In 1739, George Whitfield began to travel through America, and he had opportunity to hear a faithful evangelical preacher named Gilbert Tennent in New York.   Upon hearing Rev. Tennent preach, Whitfield wrote:

I never before heard such a searching sermon.  He convinced me more and more that we can preach the Gospel no further than we have experienced the power of it in our own hearts....Being deeply convicted of sin at his conversion, he has learned to experimentally dissect the heart of natural man.  Hypocrites must either soon be converted or enraged at his preaching....He is a son of thunder and does not fear the faces of men.

With this quotation in mind, here are some questions:

1.  Do you (as a preacher) take time to apply the truths of your sermon to your own heart before you preach it to your congregation?    

2. Do you struggle with the fear of man, and if so, how does that affect your preaching? 

3.  Do you work to apply the truth of the text to the hearts of your people, or are you satisfied with just explaining the text?

4.  Is it appropriate to dub Mike McKinley as a "son of thunder"? 

This week two things came across my eyes that made me think...

First, I received a glossy piece of junk mail advertising a national conference (probably the biggest one out there) dedicated to counseling. Above the address label, the mailer asked in big letters: What can you do when preaching a sermon isn't enough?

Second, I was reading Lloyd-Jones' Preaching and Preachers this week with an intern at the church. There the Doctor makes an interesting observation. He says on page 17, "As preaching goes up, personal counseling goes down." Now, if you've read P and P, you know that this was Lloyd-Jones speaking off the cuff. In fact, in the very next paragraph after he makes the statement above he calls tape recording of sermons a "special abomination".

But it's got me to thinking. What is the proper relationship between counseling and preaching? Does the rise of counseling indicate a failure in the pulpit (like Lloyd-Jones seems to indicate)? Does the sermon have limits as a means of addressing people's problems (like the junk mail seems to indicate)? Or is it a both/and situation?

In my experience, I did very little counseling at the outset of my ministry. I was young(er), a new pastor in a new church. My authority was fairly limited. Not many people were lining up for my help. Now that I've been preaching for a while, I think people trust me more as a resource. I also think that preaching aimed at the heart will cause people to grapple with issues that may require more personal follow-up. So I guess I'm not happy with either extreme.

Thoughts?

Jonathan,

It's a good question you ask, and an interesting observation you make. The tendency to decouple propositional truth statements from the personality of God in order to emphasize the latter is almost too ironic to bear.

By it's very nature, speech is propositional. When we speak, we say things that can be believed, doubted, denied. I suppose it's possible to engage in non-propositional speech, but hardly any of us ever do while we're in our right minds.

On the other hand, only persons engage in speech. Animals don't speak (though some engage in some forms of communication). Inanimate objects don't speak (though they may make strong impressions upon us). In the entire universe, only persons speak.

Which means that one of the most uniquely personal things any of us can ever do is open our mouths and start talking.

Now let's apply that insight to our thinking about God.

How do we know that God is a person, rather than a force or power? And how do we know that we can actually have a relationship with that personal God? We know it because that same God has spoken to us. So far from being distancing and abstract, God's propositional speech in the Bible, and through His Son, is intrinsically intimate and personal.

As a preacher, I have to understand and believe that, and then preach His Word in light of that truth. I have an obligation to deliver the truth of God from his Word, but I also have an obligation to deliver it as the kind of speech it is. It's not a systematic theology, though it contains truth that can and should be systematized. It's not a history lesson, though it contains that. It's not a story, though it has plenty of those. Rather, it's a personal message, indeed a revelation of a Person, who desires to be known by other persons. As a preacher, I need to convey that I'm delivering something other than a lecture or 3-step plan of action. No. I'm an ambassador, speaking for a King to his subjects; I'm a best-man, speaking on behalf of a groom to his bride; I'm a brother, speaking on behalf of a Father to his children.

I remember talking to a Hindu friend of mine in college freshman year. I was explaining the gospel, and I kept using the phrase, "the Bible says..." After a while, he stopped me and asked, "Don't you think that God wrote the Bible?" I replied that though he used people as means, that yes, I thought that ultimately, what the Bible said, God said. He then said to me, "Then why don't you say, 'God says... instead of 'the Bible says...?'"

