Book Review: Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller
Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism.
New York: Viking, 2015. 309 pages/$11.99
Ask any preaching professor what homiletics books are a must-buy, must-read for the first-time or veteran preacher and the common responses are: John Broadus’ On The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (1870), Henry Grady Davis’ Design for Preaching (1958), Fred Craddock’s As One Without Authority (1979), Haddon Robinson’s Biblical Preaching (1980), and Thomas G. Long’s The Witness of Preaching (1989). As one who has taught preaching and who frequently preaches, these are the standard.
In this volume, Tim Keller has given us a tour de force that every homiletics professor and pastor will want to buy, read, and apply to their preaching and teaching. His remarkable ministry at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and the various offshoots in the United States and around the world are anchored on serious engagement with the Scriptures, with the pulpit, with people in their context, and with the preacher. In this volume, Keller is careful to say that he has not written a preaching manual, but he has penned his preaching manifesto. If you have heard Keller preach live or in a Podcast, you know that he is one who takes seriously how the Word, the person, and culture connect with one another and with Jesus Christ. In reading this book, you get a sense that you are sitting at the feet of a preaching master while at once with a fellow brother in Christ who is encouraging and rooting you on in the serious business of exegeting text, context, and subtext.
Keller is clear from the outset that he leans towards expository preaching as the best way to unlock the meanings of Scripture passages, nourishing believers, and exposing nonbelievers to the Christian faith. Whether you are a Four-Page preacher á la Paul Scott Wilson or dabble in the Lowry Loop, the longitudinal value of Keller’s book is that he lays out the theological and biblical vision for preaching, why the preacher ought to trust in the revelation of God to change hearts, and how the preacher and the text account for the different heart/soul condition of listeners in the modern world. His agenda is to lay the “how” to and the “why” to preach the Word, preach the Gospel, preach to the culture, preach to the heart, “all by preaching Christ.” (241)
He exhorts that a preacher needs to be immersed in the Scripture and in culture to take both seriously, to be able to critique and engage culture, and how God is at work in culture which needs transformation. Practically and homiletically, he lays out the sermonic movement this way:
• Intro: cultural context — what we face
• Early point: biblical text’s cultural context — what we must do
• Middle point: current listener’s subtext — why we can’t do it
• Late point: How Jesus solves the heart issue: How Jesus did it
• Application: How faith in Jesus enables you to live now (231)
Keller sounds the clarion call — we must preach the Gospel. And what is the Gospel? That Jesus died and rose again. Every Scripture text, whether from the Old or New Testaments, point to Jesus Christ and his work on the cross and the empty tomb. Keller gives concrete examples of how particular texts do that, whether one preaches in a revival gathering for new believers, or a wedding, or a funeral, or the weekly Sunday worship of a congregation. He masterfully speaks to the heart of modern listeners and shows how preaching Christ frees the heart to love the Lord, and to love the neighbor. Where preaching can quickly devolve into seeing biblical characters as examples to follow, Keller calls preachers to direct preaching on biblical characters to Jesus Christ who is the fuller and ultimate “David” or “Esther” or “Ruth.” Where preaching can become an exercise in moralisms of “You need to just believe more” or “You need to give more generously,” Keller calls preachers to continually direct people to the cross and to the empty tomb. For example, a sermon on Genesis 12 and God’s call upon Abram and Sarai to leave the security of family turns to Jesus as the one who left the security of heaven so that we could have the security of His love. When we have and live into Jesus’ love, we can take the risk to reach out to others and other cultures. (236)
For some who belong to mainline Protestant traditions, one may quickly discount Keller’s book because of his theological conservatism (e.g. he does refer to the preacher in the masculine pronoun) or of his prescription of expository preaching; the latter signaling for some in the mainline traditions as reminiscent of 3-point sermons of evangelical preaching. To those who are reticent, I would argue that Keller practices what he preaches and he has done so effectively, not by use of signs and wonders, gimmicks, or a reliance on technology; he relies upon the Word, and he takes both the Word and culture seriously. He is widely read in theology and in culture, and commends the heroes and heroines of the New Homiletic and narrative preaching (Craddock, Buttrick, Rose, Lowry, McClure, and Long) for raising the heart of the issue of listeners, where expository preachers have leaned more on doctrine, cognition, and the intellect.
Keller’s Preaching is one of those books where the extensive endnotes are as important as the Appendix (which is a brief “how to” on writing an expository message) and as important as the main body. What you will find is that each of these three parts are equally important, a treasure trove of tried-and-true wisdom of one of my generation’s best preachers. I recommend his book and his preaching to you, to the glory of Christ.
