Application Allergies and Anaphylaxis, November 18, 2024.

Introduction.

One of the great characteristics of modern reform preaching and teaching is that there appears to be a deep and abiding aversion to making any concrete applications. Sometimes various things

are decorated as though they might be a matter of possible application, but this is illusory,

like a heat shimmer off a highway in New Mexico in August. Your car blows right through it. We're a

preacher to come upon a congregation unawares and give them a dose of any concrete or tangible

things to do, saying it was because

God wanted them to, the chances are pretty good that a good third of the assembled would go into

anaphylaxis, with heels drumming on the floor and everything. A visiting charismatic cousin

might even come to the conclusion that the church's Presbyterian cousin attends wasn't half bad,

for instance. One time, many years ago,

a bit of publishing business took me to another city, and I was there over a Sunday. My host took me

to worship at his church, which was a big box evangelical church. The pastor of that church was something

of a hot commodity at the time, that time being the 80s, and I remember being really struck by one aspect of the sermon.

The scriptures were opened, the exegesis was solid, and the doctrine was sound, but the whole

thing was still unsettled in a floaty kind of way. I remember telling someone later on that it was

as though he fashioned a number of spikes in his forge, gave one to each parishioner, and then simply

assumed that everybody would

be good enough to take it home and drive it into their own hearts. There was no application.

And this really is the besetting sin of reform preaching today. It isn't reformed. This is the fault

of evangelical preaching today. It isn't evangelical. The only complaint I have with the pilot

of this flight is that he won't ever land,

...