I don't think we should stop using the phrase, "the Bible says...". But I took his point, and it's stuck with me over the years. I think JI Packer has summed it up well in God Has Spoken (3rd ed, Baker, 1994):

Why has God spoken?...The truly staggering answer which the Bible gives to this question is that God's purpose in revelation is to make friends with us. It was to this end that He created us rational beings, bearing His image, able to think and hear and speak and love; He wanted there to be genuine personal affection and friendship, two-sided, between Himself and us - a relation, not like that between a man and his dog, but like that of a father to his child, or a husband to his wife.

As pastors, we can get quite concerned with the fine points of our exegesis and the details of our theology. And we should be concerned about those things. But we also need to remember that those skills and tools are given to us to use in order to help people hear the Divine Lover speak to their souls and then respond to him with their lives.

Michael,
One thing that struck me about your post is that point to God's words in Scripture to demonstrate God's personal nature in response to those that want the spiritual experience or feeling without the personal confrontation of a personal God. Interestingly, there are other circles of Christians who move in just the opposite direction: they want to de-emphasize the propositions of Scripture for the sake emphasizing God's personal nature. What you couple they want to de-couple.

Why would you say that the words and propositions of Scripture are so tremendously personal? (By this I don't mean to suggest that Scripture consists only of propositions.) I'm not asking for a professorial (e.g. epistemological etc) answer here, but a pastoral one. In other words, how do you encourage members of your church to approach all of Scripture as God's personal word to them individually and corporately?

I couldn't agree with Mike McKinley more. We've lost our faith in the power (and even necessity) of God's Word, and we've put our faith in method.

And here's one reason it matters. In abandoning God's Word for method and experience, we're playing into the hands of a growing segment of our culture that is perfectly willing to make room for transcendent experience but is utterly opposed to the notion of a personal God who reveals Himself with truth claims on our lives.

This week I was listening to the Kojo Nnamdi show on my local NPR station. Kojo was interviewing Stuart Kauffman, a bio-physicist who on the one hand argues against the reductionism of modern physics, but on the other hand rejects the traditional notion of the God of the Bible.

Then there's the article by NYT columnist David Brooks that a church member just sent me, The Neural Buddhists. Brooks, with people like Kauffman in mind though he mentions a different list, describes a new atheism that, like Buddhism, is quite comfortable with a spiritual transcendent reality, but is completely at odds with a notion of Deity that is personal and able to reveal specific doctrines that have universal application.

What does all this mean? It means that in a post-modern world, in which science itself is increasingly comfortable with the notion that it cannot explain everything we experience, people are going to be at ease with our talk of spiritual reality and attracted to our services designed to produce an experience of the transcendent. What they are not going to be comfortable with is the exclusive claims of Christ (when have they ever been?).

As Brooks notes, that means the debate is likely to shift. It will shift from a discussion of the existence of God to a debate over "faith in the Bible." If he's right, and I think he is (we've been in one form or another of this debate ever since the hermeneutical turn of the mid-20th century), then ironically, our attempts to redefine and recommend the truth of Christianity through spiritual experience, or social engagement, or aesthetic innovation will simply give comfort to the new Buddhists, who

"feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits."

Where do we learn that behind our experience of the transcendent stands a personal God who has revealed himself concretely in the person of Jesus Christ? Where do we learn what the will of this personal God is? Where do we discover the objective means to experiencing a subjective relationship with this God? We don't learn it from our experience, our aesthetics, or our social engagement. We learn it from Scripture, which alone is "able to make us wise unto salvation." (2 Tim 3:14-16) If in the midst of the cultural shift which this new scientific revolution is precipitating we abandon the Bible, then we will discover that we have lost the battle before it's even been engaged.

On the last day of the T4G conference in Louisville I greeted John Piper at the speaker area on the floor of the auditorium. Here's how part of our conversation went:

Matt: Would you like water on the platform for your talk?

John: Too late.

Matt: I'm sorry?

