Preaching Full Strength Law and Gospel

1
Preaching Full Strength Law and Gospel

• National Conference on Music, Worship, and the
  Arts - 2002
• 
  
  
  Daniel P. Leyrer

2
The Pastor Preaches Full Strength Law

• Preaching explicitly, not just specifically
• Preaching like theyve never heard it before
• And youll never have the opportunity again!

3
Full Strength Law Preaching Takes Preparation

• Sunday evening thoughts How does this Word
  make me sad?
• Text study that emphasizes context, exegesis,
  parallels.
• Real life maladies to be overcome in a telic
  note.
• Outlining that intentionalizes law preaching.
• Writing that is clear, concrete, active, with
  the ear rather than the eye.

4
Full Strength Law Preaching Is Explicit...

• about what God is
• Lord of all.
• Utterly independent.
• Holy.
• Demanding of moral perfection.
• Hates, curses, punishes every sin.

5
Full Strength Law Preaching Is Explicit...

• about what we are
• Born in Satans camp.
• Insist on independence and even desertion.
• Love ourselves over God.
• Criminals to be punished.
• Break the heart of God (and others).
• Thoroughly contaminated by sin.

6

• When the Lord wants to make us happy, he first
  of all makes us sad. When he wants to make us
  rich, he first of all makes us poor. When he
  wants to give us life, he lets us die.
• Luther

7
Full Strength Law Preaching Does Not Soften Sin

• Sin is rebellion against God, not
• an unproductive disappointment of self.
• a harmful failure to live up to ones potential.

How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin
against God. Genesis 399
8
Full Strength Law Preaching Is Not Just Teaching
About Law

• Make the threats, dont just describe them.
• Preach the law and let us feel rotten, rather
  than analyze law and tell us how we might feel.
• Preaching law is divine declaration, not dogmatic
  dissertation.

9
Full Strength Law Preaching Is Specific

• Mirror of Gods law is clear, not fuzzy.
• Preach against specific sin, not about sin in
  general.
• Preach against sin that is common to the
  congregation.
• Pastor includes himself - we, you, I.

10

• Ministers who seek to uncover and expose the man
  of sin by simply saying that men are wholly lost,
  dead in trespass and sins, lack the cutting force
  which alone can lay open the putrefying sores of
  the heart.
  Abraham Kuyper

11
Full Strength Law Preaching Is Textual

• Good text study determining original context.
• They, their before we, our.
• Textual maladies lead to fresh applications for
  this time and place.

12
Full Strength Law Preaching Does Not Moralize...

• By trying to do the Gospels work!
• Most frequent (?) moralism Law
  (mirror) Law (guide)

Using the law to motivate. sanctify.
13
Full Strength Law Does Not Seek Reconciliation
With Gospel

• It exposes sin, it does not forgive it.
• It shows us the way without getting us there.
• It shows the need for change without producing
  it.
• To preach moralisms is to be a policeman, not a
  pastor!

14
BEWARE!!!

• of results at the expense of motivation.
• of conformity over sanctification.
• of rewards over grace.

Preachers who have succeeded in abolishing
certain evils by the preaching of the law must
not think that they have achieved something
great. C.F.W. Walther
Best summary of the futility of moralizing
Jeremiah 3131-34.
15
Law cannot be reconciled with gospel...

• except at the cross!