Here are six suggestions for how seeking to glorify God through each passage of Scripture shapes the way we preach on specific texts.
1. Be assured that you will find the glory of God in every passage
It is not arbitrary, but rather biblical, to present the reality of God’s glory through the passage under study. The simple, yet universal, statement of 1 Corinthians 10:31 should enable us to show ardent zeal on this issue:
If all life is about the glory of God, how much more should all preaching be about it? Over time, our community should enjoy seeing and savoring the glory of God in every passage of the Bible.
2. Authentically embody the glory of God in worship through preaching
The reality of God’s glory within our preaching is one of the primary reasons it becomes worship in and of itself. Weaving God’s glory into the fabric of our messages without any sense of wonder or joy would do as much harm as good. To present God’s glory in a way that conveys only minimal value to the preacher is a slander against the Creator. Such an approach tells a lie, that God is not of unsurpassed beauty and value. The rational exposition of each passage is certainly essential. But so is an all-pervasive spirit of genuine, deep joy that permeates the worship, the message, and the preacher (whether from the pulpit or not).
If the glory of God appears to the hearers to be nothing more than a trick of the preacher, a label, a rhetorical device, or a mere tradition, then no amount of oratorical embellishment will conceal the hypocrisy. The very nature of God’s absolute beauty and worth can lead to two results: either it shines through in all its glory in the preaching, or it sounds like an empty formula. Worship through preaching is an explanation and an embodiment of the glory of God.
3. Seek to see and expose glory to encourage your audience to pay attention to details
When the passage under study is understood in light of its supreme purpose (to glorify God), the concrete details and particular intentions of the text do not disappear. The audience’s interest in a rigorous analysis of the text seeking to reveal the realities found therein does not diminish, attention is not lost. On the contrary, listeners are encouraged to meditate on the text, to examine it carefully and scrupulously, for the riches of God’s glory do not hover above or outside the realities of the text – but are found in and through them.
Certain theological machinations conceal the particular realities of the text and muzzle them with a misused doctrine making all these realities uniform.
It is possible that the glory of God can also suffer these abuses at the hands of a lazy, unrealistic, or undiscerning preacher. However, my experience (over four decades of preaching) tells me that the infinite and omnipresent beauty and worth of God has never discouraged or prevented me from paying particularly close attention to the details and intentions contained in the biblical text. On the contrary, knowing that each discovery of nuance of meaning and reality would give me a new insight into the glory of God has motivated me to spare no effort in my analysis of my study or the exposition of the passage.
4. Be aware that the glory of God magnifies and illuminates everything.
Keeping in mind that the ultimate goal of all biblical truth is the glory of God does not produce reductionism, but rather superductionism ( I am making up a word). The term reductionism comes from reduce, from the Latin re (back) + ducere (to direct) which means “to direct backward.” This word contains the idea that one can reduce (directly backward) the diversity, specificity, and wonderful tangibility of thousands of biblical passages to a boring theological plane that robs them of their singularity and replaces their richness with an abstract and colorless concept. I avoid this practice like the plague. I love what is concrete and precise and hate what is vague, boring, and abstract.
Superductionism
However, reduction is not what happens when we perceive precise and concrete realities about the glory of God. Rather, there will be superduction. Precise and concrete realities will not be directed backward or reduced. They will be directed forward and elevated. Superductionism does not condense things, it enlarges them. These things do not diminish, they gain scope; they do not become obscure, but limpid; they do not become dull, but sharpened; they do not darken, but illuminate. The radiance of God does not dull reality. The glory of God makes all tangibility, all specificity, all that is ordinary, resplendent with the divine immensity.
Therefore, preaching that skillfully, elegantly, and wisely connects the specific realities of a passage with the glory of God is preaching that enlarges and illuminates everything. Things that we once considered small and insignificant take on a beauty and value that they did not have before they came into contact with the glory of God. In the process, the hearts of the hearers in the assembly are enlarged, like the hearts of the psalmist who cries out:
