Every Good Sermon Has Application

Ask Pastor John

Desiring God

John Piper, Unknown, 163859, Pastor, Ask, Theology, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Questions

4.8 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How much life application should pastors offer in their sermons? Pastor John commends interweaving exposition and application throughout each sermon.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. About a month ago, I think it was. We looked at how to apply the Old Testament stories to our lives, some helpful Bible reading tools there for how to move from ancient Old Testament narratives to our own lives. That was APJ 2118.
0:20.3	Today we look at sermon application more specifically. How important
0:24.3	is life application to a sermon? Can you even have a sermon without application? Or is application
0:29.9	optional and unnecessary? That is a great question from a young woman in Washington State.
0:37.4	Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for
0:38.6	the Ask Pastor John podcast. I'm writing to say that my pastor does a great job teaching us the
0:43.9	details of the Bible, but Sundays are also very much academic lectures. While I leave church with
0:49.3	a head full of knowledge and history and facts, I don't often come away with a message I can apply to my life
0:55.5	that helps me grow as a Christian. I've asked him to consider adding some application to his
1:00.6	sermons, but this suggestion has led to no changes that I can perceive. You've heard this exact same
1:06.7	criticism yourself. I remember you saying in APJ episode 1968 titled 10 criticisms of John Piper's preaching.
1:14.2	The number nine criticism was, quote, you don't give enough application, Piper.
1:19.2	You focus mainly on exposition and not enough on application to real life situations, end quote.
1:25.2	And then you suggested that a decade of 10-minute applications and
1:28.4	Aspastor John episodes is your way of doing penance for all those years without 10 minutes
1:33.0	of application at the end of sermons. That's quite funny, but seriously, how much life
1:38.3	application should a preacher seek to offer in a Sunday sermon? I doubt that it is possible to give a quantitative answer to the question, how much life
1:51.3	application should a preacher give in a sermon?
1:54.2	But I think we will get at it by analyzing what application is in preaching. It's not a, it's not a simple thing.
2:09.5	How does application relate to exposition, or another word for exposition, would be explanation?
2:18.2	So I want to make the case that all good application is further exposition.
2:27.0	That is, it's part of the explanation of the meaning of the text.
	...

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