Believers who receive solid doctrinal messages find help to persevere during times of crisis. This is exactly what took place during the period of nazification under Adolph Hitler. The Confessing Church endured persecution and threats under the Nazi regime because their pastors refused to compromise the doctrinal verities of the Bible and proclaimed the Word of God substantively. Pastors like Theophilus Würm, Martin Neimöller, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer refused to replace the cross with the swastika and Christ with the Führer. Their nonnegotiable creed was, “Jesus is Lord.”

Preaching that is not joyous comes across as sterile and is often not received. Dorothy Sayers challenged the thought of many naysayers of her time who claimed that doctrinal preaching led to boredom and a lack of interest. She wrote:

Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as bad press. We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine—“dull dogma,” as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama.[ii]

The naysayers were aware, however, that while some actors can read a script based on fiction in such a moving and convincing manner that it becomes real in the minds of the audience, some preachers voice their message in such unconvincing and unpersuasive ways that it comes across as fiction in the minds of the worshippers.

After Peter preached the pentecostal sermon and approximately three thousand people were added to the church, the church continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine (Acts 2:42). Let the rocks cry out as an indictment upon us if we fail to pick up the mantle of doctrine!

Does theology exist in order to make preaching as hard as it needs to be? Can the same be asked about doctrine? Doctrine frames and monitors the church’s proclamation of the gospel. It also serves as a reservoir from which preaching draws its resources. Doctrinal preaching not only serves as corrective surgery on a congregation; it also offers an element of disease prevention. It is more than attaching a Band-Aid to a wound; it is also a prophylaxis to prevent the affliction. Doctrinal preaching is trifocal in nature.

Apologetically, it affirms what is orthodox, or correct, teaching; it contends for “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3, NIV). Apologetics argues for what the church has believed on the basis of God’s Word. Polemically, doctrinal preaching stands against false teaching; it sets the church in order when heresies have infected her life. Catechetically, doctrinal preaching nourishes the congregation and thus edifies the body of Christ; the sheep are fed.