John: It's too late. I learned a long time ago that taking in water while you're preaching doesn't do any good; you have to take it in before you preach. I take in as much water as I can one hour before I preach.

Matt: Would you like to know where the restroom is? (OK, I didn't say this last line, but I really wanted to!)

I had never heard this, but it made a lot of sense so I thought I'd pass it on to all you preachers.

Another hint about water and speaking? In one of Ronald Reagan's last interviews while still in the White House he was asked what contributed to his success as the "Great Communicator"? Reagan, unlike other speakers who had cold water at their side, always had warm water at his side to loosen and relax his throat.

I now am officially tapped out on all I know about preaching and water.

I was very encouraged today by the Spurgeon quote that's been ringing in my ears since T4G. Spurgeon, speaking of Wesley and Whitefield, said something to the effect of "they may preach the gospel better, but they cannot preach a better gospel". In his sermon "All of Grace", Spurgeon attributes the quote to his grandfather.

I found great encouragement in knowing that though I am by no means the best preacher, I have the privilege of preaching the best gospel.

1. "Soft preaching makes for hard people."
2. "Preachers are the only ones in the world who can take no credit for everything we do (except the mistakes)."
3. "It's not about how cool you are, but how clear you are."

I highly recommend listening to all of Dr. MacArthur's talk entitled "The Sinner Neither Able Nor Willing".

Wright is quite a speaker. He had my attention with the introduction when he described the painting of a woman sitting on top of the world but giving an illusion of power. An illusion of power gives way to the reality of pain, he said. Before he transitioned to the text, he transitioned to the application, "Isn't that the way it is with so many of us?"

He didn't presume that everyone there would connect with the contradiction between power and pain--he allowed some listeners to keep their distance from his rhetoric--for now. The woman in the painting, the person in the pew, and Hannah from I Samuel all share "a living hell."

Wright made his point clearly:

The real lesson that Hannah gives us from this chapter, the most important word God would have us here is how to hope when the love of God is not plainly evident. Now it’s easy to hope when the evidence is all around you of how good God is but to have the audacity to hope when the love of God is not evident . . . that is the true test of a Hannah type faith . . . even though you can’t see what God is going to do, that’s the real word God would have us here . . .

However, I'm not sure he ever told us "how to hope." If his answer is "hope is what saves us" he is just wrong. If he meant to say "hope in Christ" he left the most important point unsaid. Thabiti, Mike, and Jonathan have all made it clear: Hope does not save us, Christ saves us. Hannah trusted in the promise-keeping God. Those promises are kept in Christ, those promises sustained Paul through trials. Wright mentioned Paul enduring trials but never mentioned the Christ as the one that sustained Paul through his trials and the Christ Paul proclaimed.

Finally, I share Jonathan's concern about Wright's use of "hell." Hell is worse than a spouse that leaves you, it is worse than a broken home. These things are really, really bad and ought not to made light of and must be dealt with, but they are not hell.

Thabiti, thanks for sending us the link . . . let's do it again.

Thanks for setting the scene Thabiti. My memories of those times consist largely of trying to follow the Sunday Night Football game using the internet on Ryan Townsend's cell phone. Fortunately, Ryan's sermon critiques were usually about 20 minutes long, so he never noticed I was running up his bill.

I'll admit, this wasn't at all what I expected. Given the recent media coverage, I was not prepared for how... well, winsome and warm Rev. Wright was in this sermon. The message was really easy to listen to, very literate, and even inspiring at points.

Things I appreciated:

1. He is obviously outraged at sin in the world. He is bold in speaking against institutionalized injustice and racism. He decries a world which cares about more bombs for the enemy than it does about bread for the hungry. A world that is still more concerned about the color of skin than it is about the content of character. A world more finicky about the texture of hair or what is on the outside of your head than it is about the quality of education or what is on the inside of one’s head.

2. He obviously cares deeply for his people. He is sensitive and pastoral in his sympathetic acknowledgment of his congregation's pain.

