Conviction 1: Every sermon must have Jesus as its centerpoint.
If we are not determined that in every sermon Christ is to be preached, it were better that we should resign our commission forthwith and seek some other vocation… No sermon which fails to exalt Christ is worthy to be called Christian preaching.
(James Stewart, Heralds of God).b
As the two disciples make their way to Emmaus, they are dejected and confused. Unknown to them, it is the day of the resurrection. As they travel, Jesus joins them and inquires about their conversation, but they do not recognize him. They relate their painful disappointment at the crucifixion of one Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet in whom they had placed their hopes for the redemption of Israel. They express confusion about comments some of their company has made about his resurrection.
Jesus gently chastises them for being slow to understand the weekend’s events. As they continue walking together, Jesus begins to teach them: And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself1. Not until later do they recognize Jesus, at which time he disappears from their sight.
Immediately, they rush back to Jerusalem and breathlessly relate the day’s events to the other disciples. Suddenly, Jesus stands among them. They are frightened at his apparition, thinking they see a spirit. Jesus offers them evidence of his physicality. “Touch me,”2 he invites. They gave him a piece of broiled fish and, taking it, he ate it before them3. Again, he points them to the entire Old Testament (the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms4) and opens their minds to understand the Scriptures. Although they are undoubtedly familiar with Old Testament content, they cannot understand it until they were enabled to see that the Scriptures concern Jesus. Now their eyes are opened and it becomes clear. At the center of the Old Testament stands the figure of the Nazarene.
When my sons were very young, they became enamored with the solar system. They read books, watched videos, and devoured whatever information they could get their hands on. Not quite four years old, my son could easily talk for thirty minutes about the solar system. He could tell you what the great red spot on Jupiter is (a storm), the name of the largest moon in the solar system (Ganymede), and that one planet is tipped over on its side so that it rolls, rather than spins, around the sun (Uranus). As they learned, I also learned.
What struck me most was the staggering immensity of the solar system. If the solar system’s size were understood relative to the sun as the size of a bowling ball on the goal line of a football field, Earth would be the size of a peppercorn on the 25-yard line, and Jupiter the diameter of a quarter on the 35-yard line of the next football field. Pluto, the size of a pinhead, would be 19 football fields away from the sun. Pluto is on the near edge of the Kuiper Belt, a ring of objects whose outer limit is nearly 40 football fields away from the bowling ball that is the sun.
Yet the sun makes up more than 99% of our solar system’s mass. Everything else—the Kuiper belt, planets, moons, comets, and asteroids—comprise less than one percent, and their existence and movements are all defined by their relation to the sun.
What the sun is to the solar system, Jesus is to the Bible. All Christian preaching must have Jesus at its center, with all its stories, themes, and doctrines orbiting around him.
The Bible has a plot. It is the story of man’s creation, fall, redemption, and future. It is the great story of God’s redemption of a sinful humanity and a broken world, and the Bible, the narrative of that redemption, revolves around the person and work of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament looks forward to him. The gospels tell his story. The rest of the New Testament explains him and how we are to live in light of what he has done. The whole Bible is God’s testimony about Jesus. To preach the Bible, therefore, is to preach Jesus. The preacher, in his sermon, must be able to connect his text to Jesus.
That is not to say that Jesus is in every text, and the preacher must be careful to preach in a manner faithful to the text. But we should be able to draw a straight line from any text to Jesus or to the grand story centered on him.
Consider a sermon from 1 Samuel 31, which relates the death of King Saul at the hands of the Philistines. The Philistines had been traditional enemies of the Israelites since the days of Samson and the scourge of Israel throughout Saul’s reign. Now there is a pitched battle between Israelite and Philistine forces. As the battle continues, the momentum swings to the Philistines and, eventually, they close in on Saul and his sons. Saul is wounded and ends up committing suicide to prevent his falling into enemy hands.
