Category Archives: Preaching

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Keep to the Old-Fashioned Gospel

spurgeon_chair1Back in my soccer playing days it was always interesting to see how guys prepared their mind for the game at hand.

Some kept to a rigid routine driven by superstition, others lost themselves in some Jedi-like “the Force is with you” mental game, and many piped music through their headphones to drown out the world.

Apart from prayer, the way I like to prepare to preach is by reading something from The Prince: Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Sometimes it’s a sermon, other times it’s a lecture on ministry. One of my favorite paragraphs to meditate on comes from his lecture “Sermons – Their Matter.” Maybe it will be just what you need to ascend to the sacred desk with purposeful power.

In [preaching] it must be our aim to use the subject in hand with energy and effect, and the subject must be capable of such employment. To choose mere moral themes will be to use a wooden dagger; but the great truths of revelation are as sharp swords. Keep to doctrines which stir the conscience and the heart. Remain unwaveringly the champions of a soul-winning gospel. God’s truth is adapted to man, and God’s grace adapts man to it. There is a key which, under God, can wind up the musical box of man’s nature; get it, and use it daily. Hence I urge you to keep to the old-fashioned gospel, and to that only, for assuredly it is the power of God unto salvation.

Keep to that old-fashioned path and slay the Devil with the Spirit’s sharp sword.

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Preaching for Fear

Fear of the Lord

I can’t remember where I first heard it, but someone once encouraged all preachers to ask three questions of their text in sermon preparation: 1) What do I want my church to know from this text?, 2) What do I want my church to do with this text?, and 3) What do I want my church to feel about this text?

Those questions have always seemed useful, especially when thinking through wisely and pointedly applying the text to your congregation. I remember early on in preaching when I asked those questions of every sermon I prepared. I no longer ask all three questions of every sermon I prepare, but I do almost always consider the issue of what my people should feel about the text.

I wonder what are the ordinary things you want your congregation to feel.

PREACHING FOR FEELINGS

With typical pointed passion John Piper sums up how the average church today would answer that question when he writes,

Laughter seems to have replaced repentance as the goal of many preachers. Laughter means people feel good. It means they like you, it means you have moved them. It means you have some measure of power. It seems to have all the marks of successful communication – if the depth of sin and the holiness of God and the danger of hell and need for broken hearts is left out of account.

Said another way, “Entertainment rather than an encounter with God seems to be the goal of most preachers today.” Brothers, we are not entertainers; we are heralds. And heralds aren’t to be court jesters for the congregation, they are ambassadors of the living, reigning King who calls all men to repentance and faith.

Now this doesn’t mean that congregations can’t laugh or find God’s word to be entertaining,1 but I do think it means that such feelings of amusement should never be our goal in heraldic preaching. Our message is too weighty to let such trivialities be our main concern. We don’t want them walking away with fleeting candy-like feelings, but we want their affections satisfied with the red meat of God’s word (Heb. 5:11-14).

Every text does have its unique feel we preach out of and preach unto, but let me highlight one “feeling” that ought to be a common aim in all our sermons: the fear of the Lord.

AIM FOR REVERENT AFFECTION

I was speaking with a couple church members last weekend who always have thoughtful and encouraging things to say after hearing God’s word. One of them said something I might never forget, “You know we were just talking and that sermon was so timely. As I was sitting during the examination time for the Lord’s Supper (we have communion every week following the sermon) I was trying to discern what it was I was feeling from our study of Job. As I was praying I realized it was the fear of the Lord.”

That will be hard to forget because it’s the only time to date anyone has told me the fear of God was their overriding emotion after on of my sermon. May it not be the last time.

During the drive back home I was meditating on this member’s response to God’s word. I couldn’t help but think to myself that alongside feelings like faith and repentance there isn’t a more worthy and all encompassing affection with which we should aim for in our preaching than fearing God. If a faithful encounter with God’s word is nothing less than an encounter with God Himself, what other feeling is more foundational than fear?

In his fantastic book The Joy of Fearing God Jerry Bridges says, “There was a time when committed Christians were known as God-fearing people. This was a badge of honor. But somewhere along the way we lost it. Now the idea of fearing God, if thought of at all, seems like a relic from the past.” Let us pastors pave the way in restoring “reverent affection” as a preeminent target with which we direct the arrows of God’s truth. Pray for a the Spirit to mold you into a God-fearing man and your church into a God-fearing people. Load your soul with meditations on the majesty and supremacy of God in all things so that you ascend to the sacred desk ready to declare the only King to which we must all bow (Phil. 2:6-11).

BEHOLD THE TERRIFYING BEAUTY

Another thing might be in order.

