“For [Barth], no intellectual pursuit could possibly match the thrill and the terror of the bold and audacious venture to speak about God.” – Marsh, Strange Glory, 53.
Category Archives: Preaching
Theological Foundations for Preaching
I’ve long thought that David Platt is a wondrously faithful model of how to preach God’s word. He handles Holy Scripture with reverence, clarity, passion, and joy.
Back in 2009 Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary invited Platt to speak on the topic of “For the Glory of God: Theological Foundations for Text-Driven Preaching” at their annual expository preaching conference. The lecture is full of unction and help for ordinary preachers like myself.
Within the Crucible
Martin Luther said oratio, meditatio, and tentatio (prayer, meditation, and trial) are the indispensable ingredients for proper theological study.
For years I’ve labored as a pastor convinced of Luther’s laws, but to tell the truth, I’ve only experienced two of them with any regularity. Prayer and meditation have been faithful friends, yet trials has been something of a distant relative—until last fall. Tentatio knocked on my door around November and he seems to have taken up an extended residence in my life.
The Trials We’ve Faced
Our season of suffering arrived when one of our deacons found out his third child would likely not survive many hours outside the womb. God’s hand of providence took baby Eli home a few months before his due date and we wept together. Death struck again just ten days ago when a beloved church member’s heart unexpectedly failed in the middle of the night and his earthly pilgrimage came to an end.
In between we’ve watched another dear member waste away before our eyes as cancer ravages his body. We’ve counseled church members with immediate and extended family members passing away. We’ve walked through instances of secret sin seeking to steal souls and mar relationships. We’ve prayed with brothers and sisters in Christ whose bodies are failing. The storm clouds of suffering still hover overhead.
I’m thus getting a first sense of how trial teaches and shapes not only our theology, but our church’s life together. Tentatio is indeed a faithful tutor when it’s married to faith in Christ. Here are the sweet lessons we’ve feasted on these last few months.
What the Trials Teach
Suffering has brought us greater unity. Like soldiers fighting in a foxhole together creates unusually strong relationships, so too does suffering together bring peculiar unity to a church. Many relationships now have a strength from shared suffering that I doubt could have come in any other way. Intercessory prayer is more active. Concerns of mercy and benevolence, already large, seem to burst forth at every corner. It’s quite difficult to let petty differences and disputes reign when death is moving. Which leads to the second lesson . . .
Suffering has brought us joyful perspective. We’ve learned afresh that life is short, death is real, and pain is great. Yet, oh how kind God is to comfort us in grief! These are principles many of us have heard about and endured separately, but now have experienced them together. We’ve seen how God’s promises take on new significance when suffering strikes. The ministry of God’s word becomes ever sweeter. The songs of the saints rise with greater volume. The vaporous nature of life is more keenly felt. This renewed perspective is a means to what is the ordinary walk of a Christian this side of heaven: joy in suffering.
Suffering has taught us the unshakeable power of God’s word. Without the truth of Scripture, what meaning can we find in suffering? Without God’s self-revelation, how can we know how Christ relates to our pain? Without God’s word, where would we find hope and strength?
What I’ve seen—maybe most acutely—over these last few months is what happens when a church lives in, around, and under the Truth. The Word is everything to God’s people. Like Luther famously said in another place, “The word did it all.” God’s word is the ballast in the boat of our corporate life.
Seasons of suffering, like the one we’re in, are times when our corporate boat sails through storms of Satan’s fury and death’s wrath. Our enemies sling their greatest waves our way and mean to tip us over. What will we do? Grieve we will, but fall we won’t, for our Lord has conquered death. What is left for God’s people is to stand on the truth of God’s word and in the victory of God’s Son.
And so we sail towards the heavenly city with confidence and certainty in spite of the storm, for nothing can assail God’s power delivered through His ordinary means. This is what tentatio has taught us.
More Wooing Than Warning
“Although every preacher must both woo and warn, the most regular note should be of wooing more than warning, more of the carrot than the stick, more of the beauty of holiness than the ugliness of sin, more of drawing Christ than highlighting the danger of the Devil, more of the attraction of heaven than the fear of hell.
“Let’s present Christ to our congregations or to our children and colleagues in all His glory. Let’s show them how much Jesus is willing and able to save and how much He desires and delights to save. He does not save because He has to but because He wants to and enjoys to.” — David Murray, The Happy Christian, 38.
Keller Lectures on Preaching
Last fall Tim Keller delivered the John Reed Miller Lectures on Preaching at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. Listen to the four lectures here or watch them below.
Lecture 1: “What is Good Preaching?”
Lecture 2: “Preaching to Secular People and Secularized Believers”
Lecture 3: “Preaching the Gospel Every Time”
Lecture 4: “Preaching to the Heart”
Why Piper Preaches From A Manuscript
If you listen to some of the earliest biographical sermons John Piper preached at the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors (which eventually took the name “Desiring God Pastors Conference”) you’ll notice each one has a Q&A session at the end. Evidently this was when only a small crowd attended and so the setting was right for reflecting together.
At the 1990 conference Piper delivered a message entitled, “Oh, That I May Never Loiter On My Heavenly Journey! Reflections on the Life and Ministry of David Brainerd.” During the Q&A time one attendee asked Piper about his practice of delivering a sermon — whether he preached with an outline, no notes, or a manuscript. Here’s what he said:
As one who preaches from a manuscript I especially resonated with his language of being “an intellectual cripple.”
You could check out my post “Some Merits of a Manuscript” for 3 reasons why I find it helpful to manuscript my sermons.
The Right Mood of Preaching
“I love to preach in such a mood, not as though I was about to preach at all, but hoping that the Holy Spirit would speak through me. . . . Dependence upon God is the flowing fountain of success. That true saint of God, George Muller, has always struck me, when I have heard him speak, as being such a simple, child-like being in his dependence upon God; but, alas! the most of us are far too great for God to use us; we can preach as well as anybody, make a sermon with anybody,—and so we fail. Take care, brethren; for if we think we can do anything of ourselves, all we shall get from God will be the opportunity to try.” – Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, 183.
On Preaching with Steve Lawson
Last week I listened to an “In the Room” podcast episode with H.B. Charles and it was extraordinarily helpful (listen to it here). In the course of the interview I found out H.B. has his own podcast. So I ventured over to iTunes, found his “On Preaching Podcast” and my eyes immediately widened when I saw that H.B. had recently interviewed Steve Lawson for over two hours on preaching.
I’ve long thought Lawson is an underrated powerhouse of exposition. He is Macarthur-esque in his bold dogmatism and Spurgeon-esque in his unwavering commitment to God’s word. You’ll want to check out H.B.’s interview with Lawson to hear about his call to the ministry, his amazing preaching influences, why he thinks pastors should get away from the computer, and how R.C. Sproul changed the way he speaks. Listen or watch the interview below.
To Yourself First, Then To Them
“A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. And he that doth not feed on and thrive in the digestion of the food which he provides for others will scarce make it savoury unto them; yea, he knows not but the food he hath provided may be poison, unless he have really tasted of it himself. If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.” – John Owen, Works Vol: XVI, 76.
Tethered Preaching
John Piper’s The Supremacy of God in Preaching is probably my favorite book on the subject. When reading the book you can’t help but feel the gravitas of proclaiming God’s word loading your soul—in a wondrous way.
Twenty-five years after its original publication Baker just published a revised version that includes four brand new chapters representing Pipers thoughts on preaching after thirty-three years at Bethlehem Baptist. One of the new chapters is titled, “In Honor of Tethered Preaching: John Calvin and the Entertaining Pastor.” Let me whet your appetite for the new edition with Piper’s answer to the question, “What is an Entertainment-Oriented Preacher?”
The difference between an entertainment-oriented preacher and a Bible-oriented preacher is the presence or absence of a manifest connection between the preacher’s words and the Bible as the authorization of what he says.
The entertainment-oriented preacher gives the impression that he is not tethered to an authoritative book in what he says. What he says doesn’t seem to be shaped and constrained by an authority outside himself. He gives the impression that what he says has significance for reasons other than that it manifestly expresses the meaning and significance of the Bible. So he seems untethered to objective authority.
The entertainment-oriented preacher seems to be at ease talking about many things that are not drawn out of the Bible. In his message, he seems to enjoy more talking about other things than what the Bible teaches. His words seem to have a self-standing worth as interesting or fun. They are entertaining. But they don’t give the impression that this man stands as the representative of God before God’s people to deliver God’s message.
What then is a “Bible-oriented preacher?” Grab a copy today to find out!