John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1990), 110 pp.

The current renaissance of interest in preaching -- a trend which appears to continue into the 1990's -- has produced a considerable library of volumes ranging from comprehensive texts on preaching to tracts on fine points of detail and specialization. The books have celebrated preaching, proposed new modes of sermon discourse, and addressed the centrality of preaching to the church's task. But what is central to preaching?

John Piper, senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, makes clear that God Himself must be central and supreme in all genuinely Christian preaching. Reader beware! This small volume has monumental content which defies the current Zeitgeist and does so without apology. Self-esteem consultants and possibility thinkers will find no comfort here.

Piper's message is direct: "My burden is to plead for the supremacy of God in preaching -- that the dominant note of preaching be the freedom of God's sovereign grace, the unifying theme be the zeal that God has for His own glory, the grand object of preaching be the infinite and inexhaustible being of God, and the pervasive atmosphere of preaching be the holiness of God."

The book is based on two series of lectures: the 1988 Harold John Ockenga Lectures on Preaching at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, and the 1984 Billy Graham Center Lectures on Preaching. Nevertheless, the volume does not read as a set of lecture manuscripts. Its power and persuasiveness grows out of its forthright message: that much of contemporary preaching is not preaching at all, and that only that preaching which takes the glory of God as its central message is worthy of the gospel.

The current atheological age, with its rampant subjectivism and relativism, has conditioned congregational ears to expect "feel good" messages which center on superficial answers to their own perceived needs. Piper cites Samuel Johnson's description of Isaac Watts, "Whatever he took in hand was, by his incessant solicitude for souls, converted to theology." In contrast, Piper suggests that contemporary preaching would be described differently: "Whatever the preacher takes in his hand is, by his incessant solicitude for relevance, converted to psychology."

What Phillip Reiff termed the "triumph of the therapeutic" marks the modern age and has shaped the modern mind. There is little "God consciousness" in a mind saturated with concern for self-esteem, codependency, and the elusive search for personal fulfillment.

Piper does not suggest that the pulpit should not address these issues, or "nitty-gritty, practical things like parenthood and divorce and AIDS and gluttony and television and sex." But rather that "every one of those things should be swept into the holy presence of God and laid bare to the roots of its Godwardness or godlessness."

The preacher's most dangerous enemy in God-centered preaching is pride. Piper notes: "As our pride pours contempt upon God's glory, His righteousness compels Him to pour wrath upon our pride." Pride deters the preacher from centering on "the glory of God in the glad submission of His creation."