preaching christ

Tim Keller

“…So we have a balance to strike—not to preach Christ without preaching the text, and not to preach the text without preaching Christ.

Charles Spurgeon gives us a great metaphor for striking this balance. In his sermon “Christ Precious to Believers” (Sermon no. 242, March 13,
1859). In it he says that often he hears sermons that are “very learned… fine and magnificent– but there is not a word about Christ in that sermon.” And here is what he says about such preaching—“They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. I heard
nothing about Christ.”

Finally he tells of a Welsh minister who spoke to a younger minister
about his sermon. “It was a very poor sermon,” he told the young man. “Will you tell me why you think it a poor sermon?” came the response. “Because,” said the Welsh minister, “there was no Christ in it.” “Well,” said the young man, “Christ was not in the text; we are not to be
preaching Christ always, we must preach what is in the text.” So the older man said this—
“Don’t you know young man that from every town, and every village, and every little hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London?” “Yes,” said the young man. “Ah!” said the old divine “and so from every text in Scripture, there is a
road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ. And my dear brother, your business in when you get to a text, to say, ‘Now what is the road to Christ?’ and then
preach a sermon, running along the road towards the great metropolis—Christ. And,” said he, “I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if I ever do find one that has not a road to Christ in it, I will make one; I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savour of Christ in it.”