Overcoming Preaching Dilemmas

Arie Boven, at Redeemer City to City, has a helpful post for pastors, based on a dissertation published in the 1970s by Sidney Greidanus, highlighting six dilemmas pastors face while crafting their sermons: (1) relevance vs. truth, (2) objective vs. subjective, (3) explication vs. application, (4) believer vs. unbeliever, (5) head vs. heart, and (6) private vs. public.  Here's a excerpt from Boven's post: 

1. Overcoming the relevance-truth divide

The motive of proponents of the exemplary approach was a concern for relevance, while the motive of proponents of the redemptive historical-approach was a concern for sola Scriptura, the desire to preach the Word of God and that only. The objections raised by the exemplary side to redemptive-historical preaching is that it tends to lack relevance. The redemptive-historical side objected that, in his laudable attempt to be relevant, the exemplary preacher tends to be more about the man in the book and the man in the pew than about Christ.  

To overcome the divide, Greidanus asserts that historical texts are texts. Sermons must seek their point of departure not in the man in the pew nor in the history of redemption but in the historical text. One cannot detail the meaning of a particular text until one has listened attentively to that text. Because the exemplary method views the biblical stories as recorded to illustrate and depict concretely certain timeless "truths" that must be believed or certain timeless "ethics" which must be lived, it does not really need a preaching text form the Bible. But the redemptive-historical approach is liable to similar consequences in that it seeks to reach the facts behind the text to the detriment of the preaching-text. The text becomes a window through which to view the panorama of the upholding redemptive history. The text itself is no longer taken seriously.   

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HT: Redeemer City to City