Tag Archives: preaching

Gospel, Routine, and Numbness

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Jared Wilson:

How do we present the gospel in a nonroutine way in order to prevent people from becoming numb? My answer is counterintuitive. I think we do this by routinely presenting the unchanging gospel in a way that does justice to its earth-shaking announcement. This doesn’t mean we have to set it up with a power ballad or even dress it up at all. But it does mean we communicate it like it’s life or death stuff. People who know the gospel’s power will share it powerfully.

One would expect repetition of the message in anticipated ways to grow stale, but I believe ever-increasing showmanship is what actually numbs people. . .

Gospel Wakefulness, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 16.

Piper on the Preacher’s Tone

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John Piper has some excellent advice on the importance of the preacher’s tone:

So I ask again: What tone should you aim at in preaching?

My answer is: Pursue the tone of the text. But let it be informed, not muted, by the tonal balance of Jesus and the apostles and by the gospel of grace.

Read the whole post at Desiring God, What Tone Should Preachers Aim At?.

 

The Most Important Sermon on Ministry That I Have Ever Heard

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I know I am supposed to be taking a break. But today I have listened to a sermon by Russ Moore that I first heard in college. I listened to it several times then and it had a profound, humbling impact on me.  I consider it the most important sermon on ministry that I have ever heard. Yes. Not one of the most important– but the most important I have ever heard.

Listening to it today has gripped me again. It is shocking. Several times I had to stop, put my ear closer to the speaker, and turn up the volume. I hope to come back to the sermon regularly and I pray that the Lord use its truth to continue to humble me.

I beg you to go hear it. Please, listen to this sermon and may the Lord do what seems good to Him.

The Kingdom of God in the Wal-Mart Break Room: Poverty, Partiality, and the Perils of a Gentrified Christianity

Eight Things to Ask the Rough Draft of Your Sermon

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  1. What is my aim in preaching?
  2. Where is Jesus?
  3. Where is the gospel of God’s grace?
  4. What is my dominant emotion as I read through the manuscript?
  5. What do I want my hearers to remember the most?
  6. Do I sound like a starving man who has found food or like a theological tycoon who pretends to monopolize insight?
  7. Is God glorified? Is His worth and beauty magnified?
  8. Is this before and unto the LORD as Christ-exalting, Spirit-dependent worship?

Preaching to Know Christ

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Thus my end in preaching is to know Christ, and impart his truth; my principle in preaching is Christ himself, whom I trust, for in him is fullness of spirit and strength; my comfort in preaching is to do all for him. Help me in my work to grow more humble, to pick something out of all providences to that end, to joy in thee and loathe myself, to keep my life, being, soul, and body only for thee,  to carry my heart to thee in love and delight, to see all my grace in thee, coming from thee, to walk with thee in endearment.

Then, whether I succeed or fail, nought matter but thee alone.

Valley of Vision, 337

Exegesis and Prayer

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Spurgeon writes, “Texts will often refuse to reveal their treasures till you open them with the key of prayer” (44).

Praying during exegesis is very important. Exegesis in sermon preparation is not the mechanical enterprise of our hermeneutics that then becomes spiritual when we think about our preaching it and souls hearing it. It is spiritual all the way through. If our exegesis is wooden and prayerless then our exegesis must change. Determinant meaning in a text does not make the task of discovering that text’s meaning any less spiritual. This is God’s Word—it is God’s Word! And we will not get it unless the Spirit comes.