Jesus is not “in” that text and the preacher might be hard-pressed to know how to insert him into their sermon. However, when seen in the context of the whole book of 1 Samuel, an extended narrative in which the central plot concerns a contrast between King Saul of Israel and David God’s choice to be the future king, one can easily, and with integrity to the text, see Saul’s decline and demise as the inevitable end of one who sets himself against God’s King, that is, Jesus. Such preaching has power, power it does not have when Jesus is left out of the sermon.
The importance of preaching Jesus is impossible to overstate. To preach the Old Testament faithfully, one must preach it in the light of Jesus.
The same is true of the New Testament. The first preachers were the apostles, men who had walked with Jesus for several years. After his resurrection, even though at first some doubted5, Jesus spent forty days teaching them about the kingdom of God and leaving them absolutely certain it was Jesus of Nazareth, their Lord and friend, who was alive. His final words to them: spread the gospel as his witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth6.
They did this by the Holy Spirit’s empowerment and by preaching the Word of God. In Jerusalem at Pentecost, after Peter exhorted7 the people concerning Jesus, about 3000 souls8 believed, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved9. Before long, the number of men came to about 500010. It continued and more believers than ever were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women11. Even after being warned and beaten by the priests in power, who not long before had cried for Jesus’ crucifixion, every day in the temple and from house to house they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ12. When a food distribution problem had to be dealt with, the apostles maintained their focus on preaching the Word13, refusing to compromise their call to prayer and the ministry of the Word14. As a result, the Word of God continued to increase and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem15.
As Jesus’ followers spread outside Jerusalem, they took the gospel with them and continued to tell the good news. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ16. Peter and John were sent by the church in Jerusalem, and when they had “testified and spoken the Word of God17, they returned home, preaching the gospel to many villages of Samaria.18” Meanwhile, the Christians in Antioch were also “preaching the Lord Jesus19 and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.20”
When the great persecutor of the church, Saul of Tarsus, encountered the living Jesus, “immediately he proclaimed Jesus, proving that Jesus was the Christ.21” He told the Thessalonians, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.22” It was Paul’s habit to begin each stop of his missionary journeys by walking his listeners through the Old Testament, and demonstrating that Jesus Christ was at its center. He later affirmed, “We preach Christ crucified.23”
Peter reminded his readers of “the living and abiding Word of God24” and that “this Word (about Jesus) is the good news that was preached to them.25”
John, having witnessed Jesus’ life, wrote, “The life was made manifest, and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life,26” the life “which we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you.27”
The Bible announces that Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. Everything rightly owes its allegiance to him. He is the source, the meaning, the foundation, the goal of our lives, and the life of the church. His lordship is eternal and absolute. So to fix our attention on Jesus is nothing new. It is right and natural.
The Christian church has, over the centuries, confidently asserted that Jesus is the Son of God28. That assertion perhaps does not startle us because, as Christians, we are familiar with it and follow a tradition that has affirmed it as basic truth for two thousand years. If we pause to consider that assertion, however, we realize what a significant statement it is. All the significance and power of Christianity rests on that declaration. No other religion makes such a claim. Neither Buddhism nor Hinduism has the framework to even consider such an allegation. Even in Islam and Judaism, the other major world religions affirming one supreme, personal God, the idea of God having a son is unthinkable. It is such an outlandish claim that most people, even those who think very highly of Jesus (for example, Gandhi), either refuse to believe it or color it differently.
Only Christians hold that the only, supreme, personal, infinitely glorious, holy, and eternal God has a Son who is likewise infinitely glorious, holy, and eternal. This truth underlies everything we believe.
Jesus, the one foretold and portrayed in the Old Testament and witnessed to in the New Testament; Jesus, the crucified, risen, and exalted one; Jesus, in whom repentant ones find forgiveness of sin; Jesus, affirmed by God his Father; Jesus, the central figure in the Bible’s great redemption story: this Jesus is the focus of all Christian preaching. To proclaim him is to be a faithful, biblical preacher.