book goes beyond merely preaching to skeptics by developing the means of life-changing preaching in any context. Chapters four and five directly address the evangelistic theme that the book’s subtitles suggest—and these chapters are worth the cost of the book. Yet, the subtitle suggests the book is entirely about evangelistic preaching, and it is much more than that. Keller’s book envisions life-change preaching through the exaltation of Christ from the text so that the hearer’s heart is transformed. The book’s subtitle too narrowly describes the book, failing to describe the totality of the book’s content and thesis accurately.

CONCLUSION

In summary, Keller’s book gets to the heart of life-changing preaching by encouraging expositors to preach Christ as both the Savior of the lost and the disciple. Worship is the goal of preaching, and spiritual growth will be the fruit. Keller’s book is a worthy companion among the classic homiletic works of Broadus, Stott, Haddon Robinson, and Spurgeon.