Let us recover the terrifying beauty of Hebrews 12:18-29. When the church gathers for worship it climbs to the throne room of heaven to worship along “innumerable angels in festal gathering,” to “the spirits of the righteous made perfect,” and “to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” This King speaks to us through His word and “we cannot refuse . . . Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

Aim for reverence and awe to be dominant responses to your preaching. With the Spirit’s help, compel them unto and draw them into a deeper fear of the Lord.

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  1. In its narrow dictionary definition: “To give attention or consideration to.” ↩

It is rare for me to finish a sermon without feeling somewhere between slightly discouraged and moderately depressed that I have not preached with more unction, that I have not articulated these glorious truths more powerfully and with greater insight, and so forth. But I cannot allow that to drive me to despair; rather, it must drive me to a greater grasp of the simple and profound truth that we preach and visit and serve under the gospel of grace, and God accepts us because of his Son. I must learn to accept myself not because of my putative successes but because of the merits of God’s Son.

– D. A. Carson. Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson

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What is Unction?

Unction

In 1870 the old southern Presbyterian giant Robert Louis Dabney published a magisterial work on preaching entitled, Sacred Rhetoric, which Banner of Truth reprinted a century later as Evangelical Eloquence.

One of the more valuable parts of his discussion on evangelical – contemporary men would call this “gospel-centered” – preaching is how he speaks of the Spirit’s work in the pastor’s delivery.

THE SPIRIT’S ANNOINTING

Dabney says evangelical tone includes “that quality which is happily denoted by the French divines, unction.” The Union Theological man’s definition of this oft-talked about element in sacred discourse is wonderful:

[Unction] expresses that temperature of thought and elocution, which the Spirit of all grace sheds upon the heart possessed by the blessed truths of the gospel. It is not identical with animation. Every passion in the preacher does not constitute unction. While it does not expel intellectual activity, authority, and will, it superfuses these elements of force with the love, the pity, the tenderness, the pure zeal, the seriousness, which the topics of redemption should shed upon the soul of a ransomed and sanctified sinner. . . .

It is, in short, a quality not merely intellectual or sentimental, but spiritual. Although not identical with ardent piety, it is the effluence of ardent piety alone. A correct taste alone cannot communicate it. It cannot be taught by rhetoric alone. It cannot be acquired from the imitation of others. But it is the Holy Spirit who communicates it to the cultivated mind and pure taste, by enduing the soul which is thus prepared with an ardent zeal for God’s glory and a tender compassion for those who are perishing.

LET THE SPIRIT FALL

Yearn for the Spirit’s unction in every message; the ardent zeal burning for God’s glory in Christ. May every man who ascends to the sacred desk this weekend preach with this power.

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Balanced Preaching

Feed My Sheep

A clean conscience is a wonderful thing.

Just ask the great apostle. The joyful confidence Paul has in a clean conscience seeps out of almost every one of his letters. But not only his letters, also Luke’s recounting of his missionary ministry in Acts. One pertinent reference is Acts 20:26-27, where Paul told the Ephesian elders, “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” In other words, “My conscience is clean before you because I declared the whole counsel of God.”

Preacher, if you have been at your church for any length of time, would you be able to say with Paul, “My conscience is clean?”

A PLEA FOR BALANCE

Preaching the whole counsel of God means giving due attention to the fundamental nature of our Sovereign and Holy God, the sinfulness of man, the way of salvation in Christ, and the life we now live by faith in the Spirit. At the risk of employing an increasingly vapid buzz-phrase, a” gospel-centered” hermeneutic in preaching is essential to preaching the whole counsel.

But mere gospel-centrality is not all. What “whole-counsel preaching” means is actually preaching the whole counsel of God’s words; the old and new testaments, the predictions and expositions of Christ, prophecy and poetry, truth from the narrative and apocalyptic. If someone was to look at your church’s preaching calendar over the last few years would they see this kind of balance? Or would they see lots of similar studies? Something like five out of seven years occupied with Pauline epistles, or eight out of ten years spent in one of the testaments.

Brothers, this should not be so.

A SIMPLE SCHEME

When we planted IDC at the beginning of 2013 we did so with at least one burning conviction when it came to preaching: Striving for balance between the testaments and the genres in the annual sermon calendar. Coupled with that was a commitment to rarely, if ever, spend more than twelve months in one particular book. I regularly tell people that I’m much more willing to be accused of going through a book too quickly than too slowly. The length of a series is like the length of a sermon; people will rarely forget the long, but will almost always forgive the short.

At IDC we minister in a context where a fair subset of our congregation will come and go within five years. My hope then is that when people leave after a few years of attending our church they have a real sense of the whole counsel of God. Certainly there are worse things than faithfully expositing Romans for three years, but I think we can – and ought to – give our churches a fuller diet of Scripture.