3. He encourages his people to trust in God and his love and care.

4. As Thabiti mentioned, Rev. Wright had an outstanding summary of the problem the text is dealing with: how do you continue to hope when the love of God is not plainly evident. That's both a sharp analysis and a well turned phrase.

I agree with everything Thabiti said in terms of a critique. This was a "synagogue sermon", as they say. It could have been preached in a synagogue because there was no mention of the cross or the gospel. Nothing made it a uniquely Christian sermon.

I was also surprised by the lack of a clear doctrine of sin in the sermon. As I mentioned, Rev. Wright clearly identifies institutionalized sin. He even mentions the slings and arrows that come to us from people like Peninnah. But there's no sense that the problems we face are the result of sin and the curse. Even more importantly, there is no encouragement for the listener to see (and repent of) his own sin, both in the way he responds to sin and the way he sins against others. As a result, it's never clear how God will save us or what that salvation will be like. We're just told to "hope".

OK, who's up next?

and he has just turned the volume down on his Bob Marley's greatest hits cd.  The interns are there, sitting too close for comfort on the futon.  Micahel looks comfortable with a cup of English tea, sitting in the big cush chair.  Mark has his typical perch, a rocker strategically positioned to exit into the main part of the house if needed, to grab Owen or Sibbes from a shelf to his right, or to pull the hair on an intern's leg if he's falling asleep.  Mike Law is in the black office chair, spinning around in circles gleefully whistling, "Whheeeee!" like Opie Taylor.  I look at him with mild disdain.  "Little hockey man."

Mark opens us in prayer... and the sermon review begins.  Each person takes a turn commenting on the sermon, what they appreciated, what was helpful to their own souls, what was unclear, mannerisms that were helpful or distracting, including fashion foibles best exhibited in the privacy of one's own home, helpful advice "for the next time you preach this sermon," constructive feedback on outlines, applications, illustrations and the like. 

Thus begins sermon review with visiting preacher, Dr. Jeremiah Wright.

Text: 1 Sam. 1:1-18

Time: 18 minutes

Introduction (6 min 50 seconds).  Wright began with something of a critique of Watts' painting "Hope."  I don't know that I've ever listened to a sermon that opened with a critique of a picture.  I appreciated his use of it as a foil for his treatment of Hannah's situation in 1 Samuel.  "The illusion of power gives way to the reality of pain."  I also appreciated that Wright brought this home in the introduction by pointing to some cases of people "living in a quiet hell" (wife living with the unfaithful husband; divorced families having their dreams "blown to bits;" college students who seem to have everything but are empty, shallow, hurting and lonely).  Just painting these contemporary faces onto the premise helped stage the main applications.

I'm guessing that if there was an outline to the sermon it was "Hannah experienced the pain of (I) a bitter woman to contend with (v. 7); and (II) a barren womb."  Did anyone catch a clearer outline?

Other things I appreciated: Wright's use of language, very vivid and easy to remember with the alliteration at points.  I appreciated the exhortatoin to keep on praying.  He said the real lesson was "How to hope when the love of God is not plainly evident."  Hannah was "barren in her womb, but fertile in spirit."  That's a pastorally helpful idea, but apart from the simple exhortation to keep praying, he didn't at all unpack how to hope when the love of God is not evident.  Would've been helpful to do so, I think.  Last, I appreciated the touch of traditional African American songs at the end of the sermon. 

Main critiques:

1.  No gospel.  He pointed out that "hope is what saves us" but didn't point to the Object of Hope, Christ Jesus or define "hope" in any biblical categories.  No cross, atonement, repentance, faith, etc. in the appeal.

2.  I appreciated the references to other women suffering the pain of barrenness (2 Kings 4; Gen. 16; Luke 1) and the couple of references to Paul, but I would have appreciated closer attention to 1 Sam. 1 and it's meaning in context and in redemptive history.  I gathered some helpful pastoral themes from the sermon, but I don't think I came away better understanding the actual text.

Thanks for encouraging us to hope. 

