Review of Bryan Chapell's Redemptive-Historical View of Preaching

This post is a review of “Redemptive-Historic View” by Bryan Chapell in Scott M. Gibson and Matthew D. Kim. Homiletics and Hermeneutics.

I agree with Byran Chapell when he warns that the redemptive-historical view of forcing Christ into every text has “been abused, in ways that are now obvious to us, by ancient allegorism that sought to make Jesus ‘magically’ appear in every Bible passage through exegetical acrobatics that stretched logic, imagination, and credulity.”[1] I appreciate Chapell’s candid admission.

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Step Seven: Prepare the Conclusion

“Some preachers are in their approach toward the runway when, at an altitude of only a few feet from the ground, they get a new thought and —instead of landing —zoom up into the air again. Then, once more, they circle the field, line up with the landing strip, lower their flaps and start to come in for the landing, only to shoot up into the sky instead” (Jay Adams, Preaching with Purpose, p. 66). Haddon Robinson adds that your conclusion should not resemble a crash (Steven Mathewson, The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative, 150).

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STEP TWO: Study the Passage

This takes time. A large block of uninterrupted time early in the morning is usually the best. There is an excellent interview between C. J. Mahaney and Mark Dever on this necessary step. Mark Dever says that he first reads and rereads the passage that he is going to preach and spends about 35 hours a week in sermon preparation. Dever tells the following story to make his point:

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STEP ONE: Choose the Passage

John Calvin was dedicated to preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible. Steven J. Lawson in his book The Expository Genius of John Calvin wrote that Calvin preached through “Genesis, Deuteronomy, Job, Judges, I and II Samuel, I and II Kings, the Major and Minor Prophets, the Gospels, Acts, I and II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, I and II Thessalonians, I and II Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews” (page 33). Calvin was banished for three years (1538-1541) from Geneva by the City Council because he refused to let members living in open sin participate. When the city began to struggle, the City Council invited Calvin to return. “In September 1541, Calvin reentered his Geneva pulpit and resumed his exposition exactly where he had stopped three years earlier—-on the next verse! Similarly, Calvin became seriously ill in the first week of October 1558 and did not return to the pulpit until Monday, June 12, 1559—-when he resumed at the very next verse in the book of Isaiah” (page 33). Hence, the advantage of series preaching through books of the Bible.

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EIGHT SIMPLE Steps To Preparing and Preaching a Sermon

Start early! This is the welcomed advice of Bruce Mawhinney in Preaching with Freshness, Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 1991, p. 41). “Early exegesis helps to prevent late eisegesis.” Bruce Mawhinney is senior pastor of New Covenant Fellowship in Mechanicsburg and writes one of the most refreshing books on preaching I have ever read. Preaching with Freshness is a first-person narrative on reviving stale preaching. Howard Hendricks said, "If more books on preaching were as interesting as this, then perhaps we would have more interesting preachers."

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