Here’s how our aim for balance in the preaching calendar has worked itself out so far:

  • January-May ’13: 1 Timothy
  • June ’13: Ruth
  • July ’13: Haggai
  • August ’13 – June ’14: Mark
  • July-August ’14: Summer series on the means of grace
  • September-December ’14: Job

Next year our plan, Lord willing, is:

  • January-April ’15: 1 John
  • May ’15: Jonah
  • June-August ’15: Genesis
  • September ’15 – May ’16: Romans

Whether or not it works out exactly that way, it should give you a picture of how we try to practice our striving for balance between the testaments and genres. Such a pursuit has at least two advantages.

TWO ADVANTAGES OF BALANCED PREACHING

First, it gets the preacher out of his comfort zone. Every preacher I’ve met has his personal comfort zone when it comes to preaching. For some it’s narrative, for others (like me) it’s the epistles, or for guys like John Macarthur, it’s the New Testament. Pursuing the kind of balance I’m advocating for will, I think, in the end make the preacher more well-rounded than he would naturally be. I’m currently preaching through Job and it is stretching me in ways I’ve never before experienced. That stretching has to be inextricably related to the fact I’ve never preached an entire book of wisdom. The growth curve is also due, I think, to the fact we are covering 42 chapters in 14 weeks. I’m learning what it means to preach huge chunks of Scripture in one setting. I trust this whole endeavor, of which I would never naturally gravitate towards, is making me a better preacher. It’s definitely getting me out of my comfort zone.

Second, it gets the church out of her comfort zone. This reality came to me so clearly after last weekend’s service. A dear older saint in our church came up to me after the sermon and said, “I want you to know I’m so excited about Job. I can’t remember the last time I’ve looked forward to a series this much. I think it is because I don’t know Job as well as the gospel of Mark or the book of Ruth. It’s all fresh to me!” Based on the responses I keep hearing from our church, this member’s experience is not unique. A preaching diet that is wisely scattered across the whole canon will often place church members among new vistas of truth. And newness usually breeds excitement. It not only gets them out of their personal comfort zone, it also let’s them see how all Scripture is God-breathed and useful.

IS IT CLEAN?

Our churches need the whole counsel of God; they need a preaching diet that balances the vast and varied unsearchable riches.

So preacher, how’s your conscience in preaching the whole counsel?

But carry to the pulpit . . . well-digested thoughts, with suitable words to express them – written in your inmost soul, and if needful also in your manuscript – thoughts and words wherewith to stir the souls of your hearers to their inmost depths, – wherewith to hold living conversation with them, and tell them what God has been telling you; and both you and they shall find that the Pulpit still wields a power all together its own.

The Ministry by Charles Brown (Banner of Truth), 61
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Pastors Need Prayer

john-newton

John Newton is a pastoral counselor par excellence. One only needs to read his letters to see uncommon wisdom and skill in using the balm of Scripture.

Preachers all across the world will ascend to the sacred desk this morning and will plead with people to cling to Christ. Their pleading will need power. An old letter from Newton humbly captures this posture we ought to always have when preaching:

I trust I have a remembrance in your prayers. I need them much: my service is great.

It is, indeed, no small thing to stand between God and the people, to divide the word of truth aright, to give every one portion, to withstand the counter tides of opposition and popularity, and to press those truths upon others, the power of which, I, at times, feel so little of in my own soul. A cold, corrupt heart is uncomfortable company in the pulpit.

Yet in the midst of all my fears and unworthiness, I am enabled to cleave to the promise, and to rely on the power of the great Redeemer.

I know I am engaged in the cause against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. If He died and rose again, if He ever lives to make intercession, there must be safety under the shadow of his wings: there would I lie.

In his name I would lift up my banner; in his strength I would go forth, do what He enables me, then take shame to myself that I can do no better, and put my hand upon my mouth, confessing that I am dust and ashes—less than the least of all his mercies.

May preachers all across the world preach today in such prayerful dependence.

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Owen’s Advice to Preachers

In his day John Owen was called the “prince of the English divines,” “the leading figure among the Congregationalist divines,” “a genius with learning second only to Calvin’s,” and “indisputably the leading proponent of high Calvinism in England in the late seventeenth century.”

Have you read any of his works?

“HEAVY AND HARD TO READ”

owenIf you haven’t, you are in the vast majority. Owen is notoriously hard to read. Spurgeon said, “I did not say that it was easy to read [Owen’s works]!—that would not be true; yet I do venture to say that the labour involved in plodding through these ill-arranged and tediously-written treatises will find them abundantly worthwhile.” To discover Owen’s abundant usefulness you simply need to read his timeless work The Mortification of Sin. Just how helpful is this “little” book?