Mark reclines in his chair, which given that his proportions are roughly similar to my own, must be made of reinforced titanium... or he is secretly bringing in new but identical chairs each Sunday night.  He has been pretending to listen thoughtfully as I spoke... slighly furrowed brow, nibbling on one corner of the morning's service bulletin the way people with glasses sometimes put the tip of one arm of their glasses into their mouths.  "Thank you, Thabiti," he says in a tone just shy of rushed, clearly signaling that it's now someone else's turn. 

Hey guys,

I have an invitation.  What do you think about the group of us doing a sermon review?  I know, most of you have hours and hours of fun already reviewing sermons in Mark's study or, as I have, you've taken the practice with you to another church.  But why don't we make this interesting?  Why don't we review... I don't know... Jeremiah Wright's sermon that landed Obama in trouble?

Now, I don't mean we should engage all the fallout surrounding the sermon.  That wouldn't be edifying.  Rather, let's look at the sermon as pastors and preachers and elders and folks who think about the church.  We can watch it in its entirety and then post the kind of reflections and comments we might offer at a service review in Mark's study.  Perhaps this would be a virtual way for folks who don't regularly have sermon reviews to see into the practice a little bit? 

Any takers?  If so, I'd be happy to get the ball rolling with some comments on next Tuesday.  Here's the mp3 for the sermon that inspired Obama's The Audacity of Hope.

Let me know what you think.

Recently I spoke at a missions conference in the UK put on by a missions network that connects missional churches around the world. A very cool group. Anyway, they asked me to speak on social action and mercy ministries as they related to evangelism. Now, that's a topic about which I am passionate, but not one where I feel that I have been very successful or have led our congregation all that well. And so I was left wondering: how have I so badly misrepresented myself that someone would think to ask me to preach about that?

This is actually something I feel fairly regularly as I open my mouth to teach God's word... who am I to talk about this? In all honesty, I'm not the smartest, the most theologically sophisticated, or the most holy guy in our church.

So, with that said, I briefly present to you A Hypocrite's Guide to Preaching:

1. We are all hypocrites to some degree or another. None of us have attained perfection in any of the things we must preach about. But there's a line that shouldn't be crossed... if the gap between your words and your life is too great, you shouldn't be preaching at all. We need people in our lives who can help us think through these things so that we're not at the mercy of an overly tender or calloused conscience.

2. Systematic expositional preaching of Scripture is well-suited to preachers who are also sinners. It serves as a check against our natural tendency to focus on things that we do well and avoid areas where we struggle.

3. Your weakness highlights the power of God's word. There are only four reasons that people would want to listen to anything you have to say:

a. You're brilliant and holy (or at least you've convinced them you are).
b. They don't want to but they are too lazy to go somewhere else.
c. They are forced to listen as a condition of their parole.
d. You are telling them what God says in His Word.

Let's face it, you're not (a) and you don't want to be (b). When you feed your people a diet of God's Word and they learn to trust you to teach it to them faithfully they will listen on His authority, not yours.

4. We should take opportunities to acknowledge our own failures and limitations before the congregation when appropriate. If all of your children are under 5 years old and you are preaching on Ephesians 6:4, you should be willing to acknowledge that your personal experience is still somewhat limited. Then you can remind the congregation that the authority comes from God's Word, not from your personal experience. This approach models humility for your people and will (ironically, perhaps) cause them to trust you more.

And finally,

5. Since you're a hypocrite, every sermon should begin with your own heart. You shouldn't preach it to others until you've preached it to yourself. You can assume that you need to hear God's Word just as badly as the people in your congregation. Beware allowing a bifurcation between what you feel passionately in the pulpit and what you live in your day-to-day walk.

Well, actually they didn't.  But a certain young pastor in Virginia who did wear a mohawk seems to be channeling them these days.  Mike, I was wonderfully helped by your post on long, boring sermons.  Acknowledging for a moment that sermons can be long and boring, and that I've preached some, your comments shifted my thinking on this considerably.  You reminded me of a similar sntiment I read from Jonathan Edwards.

"The main benefit that is obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind in the time of it, and not by the effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what was delivered." (quoted in Richard A. Bailey and Gregory A. Wills, The Salvation of Souls, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, p. 11).

