Redemptive-historical preaching

Tom Wolfe speaking of the "absolute moral conviction" and "fervor" of the students of the sixties who demanded their dorms become coed:

Well-educated adults, in contrast, were at that moment suffering from a shortage of those two hormones, moral conviction and fervor. That very much included politicians, college presidents, and others in positions of authority.

They were becoming secularized. It had become unfashionable to thump your Bible, as Americans had always tended to do, and say, “It’s wrong! That’s why!” It made you look backward. So what was the basis for your authority, if it wasn’t religion? You had none! You tended to give way when you ran into youths with genuine moral conviction and fervor. Not agree, just yield. Did the students insist on having four courses per semester instead of five, so that they could devote more time to each course? They did, and it was done. Did they insist that they should be integrated, not segregated, by gender in the dormitories, because segregation was so hopelessly reactionary? They did, and it was done. It wasn’t a matter for debate. It was a simple matter of folding in the face of superior moral conviction and fervor.

Building on Pope Francis's commendation of Evangelical preaching, I thought it was telling that the talks I heard at this year's Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference did not mention preaching. The subject of the conference was "Salt and Light," but there was nothing about preaching. This is the state of preaching in the Reformed church today; we're forsaking preaching for the sacraments, liturgy, and culture (art, music, poetry, etc.) and these are the means of grace we trust for bringing in the Kingdom of God. 

Meanwhile Pope Francis calls Roman Catholics to know their people and to give themselves to preaching.

If you attend the worship services presided over by most Reformed celebrities today, you'll find the sermons are either vacuous exercises in redemptive-historical technique or yawn-inducing lectures on this or that theological truth. The sort of stuff coming from the pulpits of the men who have been called to tall-steeple churches to preach to the Reformed bourgeoisie today in these United States, at least, is never noteworthy for its dependence upon...

Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. - 1Corinthians 10:10, 11

Who needs warnings against the ancient Church Fathers' allegorical interpretation of Scripture when you have the Procrustean bed of this sort of Redemptive-Historical hermeneutic declared normative by some of the most respected Reformed men of our time? Pastor Tim Keller, for instance, writes...

Over in Germany bestiality zoos are open for business. It gets me thinking...

Moral societies are repulsed by crimes against nature. Citizens privileged to live in such societies voice that revulsion through laws and public discourse, but also through shaming those who sign their perversion in the way they speak and act, and the clothing they wear.

Immoral societies glory in their shame and are pleased to promote pastors and seminary professors who will justify their shamelessness. Such pastors and profs are easily recognized by their fruit. They preach and write in such a way that their kindness never leads men toward, but away from repentance.

Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? - Romans 2:4

There is no greater betrayal of the pastoral calling today than our precious parsing of any condemnation of sodomy that manages to escape our lips. We are so tender in our treatment of same-sex intimacy that, now, other-species intimacy is upon us and we have only ourselves to blame...

Last night my wife told me of a conversation with a friend...