Matt Woodley sat down with Rev. Robert Smith, Jr., Professor of Preaching at Beeson Divinity School, to discuss Dr. Smith's big ideas about preaching. In this interview, Dr. Smith shares his passion for preaching from a future condition focus—or preaching that always keeps the Eschaton in view.

You're a veteran preacher, and closely connected with the next generation of ministers. What are you passionate about in your homiletics classes these days?

I'm passionate about making the connection between "fall" and "future." Bryan Chapell talks about this in Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Message. I think that it's important for preachers to marry what he calls the FCF—fallen condition focus—with my FCF, the future condition focus. We can't just highlight the fallen creation. We also have to present the fully redeemed future condition of humanity.

I like to examine a given text using these two lenses—like a dual microscope. The fallen condition focus identifies the grim picture of original sin, including not only the sinfulness of humanity but also the results that came as a consequence of the fall—sickness, sorrow, relational risks, etc. As preachers, we do need to examine our fallen condition. But then we also need to pair it with our future hope.

So if I'm preaching Judges 19 (one of the darkest sections of God's Word) I should eventually move to the eschaton. I should say that there will come a day when Judges 19 will be no more, and Revelation 19 will be fulfilled, giving humanity a righteous King. Through bridging the text like this, from fall to future, even a dark passage can bring our hearers hope. In fact, I think that dark texts not only anticipate the future condition focus, but actually necessitate it.

We forget to connect specific texts to the big picture sometimes. We are busy looking for application, but often we don't do enough work to really draw on the power of the Bible's overarching story. Even though a preacher can't mention all of redemptive history in a single sermon, that story has to have formed the thinking of the preacher. How does this passage fit in light of the whole Bible? It's not isolated, it's an acorn that must have fallen from an oak tree. Acorns don't just pop out of the ground.

Getting back to the original question, this is personal for me. Our 34-year-old son was murdered in 2012 while he was working at his restaurant. When he was killed, the "text" of his life ended. From one perspective, his life just goes from his birth certificate to his death certificate. But this isn't the end of the story. His future condition is the epilogue.

With this in mind, I live in light of his whole story. This includes not only his birth, life, and death, but also his resurrection. Our reunion. And that's encouraging to me. The resurrection is not a luxury for me, it's a necessity. The Judges 19 passages of Scripture and of our lives are not the end. The promise of Revelation 19 is the end of all of our preaching.

That's very powerful. Where did this perspective come from for you?

Well, it's been in the church's preaching from the beginning. For me, it comes out of my African American culture. When I was a little boy in church, our preacher, no matter what he was talking about—tithing, child rearing, family life, it didn't matter—he would close the sermon by saying something like this:

One of these days when this life is over, when the battle is fought and the victory is won; one of these days when God shall tell Gabriel to put one foot on the troubled sea and another foot on the quaking earth and declare that the time that has been will be no more; one of these days when the saints go marching in three gates in the east, three gates in the west, three gates in the north and three gates to the south … One of these days …

That's how he closed. At the eschaton. Now, he didn't even use the word "eschaton." I'm not so sure that my early childhood pastor would have even known that word, but that's exactly what he was talking about. We celebrated it. It engaged our emotions. "I have a dream," said Martin Luther King, Jr. "I have been to the mountaintop and I've see the promised land." Then he says, "I may not get there with you," which is future, "but we as a people will get to the promised land." So that comes out of my culture.

But it also comes out of the writings of the great theologians. Like Calvin, for instance. Not just in the heavy doctrine, but in their preaching, their pastoring. Sometimes it's not even at the end. It might be in the middle of their sermon where they make an eschatological connection. But when you look for it, it's there.

I want preachers, especially my students, to become so aware of what it means to preach the whole counsel of God that they will always reserve a place for an eschatological projection. Without even having to think about it.

Ok. Let's say you're preaching on building a strong marriage, or sexual temptation. How does this "dual microscope" work on very practical topics?

Let's take a marriage sermon as an example. Say I'm preaching on the passage where Jesus talks about how God's original intention was different from Moses'teaching on divorce. It's clear in the passage that divorce was not His plan at all. It happened because of the hardness of the heart of individuals. That's the fallen condition focus. So if you want to talk about how to have a happy marriage, you go through that passage to talk about God's intentions for marriage, about the kind of marriage that God wants between Christ and his church. And you'll quickly realize that that's what Paul does in Ephesians. He's talking about marriage, he's talking about submission, and he's talking about not only for a woman to be submissive to her husband, but for husbands and wives to submit themselves to each other. Then he goes on to talk about husbands loving their wives as "Christ loves the church." Paul is saying, Look, I don't really want to talk about marriage. I want to talk about the relationship of Christ to his church. Marriage is the lens (and it can be a fallen lens) that lets him see the future focus in something as practical as a "how to strengthen your marriage" sermon.

