Have you ever wrestled with the question, "What does well balanced preaching look like?" Is the pastor supposed to SOLELY point the congregation to Christ, give facts like a lecture and let the Holy Spirit work in the hearts of the believers for application? Or is the pastor supposed to EMPHASIZE to his congregation how to live making the gospel and finished work of Christ a secondary matter?
Pastors and seminary professors have long wrestled with this question. For example, Dr. John Carrick noted:
"If the indicative is permitted to predominate to the exclusion of the imperative, preaching will inevitably tend in the direction of quietism or antinomianism. If the imperative is permitted to predominate to the exclusion of the indicative, the preaching will inevitably tend in the direction of moralism and legalism."
— Dr. John Carrick, The Imperative of Preaching, p. 146
The Lord saved me in 1985, and I have been in several churches and probably without exaggeration (including online messages) have listened to thousands of sermons. I even preached several times. And I can tell you it was harder to write a sermon than to write some of my papers for my Masters in Christian Apologetics. And it was for the reason noted above — how much should a sermon be divided between what is known as indicatives (facts) and imperatives (commands)? This is no easy question to answer.
Having been in churches that follow the preaching style called "Redemptive Historical" I have seen the wisdom of the Dr. Carrick quote come to pass. By that I mean what Dr. Carrick refers to as "quietism" — a passive approach to the Christian life in which believers emphasize what God has done for them in Christ but neglect their responsibility to actively pursue obedience, holiness, and sanctification. My wife and I ended up asking the Francis Schaeffer question "How Should We Then Live?" We "found" Christ in every passage (using sarcasm here), but the sermons came across as lectures ABOUT Christ rather than heralding the full counsel of God which includes bringing Christ to all of one's life.
Carrick's warning is particularly important in Reformed theology because of its strong emphasis on sovereign grace. A preacher can become so concerned about avoiding legalism that he hesitates to issue biblical commands. But the Reformed doctrine of sanctification does not teach passivity.
As the London Baptist Confession of 1689 notes in Chapter 13, paragraph 1:
"They who are united to Christ, effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, are also farther sanctified, really and personally, through the same virtue, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts of it are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of all true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord."
However, on the other side of the fence, I've been in churches where my wife and I have heard only imperatives which ended up burning us out. We felt like we were on the "hamster wheel of obedience." The topic of cultivating the intellectual side of our faith was never mentioned. It almost came across IN PRACTICE (not on paper) as "saved by grace, kept by works."
"'What are you doing for God?' replaces the preaching of what God has done for us in Christ."
— Bryan Wolfmueller, Has American Christianity Failed, p. 16
So, what does well-balanced preaching look like? Perhaps the answer is not found in determining how much of a sermon should be devoted to indicatives and how much to imperatives, but in understanding their proper relationship. The Apostle Paul captures this beautifully in Philippians 2:12–13: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." Notice that Paul does not hesitate to command believers to act, nor does he leave them thinking that their obedience depends upon their own strength.
My last bit of advice: after you hear a sermon, ask yourself the question — "Was I shown from Scripture both what God has done for me in Christ and how, in light of that glorious truth, I am now called to live?"