Jerry Bridges said, “John Owen’s treatises on Indwelling Sin in Believers and The Mortification of Sin are, in my opinion, the most helpful writings on personal holiness ever written.” JI Packer feels indebted to Owen, for he once wrote, “I owe more to John Owen than to any other theologian, ancient or modern, and I owe more to this little book [The Mortification of Sin] than to anything else he wrote.”

Around this time last year I had a few dozen men in my church read The Mortification of Sin (the Puritan Paperback version from Banner) a good handful of them said something to the effect of, “This is one of the most useful books I’ve ever read!”

Indeed.

LAY DOWN THE AXE

The book is also oh so useful for pastors in their personal pursuit of holiness and faithfulness in pastoral ministry. Here’s what I mean. Chapter seven closes with a luscious aside directed to preachers who aim to be instruments of mortification in the hearts of their hearers. The Prince of Puritans warns,

Let me add this to them who are preachers of the word, or intend, through the good hand of God, that employment: It is their duty to plead with men about their sins, to lay load on particular sins, but always remember that it be done with that which is the proper end of law and gospel;—that is, that they make use of the sin they speak against to the discovery of the state and condition “wherein the sinner is; otherwise, haply, they may work men to formality and hypocrisy, but little of the true end of preaching the gospel will be brought about. It will not avail to beat a man off from his drunkenness into a sober formality.

A skillful master of the assemblies lays his axe at the root, drives still at the heart . . . To break men off particular sins, and not to break their hearts, is to deprive ourselves of advantages of dealing with them.

. . . Can sin be killed without an interest in the death of Christ, or mortified without the Spirit? . . . If such directions should prevail to change men’s lives, as seldom they do, yet they never reach to the change of their hearts or conditions, they may make men self-justiciaries[sic] or hypocrites, not Christians.

I believe the margin next to this section in my copy reads, “Boom! and Amen.”

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Holy Club

Sermon Prep in Community

I think it was sometime in late 2011 that, while I was an Associate Pastor at Providence Church, we created a regular gathering time to discuss the coming Sunday’s sermon text. The meeting consisted of pastors and interns and functioned as something like “Sermon Prep in Community.”

And we called it “The Holy Club.”

A SERMON PREP SMALL GROUP

The name might sound rather pretentious, but it actually has historical precedent. We took our cue from the original 18th century Holy Club that included the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield.1 Their pursuit was largely one of external righteousness, but ours was one of understanding and applying the soon-to-be-preached-on passage of Scripture. Afshin Ziafat, the lead pastor at Providence, would tell us what text he was planning to preach from and his initial thoughts on the sermon. Then he would let other guys in the room give their observations about the text, consider potential objections within the text, and offer vital applications from the text.

For a variety of different reasons – and none of them very good – we have yet to institute our own weekly version of “The Holy Club” at IDC, but in the last few weeks I’ve felt a renewed sense of such a group’s importance. Let me give you three reasons, from my past experience, to consider instituting your own sermon prep small group at your church. These are in fact the very reasons I’m working on putting together our own IDC Holy Club.

3 BENEFITS OF COMMUNAL SERMON PREP

#1: Reception of diverse insights. If you prepare each week’s sermon in your own ivory tower you’ll run the risk of letting personal presuppositions or experience drive your sermonic construction. It’s wonderfully helpful to have other Christians give their initial observations and insights. Who knows, they may spot a particular phrase that seems plain to your mind, but is actually hard to unravel for most church members. What I’ve found to be most useful in these types of settings is the variety of applications other people bring out of the text. There can be a tendency in sermon preparation to universalize experience and thus your sermon gets pointed power through hearing and seeing how other people experience the text’s truth.

#2: Promotion of pastoral humility. You won’t seek out other thoughts on the text if you pridefully think yours needs no improvement. Doing sermon prep in community will give you multiple opportunities to humble yourself through recognizing another person’s insights as clearer, bolder, or wiser.

#3: Training of future preachers. Young and aspiring preachers learn the art of sermon delivery in the weekly worship gathering, but they also need to learn the art of sermon preparation. A sermon prep small group will go a long way in helping them discern how best to construct their own practice of sermona preparation.

AN EASY PLACE TO START

Don’t know where to start building your own Holy Club? Here’s a simple suggestion: start with your elders. Spend time at your regularly scheduled elders’ meeting(s) talking about the coming weekend’s text. Get their insights, wisdom, and experience from the text. Tell them what your main point is and how you intend to divide the text for clarity and comprehension. Or, if your elders meet early in the sermon process, use their remarks as something like a catalyst for the week’s preparation.

Or maybe you currently don’t have elders. Well, if you are being faithful to Paul’s injunction to Titus to appoint elders you should at least have couple men on your radar. Invite them into your preparation process. Who knows, it may end even up being something like informal elder training.

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  1. Click here for a summary of the original Oxford Holy Club’s activities. ↩