Category Archives: Preaching

Posted on

Preaching on Job

Job Title

The advent of a new fall semester often means the advent of a new sermon series for many churches. So it is for us at Imago Dei.

At the end of June we completed a ten-month study of Mark’s gospel, and then took the next eight weeks or so to think specifically about the sufficiency of God’s word for His church. For Psalm 119 says the word is our life, so we considered six ordinary ways – preaching, reading, seeing, supporting, singing, and praying – the life of God’s word resounds into the life of God’s church.

A STUDY FOR OUR SUFFERING

This weekend we begin a study of the book of Job that will, Lord willing, take us right up to Christmas time. A series on Job is no small endeavor. It is a 42-chapter book and one that’s been held in the highest regard by literary scholars for centuries. The Victorian essayist Thomas Carlyle said Job is “the grandest book ever written with pen.” Selections from Job were actually required reading in one of my college English literature classes. The great Reformer John Calvin preached 159 sermons on Job and we are aiming to do it in fourteen weeks! A tall, yet glorious, task awaits.

Over the past few months I’ve told quite a few people that my desire was to preach through Job this fall and the general response has been something like, “Oh. That’s i n t e r e s t i n g.” Meaning, “Are you sure you want to do that?” After much prayer, study, and deliberation I can say, “Yes, I am.” And let me give you two reasons why this book is uniquely valuable for our lives:

  1. God is sovereign. I am convinced that, outside of the gospel of Jesus Christ and sufficiency of Scripture, precious few truths are as life-transforming as God’s sovereignty over every atom in your body and galaxy in the universe. Job is a book that offers a stunning, if at times uncomfortable, portrait of a God sustaining and governing His creation.
  1. God’s people suffer. Jesus assumes the Christian life will be one of cross-bearing, Paul announces that everyone who desires to live a godly life will suffer, James says to expect it, and you don’t need to look very far before your eyes will fall on someone enduring pain, hardship, persecution, or trials.

What we need then, and why we turn to Job in these days, is clear and biblical understanding of how God’s sovereignty relates to the suffering of His people. Piper is right to say, “Pain and loss are bitter providences. Who has lived long in this world of woe without weeping, sometimes until the head throbs and there are no more tears to lubricate the convulsing of our amputated love? But O, the folly of trying to lighten the ship of suffering by throwing God’s governance overboard. The very thing the tilting ship needs in the storm is the ballast of God’s good sovereignty, not the unburdening of deep and precious truth. What makes the crush of calamity sufferable is not that God shares our shock, but that his bitter providences are laden with the bounty of love.”1

Our study of Job, Lord willing, will comfort those in our church who are suffering, encourage those who minister to suffers, and prepare us all for future suffering.

COMMENTARIES ON THE SHELF

In case you ever preach through Job here are some commentaries I have used in preparation, force ranked in order of how useful they’ve been so far:

I can’t wait for this journey to begin. It wouldn’t surprise me if most Mondays this fall find me posting a sermon excerpt from our study in Job. I pray they will be useful meditations for us all.

  1. Piper, The Misery of Job and The Mercy of God, 9. ↩
Posted on

Sermon Prep 101

Alistair Begg and Mike Bullmore just might be my two favorite living preachers. I feel as though I’ve learned more from these man about preaching than any one else.

It was with great joy that I saw Bullmore lead a TGC roundtable discussion with Begg and Bryan Chapell on “Sermon Prep 101.” It’s never a waste of time to listen to brothers, seasoned in ministry, ruminate on preparing to preach Christ crucified. So tune in, edification awaits!

Posted on

Preachers Need Prayers

Resound Slider NT

In Ephesians 6:19-20 Paul says, “[Pray] also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel,for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.”

He is in chains in a Roman prison at this time, thus it’s interesting to note he doesn’t ask the Ephesians to pray for his release. Rather, he asks them to pray for him to boldly preach the gospel. Are you in a time of suffering and hardship? It’s not wrong to ask for God to release you from your trial, but don’t forget to ask God to empower you to proclaim the gospel boldly in your suffering. Your chains, like Paul’s, just might be the very vehicles God has ordained for sinners to come to faith in His Son.