Obviously one can take that sentiment too far and act as though remembrance and active application of a remembered sermon are ruled out.  I don't think either you or Edwards intend that.  But what's helpful about the statement is that it makes "practical" considerations like sermon length and retention secondary to the impression of Christ we press onto our hearers. It shifts our thinking from entirely man-centered, perhaps man-fearing considerations (length, excitement, etc.) to Christ-centered, Christ-exalting considerations. 

Which is where Calvin seems so appropriate to this issue.  In his sermons on Galatians 4:11-13, Calvin opens with the following:

"Especially when it comes to preaching the Word of God, a man will never follow the right course if he cannot forget self, and close his eyes to anything that might distract him in this world from acting according to God's pure ways.  Indeed, he will surely stray away from the path, first to one side, then to the other.  Hence, God's doctrines are often corrupted because those who ought to preach them are inclined to malevolent, or to seek the favour of their hearers.  They may fear to incur bad feeling or to provoke anger against themselves.  Therefore, it is impossible for us to serve God in our natural state; we must be absolutely determined, with unshakeable constancy, to suffer for the doctrines that we preach, and not to let this cause us grief.  We must fight under the ensign of our captain, Jesus Christ, knowing that we cannot share in the glory of his resurrection if we have not first suffered with him, following his example.  All believers must certainly strengthen themselves to do these things.

"...those who are called by God to preach his Word must be resolved that they will not compromise, even if the whole world were to rise up against them.  They must bear all conflicts, knowing that God will help them in their need and always grant them victory, provided they follow their vocation in purity and simplicity.  The greatest insult and injury that we can give to God is in yielding to the desires of man, and twisting his Word both left and right.  It is not only a question of abandoning our own ideas, but also of constantly upholding God's truth, which is immutable; it must never be altered, however changeable and inconstant man may be." (pp. 503-4, 505)

Well, here we have Edwards agreeing with McKinley about the main benefit of preaching.  And we have Calvin exhorting preachers not to fear man but to forget themselves in devotion to the truth of God's Word.

Here's my question: Assuming a man wants to be faithful to the Lord and His Word, how should he respond to the critique and criticism he may receive about sermon length and content?  How can a man know when he is being faithful in shaping the people's ability to hear and attend to the Word, and when he is being proud and unteachable?

It's trendy these days to deprecate the sermon as a means of communication. You know the argument... people only retain 10% of what they hear, but they retain a much higher percentage of things learned in conversation or by experience. We should thus shift away from sermons and towards more conversational or informal means of communication.

I am willing to concede that there's probably truth in those statistics. But as I sat down after inflicting 45 minutes of Hosea on our church last Sunday, I was struck by how information retention is really a secondary consideration. Do I care if people in my church can outline Hosea from memory at this time next year? A little, I guess. I mean, it would be nice. Certainly I hope the systematic teaching of the Bible will help my congregation understand the Scriptures more fully over the years.

But something much greater and more important is happening in a sermon. We are holding up Christ from all the Scriptures, we are exploring the ways that he is beautiful, we are feeding on him by faith and celebrating his works together.

In a sense, I'm hoping that experience has a seven day shelf life. I look out over this flock and see people who are hurting terribly, marriages in shambles, people whose faith is tottering, other people who are hungry for God, some people who are knowing God's grace freshly... and I pray, "God, graciously use this sermon to get them through until next Sunday. Then we'll do it all over again."

I am not saying that you can only have this experience in a sermon. Other people have made a good case for the centrality of preaching, so I won't rehearse them here. But I am suspicious of arguments that make the rate of information retention the deciding factor in how we teach the church.

Dr. Al Mohler has an excellent blog today on recovering a bold vision for biblical preaching.

The pastor of a smallish, rural church who is a good friend recently asked this question:

What New Testament book do you think I should preach through next? I've preached through Mark, then Genesis, now I'm considering Romans or 1 Corinthians.

Let me divide his question into two parts: (i) what's your answer to his question; (ii) what criteria would you use to answer his question?

Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. - 2 Timothy 4:2

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. - Hebrews 4:12

Below are three useful tools that I picked up from godly mentors who have been faithful in preaching God’s Word. May God use these suggestions to better equip and prepare you for the wonderful task of interpreting, preaching, and applying His whole Word to your family, friends, and congregations.

The Puritans – their methodology for interpretation and application
The following points come from chapter six of J.I. Packer’s A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life.

1. Interpret Scripture literally and grammatically. Ask yourself: What do these words actually mean?

2. Interpret Scripture consistently and harmonistically. Ask yourself: What light do other Scriptures throw on this text? Where and how does it fit into the total biblical revelation?

3. Interpret Scripture doctrinally and theocentrically. Ask yourself: What truths does it teach about God, and about man in relation to God?

4. Interpret Scripture christologically and experimentally. Ask yourself: How are these truths related to the saving work of Christ, and what light does the gospel of Christ throw upon them?

5. Interpret Scripture experimentally and practically. Ask yourself: What experiences do these truths delineate, or explain, or seek to create or cure? For what practical purposes do they stand in Scripture?

6. Interpret Scripture with a faithful and realistic application. Ask yourself: How do they apply to myself and others in our actual situation? To what present human condition do they speak, and what are they telling us to believe and do?

“The soundness of their [Puritan] method is unquestionable; we shall do well to follow in their footsteps” (Packer, 105).

The Joseph Hall Questions
Joseph Hall was an Anglican, Puritan from 17th century who wrote The Art of Divine Meditation in 1607, which was one of best selling books of its time (available for free online at http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/hall/hallbib.htm.). His questions are a useful tool in generating good information when meditating on and teaching Scripture.
1. What is it (define and/or describe what it is)?
2. What are its divisions or parts?
3. What causes it?
4. What does it cause, i.e., its fruits and effects?
5. What is its place, location, or use?
6. What are its qualities and attachments?
7. What is contrary, contradictory, or different to it?
8. What compares to it?
9. What are it’s titles or names?
10. What are the testimonies or examples of Scripture about it?

Mark Dever’s Application Grid
Mark often takes the main points of his sermon outline and plugs them into his application grid (available online at http://marks.9marks.org/Mark1). The main sermon points go down the first column of the grid. And then the first row has the six application headings listed below, asking, what does this mean for:
• Unique Salvation-History
• Non-Christian
• Public (e.g., culture, society)
• Christ
• Christian
• Your Church

What tools and methods do you have in place to ensure you are faithfully expositing and applying God's Word? Any other suggestions?

For as popular as Jeremiah 29 is these days, you don't hear much comment on the false teacher Hananiah in Jeremiah 28. Here's Phil Ryken's trenchant remarks in his expositional commentary on chapter 28:

However sincere it is, false teaching is always deadly, both for the teacher and his students. False teachers usually mean well. Often they are nice people. They seem genuine. They claim to speak in the name of the Lord. But Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 7:21).

There are many Hananiahs in the contemporary church, false teachers who discount God's justice and deny the judgment to come. As Lesslie Newbigin accurately states, "It is one of the weaknesses of a great deal of contemporary Chrsitianity that we do not speak of the last judgment and of the possibility of being finally lost."

The lies about which Newbigin warns will be repeasted right up until the very moment Jesus Christ returns to judge the earth: "While people are saying, 'Peace and safety,' destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape" (1 Thes. 5:3). "Peace and safety," the Hananiahs will say. "Everything is going to be OK. Everyone will be saved. God will not punish us for our sins." (In Jeremiah & Lamentations, in the Preaching the Word series, Crossway, 2001)

Hey Jonathan,

I use an introduction about 20% of the time. I think people in my congregation generally like it when I do, but I don't do it often for a few reasons (in no particular order):

-- They take a lot of work to do it well (at least for me). I'd rather invest that effort in the text, plus my sermon already eats enough family time.
-- They tend to make me look clever (look who's read Dostoevsky!).
-- They generally entertain, but rarely actually shed light or generate interest in a topic (though perhaps this is due to my incompetence).
-- As a concession to reality, I don't think anyone wants my sermons to be longer.

