Weekend Reads: Reaching the heart and heaven

The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text

By Murray Capill

Have you ever left church feeling that the sermon was just a little too up in the clouds? Murray Capill has too. Thankfully, though, he teaches homiletics for a living, and so he has more recourse than most of us. He took a couple of sabbaticals from his professorial post in Geelong, Australia, and penned The Heart Is the Target: Preaching Practical Application from Every Text (P&R Publishing, 2014).

For the working preacher (like yours truly), Capill’s work provides a workable model for “applying” the truth—that is, for getting it to stick and explaining how it affects life. First of all, Capill notes, Scripture has four main purposes: It teaches/rebukes, trains/corrects, tests/convicts, and encourages/exhorts. Most pastors are familiar with teaching, exhorting, and convicting. In fact, Capill guesses that’s the primary diet in Bible-believing churches. But not in the letters of the Apostle Paul, who is constantly giving thanks for his churches and encouraging them by how well they’re doing. And what happened to giving tests? We tell people they need to depend on the Spirit, but never reveal how one might know whether he’s doing so.

But recognizing that Scripture has work to do in the world is not enough; the preacher must fill his reservoir by thought, information, observation, and personal walking with God. Then he must deliberately preach to the four faculties of the soul: the mind, the conscience, the affections, and the will. Application is for all of these, not just the will. It’s also for all kinds of hearers, and preachers should directly address the unconverted, the doubting, the mature, the guilty, and others, thus producing “biblical faithfulness that impacts lives.”

Capill’s writing is content-rich. Clearly, Heart Is the Target is the product of hard thinking. If your pastor’s sermons need a little homiletical help, buy it for him.

What Does It Take to Get to Heaven?

By Timothy W. Burrow

A work of systematic theology by a lawyer with a degree in architecture and no theological training? Yes—and a surprisingly good one. What Does It Take to Get to Heaven? (Credo House Publishers, 2014) is the product of about a thousand hours of Bible study spread over seven years. It was prompted by the death of Timothy Burrow’s wife Tamara in 2006. Burrow wanted to join her in heaven but realized that despite being the son of Presbyterian minister, he wasn’t totally sure how to get there. So he went to the source of accurate theology (the Bible) and attempted to coordinate all its verses on salvation. His study is somewhat hampered by being largely limited to the New Testament, but its conclusions are sound.

To get to heaven, says Burrow, you must believe in Jesus as Son of God and Savior. You must repent, love God by obeying Him, and ask for and receive the assistance of the Holy Spirit. So far, so good. But then, “In time, by sowing to please the Holy Spirit, we become a new creation, which is our conversion.” By conflating the categories of conversion (a lifelong process) and regeneration (an instantaneous, once-for-all change), Burrow does disservice to the teaching of John 3 and 2 Corinthians 5 that becoming a new creation is the one-time beginning of the Christian life.

Burrow’s chapter on ethics is sharp, accurate, and convicting. His resolute insistence on taking the very words of Scripture and not departing from them in the slightest produces the best popular-level treatment of Christian ethics I have ever read.

I wouldn’t give Burrow to a new Christian; his lack of acquaintance with traditional systematic categories can be confusing. But for those willing to overlook some imprecise wording, What Does It Take to Get to Heaven? could be quite helpful.