Frequently, Jesus refused to temper those decisions with any promise of grace.  At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, He offered no comfort for those who mess up, no assurance of forgiveness, no politically correct disclaimers about different religious traditions and respecting those who may disagree.  He laid out the judgment as plainly as possible: if you accept what I say you are wise, if you know these things but don’t do them you are foolish — and you will experience a great destruction (Matt. 7:24-27).

Whenever He asked His audience to choose, He was ultimately asking them to decide about Him.  As in everything He said, He was precisely in the center of the choice He forced on His audience.  In the same way, contemporary preaching needs to be infused with a radical call to decision about Jesus. He is Lord or He is nothing.  He is God or merely man.  He is worthy of obedience or He is not, but no one who hears our preaching should be able to remain undecided.

Jesus Preached about Himself Theologically

A growing fault of contemporary preaching is a pervasive belief that people are either incapable of comprehending doctrine or at least uninterested in it.  I hear it in conferences I attend, I read it in books, and see it in churches I visit. The last several decades of preaching seem to have shifted from theological content to psychological therapy.  The preacher has become less prophet, more cheerleader; the holiness of God has been shunted aside for the happiness of man.  Rather than teach our members concepts like justification and sanctification, we preach coping strategies and time management.  We have placed man squarely in the center of our religious universe. 

By placing Himself at the center of His preaching, Jesus packed His preaching with doctrine.  He may have preached simply and even to simple people, but never at the expense of theological content.  His preaching revealed the person and the character of God as the most significant consideration.  When answering questions about divorce, for example, His answer was about God’s intention in marriage rather than about man’s happiness (Matt. 19:3-12).  When He taught the disciples how to pray, He trained them to begin their prayer with the will of God done on earth as it is in heaven and to end it with God’s kingdom, power, and glory.  He taught His disciples to fear God rather than man, to honor the Lord of the Sabbath more than the tradition of the Sabbath, and to put devotion to God even above keeping the law.

One event in the ministry of Jesus that is theologically rich is His encounter with the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-22 and Mark 10:17-31.  Jesus’ statements to the young man are shocking enough.  Answering the question, “What good things must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus just followed the young man’s incorrect assumption to its logical conclusion.  “Go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Hardly the methodology that many would employ today!  Apparently someone needed to tell Jesus that He could never build a large congregation with that kind of demand.  When the young man turned sadly and walked away, Jesus did not chase him, hound him, or lower the standard to make it easier for him.  He let him go, even though “Jesus felt genuine love for this man” (Mark 19:21).  Significantly, Jesus equated following Him with getting eternal life.