WHAT PREACHING MUST BE

If ever there was an illuminating and pointed truth on preaching, it’s Ephesians 6:20. For here we see apostolic teaching on what preaching must be. I wonder what adjectives you want to attach to preaching? Complete this sentence, “I look for preaching that is __________.” What came to mind? Preaching that is short, entertaining, compelling, funny? Or do you, like Paul, long for preaching that is bold. The preaching of the Gospel is the means by which God awakens dead sinners, assaults the kingdom of Satan, and establishes the kingdom of His Son. Such bold preaching will always need prayer. Alistair Begg, a master of boldly proclaiming the mystery of the gospel, said, “The devil is unafraid of prayerless proclamation.” Can God use preaching not saturated with prayer? Sure. But we have no reason to expect He will.

THE FURNACE ROOM

In the latter half of the 19th century five young college students were waiting to hear the great Charles Spurgeon preach when a man walked up and asked, “Gentlemen, let me show you around. Would you like to see the furnace room of this church?” They were not particularly interested, for it was a hot day in July. But they didn’t want to offend the stranger, so they consented. The young men were taken down a stairway, a door was quietly opened, and their guide whispered, “This is our furnace room.” Surprised, the students saw 700 people bowed in prayer, seeking a blessing on the service that was soon to begin in the auditorium above. Softly closing the door, the gentleman then introduced himself. It was none other than Charles Spurgeon.

He was the Prince of Preachers because his people were mighty in praying for his preaching.

Look anywhere in church history and you’ll see behind every powerful preacher is a prayerful people. Do you pray specifically for the preaching ministry of your church? I believe with my whole heart that the power of your church’s pulpit will advance only as far as your prayers for it.

A few weeks ago at IDC we began an informal meeting from 4:30-4:45 to pray for the night’s sermon and preacher. I like to think of it as our own little furnace room. And I take it to be no mere coincidence that after our first Furnace Room gathering a brother in our church, who aspires to pastoral ministry, preached a sermon that was received with unusual force in the congregation.

Preachers need the prayers of their people. Pastor, how can you build a culture in your church where preachers are regularly lifted up in prayer?

Posted on

Do You Believe?

02202012_spurgeon

Spurgeon’s timeless address “The Preacher’s Power, and the Conditions for Obtaining It” has truth and wisdom aplenty to challenge any preacher.

Consider this point on faith and preaching:

Beloved, have a genuine faith in the Word of God, and in its power to save. Do not go up into the pulpit preaching the truth, and saying, “I hope some good will come of it” but confidently believe that it will not return void, but must work the eternal purpose of God. Do not speak as if the gospel might have some power, or might have none. God sends you to be a miracle-worker; therefore, say to the spiritually lame, “In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk,” and men will rise up and walk; but if you say, “I hope, dear man, that Jesus Christ may be able to make you rise up and walk,” your Lord will frown upon your dishonouring words. You have lowered Him, you have brought Him down to the level of your unbelief and He cannot do many mighty works by you. Speak boldly; for if you speak by the Holy Spirit, you cannot speak in vain.

Oh, that we could make our people feel that we believe what we are saying!

If you are preaching this weekend, ascend to the pulpit with belief, so that you may have power!

Posted on

An “Upcoming Sermons” Card

Screen Shot 2014-08-10 at 6.44.44 PM

The “Upcoming Sermons” card from our most recent Gathering Guide.

One of my favorite things we do at IDC is put an “Upcoming Sermons” card in our weekly Gathering Guide (think church bulletin).

The card is quite simple: it lists the next six sermons to come at IDC, complete with the sermon text and scheduled preacher.

A HELP FOR DILIGENT PREPARATION

Part of faithful shepherding includes discipling church members in what it means to diligently prepare for the service of gathered worship. I have been so helped on this point by Q&A #90 from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which says:

Q. 90. How is the word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual to salvation?
A. That the word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives.

What life would come into our churches if the majority of our members were diligently preparing and praying to receive God’s word with faith and love! Not only preparing to receive God’s word, but to respond to it with humility and repentance.

An Upcoming Sermons card might just be one of the easiest means to consistently encourage such preparation in the life of your congregation.

THE VALUE OF KNOWING WHAT’S COMING

We encourage our church members to tear off the card every couple of weeks, put it in their Bible, and do three things with it.

#1: Read the upcoming week’s sermon text. By reading the upcoming sermon’s text church members arrive to the worship gathering with unique awareness of the passage that will be preached. Some will come with questions, others with an eagerness to understand the truth better, and some members’ familiarity will cause them to cry out with delight when a new wrinkle of meaning comes through the sermon. In many ways, by reading the text a few times prior to the sermon a church member is equipped to engage the preacher in that glorious “silent dialogue” of preaching. Reading the text ramps up the meter of eagerness and excitement.

#2: Pray for hearts to hear and respond in faith. Preaching is a two-sided event; the preacher must be faithful in his heralding of truth, and the member must be faithful in his hearing the truth. None of us dare presume that we can merely show up without prayerful preparation and hear well. God is often kind to empower faithful hearing in spite of one’s neglect to prepare, but we cannot assume He will do so. Like soil must be tilled for planting, so too must our souls be plowed through prayer to receive God’s word.

#3: Pray for the man who will preach. Moses needed Aaron and Hur to strengthen his hands in the midst of battle. Church members can play such a role of assisting their often weary preachers through prayer. The apostle Paul regularly asked the churches to pray for his preaching, that doors would be opened and that he would preach clearly and boldly. Behind every powerful preacher lies a praying congregation.

Now, I recognize that all three of these things can happen without the help of an “Upcoming Sermons” card. But I do think this resource has unique potential to catalyze your church body unto diligent preparation.

Why don’t you try it out this week?

Posted on

The Book is Alive!

Light Em Up

This weekend preachers all over the world will expound the word of God to lift up the Word of God. The book is living and active, so let God’s preachers today be alive in the Spirit.

Christopher Ash, in his book Hearing the Spirit: Knowing the Father Through the Son, channels his inner Machen to give us this wonderful exhortation to fuel faith in God’s word:

Let us never slip into speaking of the Bible as a dead book. Back in 1923 J. Gresham Machen wrote, “Let it be said that dependence upon a book is a dead or artificial thing. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was founded upon the authority of the Bible, yet it set the world aflame. Dependence upon a word of man would be slavish, but dependence upon God’s word is life.” Elsewhere he speaks of “a so-called ‘dead orthodoxy’ that is pulsating with life in every word. In such orthodoxy there is life enough to set the whole world aglow with Christian love.”

God’s not dead and so His word is alive. Now go ascend to the sacred desk and set the world afire in love for Christ.

Posted on

A Forgotten Friend in Sermon Preparation

Meditation & Preparation

Martin Luther once gave three rules for studying theology in the right way: “Oratio, meditatio, tentatio.”

For we Latin-illiterate people, he says “prayer, meditation, and trial” are three keys which unlock the depths of theology. What I want to briefly consider, and commend, today is the role meditation can play in your sermon preparation.

BEAT IMPORTUNATELY ON THE TEXT

Have you ever sat down to prepare a sermon on a given text and the unsearchable riches seem hidden behind an insurmountable wall? Luther definitely did.

In his Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings Luther recounted his great gospel discovery from the book of Romans. He wrote,

Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteous wrath!” Thus I raged with a fierce and trouble conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.

At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” There I began to understand [that] the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith.

The great apostle’s teaching was veiled to Luther and so he “beat importunately” by “meditating day and night”, which in turn led him “to understand.”

DON’T NEGLECT THIS KEY

Earlier this week I was preparing to preach on 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 and, wow, was I in a rut. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand the point Paul is making about Christian generosity. Rather, I had yet to land into the deep end of his typically – and gloriously – dense logic. I needed to understand the relationship between certain words and phrases. I felt as though I wasn’t getting through.

Sure, the sermon outline and manuscript were workable, but something was missing. And it was a depth of understanding.

So, I set the manuscript aside, prayed, and then spent thirty minutes drilling the text into my mind through memorization. I normally make a point to memorize the text, but for whatever reason, I plowed right through the initial stages of preparation without saturating my soul in the passage. Oh, how I needed to remedy a surface level understanding of the text!

And so it was some time later in the morning, after extended meditatio, that the surface unfolded to the deeps. The key of memorization unlocked the door to inspired apostolic treasure.

Dear brother in ministry, don’t neglect this key of meditation through memorization. It just might be the weapon you need to round out your arsenal for sermon preparation.

The Gospel is preached in the ears of all—it only comes with power to some. The power that is in the Gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher, otherwise men would be the converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preacher’s learning, otherwise it would consist in the wisdom of man. . . .

