Episode #89—Where the Battle Rages: Preaching the Text to the Moment

Martin Luther once wrote: “If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God, except that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.”

These words should lodge themselves in the preacher’s conscience. They do not allow for the comfortable middle ground of doctrinal exposition that stops short of application. Luther presses the question, not merely, “Are you teaching the Bible?” but, “Are you teaching it where it matters most, right now, to these people, in this moment?”

I have spent years wrestling with that very question, and much time reflecting on what faithful, courageous application actually looks like—the discipline it requires, the safeguards it demands, and the pastoral wisdom it depends upon.

There is a danger of misreading Luther’s challenge. It might seem to license a kind of topical opportunism—scanning the news on Monday morning and then hunting for a biblical text to validate whatever controversy is trending. That is not faithful preaching.

The point of the text needs to be the point of the application—and vice versa. The faithful expositor cannot be teaching through 1 John, focusing on love, and then suddenly use the text as an occasion to attack the new president in power. That is not faithfully handling the text.

The discipline of expositional preaching keeps the preacher honest. When you are working through a passage week by week, the text sets the agenda. You do not get to choose which truths to emphasise and which to skirt around. But that same discipline also means that, when the text lands squarely on an issue the congregation is actually facing—personally, culturally, or spiritually—the preacher has no legitimate excuse to look away.

If the preacher knows that there is a cultural issue to which the text directly speaks, he must do the hard work of applying it to his people within that context. Failure to do so is failure to be faithful to Christ. Vague applications are unhelpful. The preacher must apply the text, which means that he must sometime contend for the faith.

There is a double protection in this approach. On the one hand, the preacher will not bully the congregation or ride hobby horses. The authority behind the application is the word, not the preacher’s personal agenda. On the other hand, it helps the preacher because the text itself carries the burden. Preachers should not be looking for a fight, but, if the text puts them in a conflict, they should not run from it.

Faithful application requires the preacher to know two worlds: the world of the text and the world of the congregation. Spurgeon’s famous image captures it well—a Bible in one hand, the newspaper in the other. John Stott elaborated it into a theology of preaching: The task is to build a bridge between the ancient world of Scripture and the world in which people actually live.

This conviction forces the preacher to stay genuinely engaged with what is happening—in the culture, in the church at large, and among his own congregation. While I don’t generally spend a great deal of time reading about heresies, I am currently reading a book on the deconstruction of Christianity, because that’s a big problem in America, which will inevitably find its way to South Africa. I need to be prepared.

Knowing the congregation is equally important. As I preach a text about trusting the Lord in difficult times, I will be aware of members in our congregation who are wondering how they will make it financially month after month. Knowing my people gives me the scope to apply the text in a way that actually reaches them.

The earlier caution, however, remains. The preacher who begins Monday with the newspaper and then goes looking for a text to fit the latest controversy has inverted the proper order. The text must lead. The awareness of culture and congregation simply ensures that the application lands with the precision and weight it deserves.

An example of this from my own ministry was Easter weekend 2026. I had been systematically preaching the book of Romans. On Easter Sunday, the text before me was Romans 2, which addresses the danger of relying on religion and ritual as a substitute for genuine repentance and faith.

While I could have preached one of the resurrection account, I intentionally opted to preach that message on Easter because I knew that church seats are filled on Easter weekend with people who otherwise do not attend church. For too many, Easter church attendance is the religious thing to do. In my preaching that Sunday, I wasn’t trying to run anybody off. But I know that this is where the devil is attacking right now. Many people sitting in church pews that Sunday needed to be confronted with the reality that Christianity is about more than one Sunday a year.

This was not a manufactured connection. The text itself is already aimed precisely at the kind of religious formalism that fills churches on high days and holy days. Luther’s principle was at work: The world and the devil were attacking at that point, and faithfulness to the text demanded that the preacher address it.

Interestingly, I later discovered that a friend preaching through Romans in a different church had made the same decision for the same reason. The same passage, the same occasion, the same conviction. The text was doing what texts do when preachers let them.

Not every application is straightforward. Some require the preacher to walk a fine line—neither flinching from what the text demands nor being unnecessarily combative in how it is delivered.

Several years ago, I was preaching from Romans 13 in Zimbabwe—a text about the Christian’s responsibility toward governing authorities—in a context where those authorities were actively corrupt and dangerous. It was tense, but there were necessary applications.

The text would not allow me to pretend that political authority is abstract or hypothetical. But it also did not require naïve affirmation of whatever a government does. The preacher’s task in this text is to help people see what a righteous, biblical response to a corrupt government actually looks like, which is neither passive acquiescence nor reckless rebellion.

Sometimes, the text demands restraint rather than confrontation. This came home to me as I was preaching through Romans 1. Many preachers approach Romans 1:18–32 as an opportunity to address sexual immorality—particularly homosexuality, given the explicit mention of same-sex relations in vv. 26–27. It has become, in some contexts, a signature text for culture-war preaching.

As I approached the text, I wanted to be careful, because I think sometimes people come to Romans 1 emphasising the big, ugly sins—and almost thereby creating a self-righteous psyche in the congregation.

The main point of the text, as Paul develops it, is not a taxonomy of sexual sins. It is the diagnosis of what happens when human beings suppress the knowledge of God (v. 18). The root is ingratitude and failure to honour God as God: “For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21). Everything that follows—idolatry, immorality, a reprobate mind—is the fruit of that foundational failure.

As I wrestled with the text, I realised that, rather than hammering the sin of idolatry and homosexuality, it would be more helpful for us as a church to be confronted with the sin of ingratitude, which is at the root of those sins. It was a bigger issue for us as a congregation. This is not to say that idolatry and immorality don’t matter, but focusing on the homosexuality question can actually be a distraction because it’s not the main point of the passage.

This is the Luther principle operating in a less obvious direction. The world and the devil are not only attacking through obvious cultural controversies. Sometimes, the attack is more subtle—a settled ingratitude, a creeping spiritual dullness—and the preacher who fixates on the visible fruit while ignoring the hidden root may be missing the more urgent battle entirely.

There is an instructive model for this kind of preaching within Scripture itself. In Romans 3:10–18, Paul makes his case for universal human sinfulness not by argument alone but by stringing together a series of Old Testament quotations without commentary. He simply lets the texts speak.

In that text, Paul is doing what every faithful preacher must do: trusting that ancient texts, written centuries before, speak with full authority to the present moment. He doesn’t offer commentary. He simply lays bare the text and expects the church to hear those words—written a thousand years earlier—and recognise their contemporary relevance.

At the same time, we must recognise that Paul quotes those Old Testament texts to support a specific argumentative. His Jewish interlocutors might have heard those passages and thought of them as a description of Gentile sinfulness. Paul turns the accusation around and shows that the texts condemn everyone. Knowing the original context of the quotations is not merely academic—it is what allows the preacher to follow Paul’s logic and apply it faithfully.

Preachers must recognise that, even as they expound the text, listeners are asking, “So what?” The preacher may have explained what the text meant in its original context. He may have traced the argument, outlined the structure, and noted the meaning of the original languages. But if he does not apply it to his people, he will not have helped them.

The preacher who never answers that question has done only half the work. The preacher who answers it without being governed by the text has done the wrong work. The challenge—and the calling—is to do both: to let the text set the agenda, and then to have the courage to follow wherever it leads, including into the places where the world and the devil are most actively at work.

As Luther understood, that is not an optional extra for the particularly courageous. It is what confessing Christ actually means.