Thanks for asking.

mike

Gents,

Mark forwarded me an email he recently received which said,

I've been listening to some of your sermons lately...It seems that you (and the other pastors at CHBC) begin your sermons with a quote from some non-Christian writer or by mentioning some current event as a segue into preaching from the Word. I'm interested as to why you choose to do this.

Do you guys do this? Is this a good way to begin? Why or why not? One of the best young preachers I know--Bert Daniel--intentionally begins by reading the text because, he says, it shows what's most important. Thoughts? (I tend to do both)

One only has to read book reviews on the 9-Marks website to see that there is an epidemic among popular ‘evangelical’ books that say some true things about Christianity but fail to articulate the gospel clearly. They say a great deal about Jesus but fail to say that his penal substitutionary atonement is the only hope for sinners under God’s just and holy wrath.

Take just three quotes from the reviews in the latest 9Marks e-journal:

Most pointedly, I do not believe Simply Christian tenderly and clearly warns individual sinners of their peril or calls upon them to flee to Christ and to his cross as the only remedy for personal guilt and sin before a holy God. (Andy Davis on NT Wright)

But you still haven’t told the non-believer what exactly he’s beholding on the cross. He is, in fact, beholding the Son of God taking upon himself the wrath of God for the sins of all who repent and believe. That picture is amazing. But it’s more. It’s actually doing something, like paying for sin. (Jonathan Leeman on Erwin McManus)

The fact is, McLaren does not sufficiently call human beings to grapple with and exult in what God did for us in Christ. Put another way, he does not place concern for the here-and-now in the context of the eternal. That is a grievous error, for it is only when we have a deep understanding of our eternal relationship with God, won by Jesus Christ, that concern for the present world is placed in its proper perspective. The Bible could not be clearer about this. Good works apart from Christ’s saving work are nothing. But good works springing from a heart that has been changed by God’s regenerating power are the sweetest of fruit. (Greg Gilbert on Brian McLaren) 

My question is this: could the same be said about any of the sermons that we preach from the pulpit? I fear that I have preached several sermons which were Christian in what they said, but failed to get to the heart of Christianity in failing to articulate the gospel. 

Preachers, remember that you have not adequately taught any Christian truth until you have shown how that truth relates to the center of Christian truth the gospel. Thus we cannot claim to have preached a Christian sermon if it does not call sinners to depend entirely upon the penal substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Will the gospel be clear in your next sermon?

Mark, I once heard Mark Driscoll refer to Spurgeon's ability to meditate on Scriptures' many word pictures or images (e.g. the scepter of Judah) as part of what made his preaching so powerful. Without assuming that everything Spurgeon did is replicable, what are a couple of things you would say preachers could learn from Spurgeon?

Hey Jonathan (and my other non-posting comrades... ahem),

Thanks for qualifying my point. I was just thinking that I needed someone to gut it with petty nuances (insert smiley face here so that people know I'm sort of joking).

I wouldn't recommend a full confessional from the pulpit. I just had coffee with a brother, and I shared some personal struggles with him that would be unhelpful to talk about in the pulpit.

But I do think that we're fooling ourselves if we don't think that our personalities and our personal lives play a role in our preaching. People aren't watching a robot preaching, they are hearing God's Word from a sinner saved by grace. And so my sinfulness is very much at issue, it's only a matter of how I portray it. Do I cultivate an air of impressiveness, so that others feel guilty that they don't live up to the standard of the professional holy man? Or do I step down off the pedastal so that I can put Christ up on it?

To give you an example, a few weeks back I preached on the end of Ephesians 5. I've been married for 10 years and I have not been the kind of husband that Ephesians 5 describes. By God's grace, I have changed and am changing. But as I preached that passage, I felt like I had to acknowledge that I was going to tell husbands to do things that I had not done myself. I wanted to avoid hypcorisy, to cause the people in my church to trust the authority of God's word, and to encourage husbands to seek hard after the grace to change that we all need.

I would agree that, as with any virtue, we can be humble and honest to a fault. I also suspect that, given my own prideful nature, I do not have to worry about crossing that line any time soon.