Is there ever a time when you don't want to end by focusing on the eschaton?

Yes, there is one caveat to what I've said so far. If I was preaching on something like Good Friday, I would not move to the future hope. There's a time for darkness. Especially if it's a Good Friday service. I want the people to leave in silence. I want there to be a somber atmosphere. I don't want to talk about resurrection then, because even though we know it's coming, I want to wait until Sunday morning. I want the mood to be one of contemplation and sorrow and great recognition that God must have loved us so much that if it calls him to bankrupt heaven that we might be saved.

As you look at the world of preaching in the Church today, what concerns do you have?

For too long we've blamed the church for being biblically illiterate. If I come to your church after you've been there for three to five years, and it's still biblically illiterate, then it's not on the folk, it's on you. We need Bible saturated people, and most preachers aren't giving the big picture of scripture that really does that for their church. I'm talking about taking the text and preaching it in light of canonicity. How does this one text or this passage actually sit in light of the whole Bible? Like one piece of the puzzle. How does it sit in light of the whole puzzle? Do you see its place, its role, and why it functions?

And then in addition to that, I want to see a passage that is being preached shown in light of redemptive history. Where is redemption here? Basically the Bible is about three things: First, God made a perfect world; second, we messed it up; third, God sent Christ to fix it up. Those are the three moves. God made a perfect world, we messed up the perfect world, and God came to fix up what we messed up so he could restore what he had made. So it's the move of John Milton, from paradise lost to paradise regained, and Christ is in the middle to regain and restore what we had so to speak lost.

So I want to see preaching that is biblical in light of two prongs. One, canonicity, or how does that passage connect with all of scripture without trying to quote every verse of the Bible? Number two, how does that passage reflect and expose redemptive history? For instance, it's a mistake to try to preach Ruth unredemptively. I've heard preachers use Ruth as a book of how to court, how to date, how to get a man—all those kinds of things. That's not what Ruth is about. Ruth was written in the day of the judges, that's how it starts: "In those days the judges…" Of course, we don't have to go any further, we know there's anarchy there and people do what's right in their own eyes because there's no king. So I will start off by saying Naomi and Elimelech lived in a day when there was no king. And second of all, not only was there no king but then there was no bread because Bethlehem where they lived means house of bread. And because there was a famine, they left Bethlehem, house of bread, because there was no bread in the house of bread. And they went to Moab, and Moab of course was a cursed country and there in Moab their two sons, Malhon and Chilion, died. So the book of Ruth starts off pretty negatively. There is no king, there is no bread, and now there is no son, no son of Mahlon, no son of Elimelech and Naomi. Ten years later, the word gets out that the famine has been lifted in Bethlehem and of course Naomi is a widow now, she decides to go back because there is now bread in the house of bread. Bethlehem is now living out its name, so to speak, because there is bread in the house of bread, no more famine. But the story ends when Ruth and Boaz have a son who will anticipate the King because Obed will become the father of Jesse, and Jesse will become the father of David, and David will become, so to speak, the father of Jesus.

So you have to preach Ruth in that salvation history manner so that you can put Ruth in light of the whole Bible, canonically speaking, and in light of redemptive history. That there is now Bread and that Bread is the Bread of Life. There is now a Son and that Son is the Son of God, the only begotten one. And there is now a King, and that King is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And all of that came through Ruth, because if there was no Obed then there would not have been a Jesse or a David or eventually a Jesus. So if anyone preaches Ruth and declares seven principles for dating they're missing the whole point of Ruth.

Are there any other major concerns that you have about preaching, the preacher's soul, or sermon prep?

I'm very concerned about our dependence upon the Holy Spirit. There is an indispensable role of the Spirit in our preaching. Folks like John Calvin say, "There has to be an internal witness of the Spirit." That is, the Spirit not only needs to be operative in the preacher as he compares and presents, but the Spirit has to prepare the hearer to hear what the preacher is preaching. Peter was on a housetop having a vision of a four-fold sheet with all kinds of un-kosher animals. God said, "Peter, rise, slay, and eat." Peter said, "I've never eaten anything un-kosher or common in my life. I can't do that." And God said, "What I've cleansed, don't call common." He's really talking about the integration of the church—Jews and Gentiles and Greeks.

And while the Lord is talking to Peter on the housetop, he's speaking to Cornelius in the same chapter, Acts 10, about his prayers. He told him, "Send a couple of your messengers down to Joppa to bring Peter to your house and present the message." God had a two-way conversation. God was talking to Peter, and God was talking to Cornelius. And Peter goes back. Because he preaches, and the Spirit comes down, interrupts his sermon, and Cornelius and his household experience salvation.

Robert Smith, Jr. serves as professor of Christian preaching at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama.