Al Martin on 'What's Wrong With Preaching Today?'

It's Pastor's day once again at Resolve. Today we feature an article by Al Martin entitled 'What's Wrong With Preaching Today. These are portions on Biblical Content and Doctrinal Substance- the rest can be read here (HT Monergism)

'Let us now consider what is wrong with preaching today as it relates to the MESSAGE which is being preached. It is perfectly possible for a man to be marked by an eminent degree of personal piety and practical godliness, and yet to be woefully lacking in a powerful preaching ministry. Of course, part of this problem may be due to the fact that some men were never furnished by the great Head of the church with the requisite gifts for a teaching and preaching ministry. In such cases, the only answer to the problem is that such a man must recognise that he is not in the place for which God has furnished him. With no sense of shame he should leave an active teaching and preaching ministry and seek employment in the secular world, or in some other form of the work of Christ’s church which does not demand some measure of God- given gifts for oral communication.

However, I am directing my remarks to men who have reasonable grounds to assume that they have been given sufficient gifts to stand as preachers of the Word of God. In regard to this class of men, there are several areas in which contemporary preaching is marked by glaring defects.

BIBLICAL CONTENT
First of all, most preaching today, even in good Reformed circles, lacks substantial biblical content. One of the unique things about the great preachers of the past, the thing that makes their written sermons live hundreds of years after they were written, is that they are marked by their weightiness of substantial biblical content. What is it that gives the sermons of these great ambassadors their spiritual power? It is this. They are packed full of solid biblical substance, so that one feels that standing between him and the preacher is a wall of divine truth; that the issue is not with the hearer and the preacher, but with the hearer and the Word of God being conveyed to him by the preacher. That is precisely what men ought to sense when they hear us preach. Of course — and here we see again the relationship between the man and his message — much of the problem of preaching today in respect of its lack of biblical content, is due to the fact that men are too busy running the ecclesiastical machinery of their churches to soak their minds and spirits in the truth of Holy Scripture. It is only when the preacher’s mind is saturated in Holy Scripture, that the Holy Spirit will bring to remembrance the truth of God in the context of preaching, and enable the servant of God to wield the Sword of the Spirit with power and authority. Then, even the illustrations and allusions will in great measure be drawn from the very words and thought patterns of Holy Scripture.

DOCTRINAL SUBSTANCE
Secondly, much contemporary preaching is defective in that it lacks solid doctrinal substance. We have suffered from a mentality that has regarded doctrine and theology as some form of a medieval hobgoblin! The fact of the matter is, that truth is beautiful in its unity and symmetry. Doctrinal preaching is that preaching which is always disciplined by the framework of the whole counsel of God. It refuses imbalance and lopsidedness, and seeks to set every individual facet of truth into the context of the whole spectrum of divine truth. These first two factors must be fused together in an ever increasing measure in the life of the true servant of Christ. Doctrinal preaching which is not exegetically founded and textually oriented, will lead to a philosophical orthodoxy. On the other hand, dealing with texts and the exegesis of those texts without showing the inter-relationship of truth, will lead to a disjointed and fragmented concept of divine truth.