four application questions for sermons

Interesting post – especially because I’ve just been reading Bryan Chappell’s book recently. At the risk of being controversial, I’m still not entirely sure whether I entirely agree with his answer to the third question.

The questions itself is very good (ie Why must we do what God requires?) However, he then turns around and gives the same answer every time, “We obey out of gratitude for God’s grace, not guilt for being disobedience.”

However, on my reading of the Scriptures, while I don’t deny at all that grace is evident throughout all the Scriptures, there are times when Christians can be addressed in such a way as to provoke a healthy amount of guilt in them to change their ways. (i.e. when Paul writes to the Corinthians to get stuck into them about things, his language is not the gentle language of “Hey, you should change because you’ve been saved” but the far more guilt-inducing language of “How could you let this go on in your church?”

Perhaps a tangent . . . certainly, if all ministers asked themselves those questions, I think we’d have some pretty good sermons.