We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit going with it, changing the will of man! O Sirs! We might as well preach to stone walls as preach to humanity unless the Holy Spirit is with the Word to give it power to convert the soul! – Spurgeon

Posted on

BT & ST in Preaching

0e733507_helm2ndaryIt ought to be no surprise that the recent resurgence in gospel-centrality has coincided with a renewed concentration on biblical theology. The latter gives weight and meaning to the former.

David Helm, pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Chicago, is no stranger to biblical theology. Through his work with the Simeon Trust he’s trained hundreds of pastors in expositional preaching that’s rooted in biblical theology. He’s also published a perennial best-seller, The Big Picture Story Bible, which eloqently explains the basics of biblical theology for parents and children.

On top of all this, Helm recently published Expositional Preaching in 9Mark’s “Building Healthy Churches Series” in which he says, “The discipline of biblical theology offers preachers a certain benefit. It prevents intellectual or moralistic preaching. To put that positively, it brings you – legitimately – to the heart of the Christian gospel from particular texts in the Bible. It keep the main things the main thing.”

BT & ST IN PREACHING

So what is it about the resurgence of biblical theology – a very resurgence he’s helped promote – that concerns good Mr. Helm? That’s what Mark Dever asked in a recent 9Marks interview. Furthermore, does systematic theology have any place in preaching? Helm says, “Yes!” and his answer is oh so good.

Listen in to this four and a half minute clip as Helm provides sound counsel on how to faithfully integrate biblical theology and systematic theology in your preaching.

Posted on

Out of the Pulpit

Out of the Pulpit

From the very beginning of our church plant I endeavored to preach no more than 40 times a year, and so I rounded out 2013 having occupied our pulpit 39 times. From my perspective, it was one of the healthiest things we did all year.

I’ve been around many pastors over the last decade who seemed to protect their pulpit with an iron hand. One mentor of mine said he’d never preach less than 48 times a year. I’ve also heard many a church member say something like, “He has to preach every week. That’s what we pay him for!”

Such sentiment, if left unchecked, will set your church on a trajectory of implosion. Let’s begin to chip away a that ticking time-bomb by considering four benefits of having other men occupy the pulpit.

4 BENEFITS OF HAVING OTHERS PREACH

Protects against senior pastor dependency.Regularly having other men preach creates a culture of shared leadership through shared proclamation. No longer is the senior pastor seen as the only resident Bible teacher. The theological acumen of other men bleeds through as they preach and the congregation will recognize their ability. For example, last year one of our members wanted to better understand the finer points of eschatology. He sought out a man – who was an elder candidate at the time – who had preached several times over the year and revealed himself to be theologically trustworthy and able. I love seeing and hearing such things happen!

If a pastor rarely steps out of the pulpit he loses an opportunity to delegate authority. Nothing builds godly authority in a local church like the faithful heralding of God’s word. Have your elders speak from behind the pulpit with some consistency, then sit back and watch the congregation’s joy in submission increase exponentially.

Provides regular weeks of rest.A pastor needs to have weeks when he is still in the trenches of ministry, but the glorious burden of sermon preparation is borne by another. On average, I spend one week every month out of the pulpit. When used rightly, those weeks are like jet-fuel for joy and longevity in ministry. The soul lightens on weeks like these and enables you to return to the pulpit with Spirit-wrought vigor.

Tests and trains future pastors. You will undoubtedly have men in your church that express a calling for pastoral ministry. Having them fill the pulpit does two things. First, it tests the reality of their ability to teach. Pastors must be able to teach (1 Tim. 3:2) and letting them ascend to the sacred desk functions like an “Exam on Your Calling as a Pastor.” Even if the sermon is a dud, a man truly called to pastor will offer many glimpse of hope during the “dudness.” Second, opening the pulpit trains men for faithful ministry. We want to send out men who are relatively seasoned in pulpit ministry. Your church’s pulpit is the saltiest place for that to happen.

Models expositional listening. This is a point of benefit I cannot overstate: your church will be immensely helped by watching you hear a sermon. Do you want your congregation to have expectancy in hearing God’s word? Do you want them to prepare diligently to hear it preached? Do you want your people to come with hearts ready to respond to God’s word? Having regular weeks out of the pulpit while still being in the congregation enables you to model all those things.

The fall is right around the corner and it’s quite likely you are planning to start a new sermon series. So plan to be out of the pulpit a few times and watch the church your church benefit spiritually.