Some ideas on how to prepare to listen to a sermon

Joshua preached last night on Pursuing God through Listening to His Word Preached. I thought his list of ways to prepare for listening was worth repeating here:

·      Read the text that will be preached prior to Sunday.

·      Pray through the text and pray for the preacher of the text.

·      Be inquisitive. Ask questions of the text that you hope will get answered in the preaching.

·      Read all of your Bible as much as you can. Good preaching will almost always be full of Biblical allusions that only get caught and understood as our understanding of the sweep of Scripture continues to grow.

·      Come ready to listen in a way that will enable you to talk about what you heard; then start talking to others afterwards about what encouraged you, etc. Or, learn to explain some part of the sermon to your kids, or somebody else’s kids.

TPF: Spurgeon, Pierre and the Smiling Osteen

A certain world famous blogger thought it would be really funny to cover up my portrait of C.H. Spurgeon today with the glimmering smile of one Joel Osteen. Now there is a study in contrasts!

Speaking of contrasts… watching Mr. Osteen on Youtube today made me pause in wonder at what he does in a pulpit compared to what Dr. Pierre Constant was urging upon us at the Toronto Pastors Fellowship yesterday. Pierre had a great presentation on how to preach the text.

Every week, Joel and the thousands chant:

“This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. Today I will be taught the word of God. I boldly confess my mind is alert, my heart is receptive; Ill never be the same. In Jesus name, God bless you.”

And then everybody puts their Bible under their seats and listens to Joel talk about stuff.

Osteen is a pretty easy target, but I wonder how many times what we call “expository preaching” is not that much different from what happens in Texas every week? Do we really say what the Bible says? Do we stick to the text and only the text? Do we labour in study and pulpit to not only tell our people what it says, and what it means by what it says… but also to teach them by our methods how to do that on their own? Pierre gave some wonderful instruction on how to do it all. Be sure to download the audio and a pdf of the paper to follow along.

Over the Hill?

Last week I completed our Sunday morning sermon series on the core values of Grace Fellowship Church. It was joy to study and preach through these with Julian and you can access the messages here.

This week I am back in the Gospel of John after a long hiatus and it is like sitting down for coffee with an old friend. I was quite timid to preach John as I think it is one of the most layered and profound books in the Bible. Even though it is narrative, it almost carries a sense of the wisdom literature genre to it – for the careful reader. But initial fear, as is so often the case, was soon replaced by excitement. The only Gospel I have yet to preach through verse by verse is Matthew – and the beauty of each is that it teaches you Christ.

I recall someone coming to me early in the John series and saying, “When you announced John I was a little let down. We had already heard lengthy series on Mark and Luke. But once we got going it enflamed my love for Jesus like never before! I just cannot get enough of Christ!” My thoughts run parallel. The Christian never tires to hear of His Lord (even though the preacher might get tiresome).

So, it is finally back to some routine. I have a set text to study each week, instead of a topic like the Core Values series and that is fine with me. It has been a long and weary sprint from Labour Day to this week!

We have also begun a new evening series we call “26 Questions (You Should Be Asking).” Lots of folks have asked me for that list of questions and I am happy to share it here:

1. How Can I Know What is True?
2. Who Is God?
3. How Many Gods Are There?
4. Where Did the World Come From?
5. Is The World Spinning Out of Control?
6. What is prayer and What Does it Do?
7. Are There Other Spiritual Beings?
8. Why Are We Here?
9. Is There Any Difference Between Men & Women?
10. What is Sin and What Difference Does it Make?
11. Who is Jesus?
12. Why Did Jesus Die?
13. Where is Jesus Now?
14. What is the Gospel?
15. What Does it Mean to Be Born Again?
16. What Can I Do About My Guilt?
17. Will My Life Ever Get Better?
18. Can I Lose My Salvation?
19. What Happens When I Die?
20. Who is the Holy Spirit?
21. What is the Church?
22. What is Baptism?
23. What is the Lord's Supper?
24. Where Do I Fit in the Church?
25. What Will Happen at the End of Time?
26. What is the 'After-Life'?

Some of those questions might get tweaked a little as we move on, but they give you the general feel. I am really excited about this series especially as it falls on the end of our Core Values. Not only do we want to answer these questions, but we also want to show how these answers contribute to our Core Values. I think it will be a great series taught by a number of our gifted men.

I will be preaching elsewhere this week, but am happy to leave my pulpit to Tom Gee and Julian Freeman. It is a Fellowship Lunch Sunday at GFC, so after our morning meeting we eat lunch together and move right from that into a celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Our whole family hates to miss that, but such the schedule dictates!

So, it appears the gallop has settled back down to a trot. We are over the hill and await a new one.

Is Texas Big Enough for This Tall Canadian?

I am looking forward to preaching this weekend at Kerrville Bible Church & Believer’s Fellowship of San Antonio 3^rd Annual Men’s Retreat.

Kerrville Bible is pastored by my old friend Chris McKnight who single-handedly enabled me to pass seminary. You see, Chris is one of those really smart people who hardly have to study and after failing every quiz in Dr. Thomas’ New Testament Introduction I was about ready to give up. Chris, who had the distinct privilege of grading all my failed quizzes (and yes, I had the joy of marking all of his PERFECT!) once asked Dr. Thomas (on my behalf) if one of my answers would do, even though it was not exactly the way the good doctor had worded it. Said doctor said, “No,” but my buddy Chris jumped out of his seat, and went and argued on my behalf for that one point... and he won.

I got 3 out of 12 on the quiz.

Now, you may think that is a pathetic little story, but for a guy who was working 32 hours a week, with a new baby in the house, and 14 hours of class time and oodles of homework... it was life. Somebody was for me! Out of all my days in seminary classrooms that one always comes to mind as the most encouraging!

So, I am glad to go and preach at the H. E. Butt Foundation's Linnet’s Wings Camp this weekend, where the brochure for the retreat includes the line, “Bring Your Own Shotgun.” I am fairly certain they will not let me take one on the plane and equally as sure that if I tried to shoot a shotgun I would dislocate my shoulder, so I will pass on that. But the steak dinner and hiking and fish fry look great!

I will be preaching four messages on leadership:

• The Heart and Soul of Leadership: Service
• The Means of Leading: Risk
• The Mark of a Leader: Holy Resolve
• The End of Leadership: Finishing Well

I hope it is used of God in the lives of my Texan brothers. Please pray to that end and forgive me if I preach in a Texan drawl when I get back... it's so contagious!

Preacher – Do You Become Like Your Text?

I was pondering some changes in my life since starting to preach the Gospel of John. After spending nearly three years in Romans and the linear thought of Paul, I found the first few months in John very labour-intensive. Now, the start of a new book is always more work as you begin to grow deeper in the author’s intentions, flow of thought, word usage, etc – but this was different. The abrupt change in style was forcing an abrupt change in study habits!

I had always loved John but been scared to preach it. I am by nature more comfortable with a book like Romans (in style, not content – the depth in this letter scared me off preaching it for 7 years!), but John has all this godly “double-entendre,” parallelism (not parallelomania, Tom!), OT connectivity, and depths and depths of meaning buried in each text. It is a selah book – you have to stop and ponder over and over again.

(For example, how does one really preach John 1:1-18 with any adequacy? I took Carson’s advice and polished it off in one sermon! To do otherwise would have meant we would still be there!)

But, here is the observation I have made. The more I study John, the more slowly, meditatively, and thoughtfully I seem to live. What I am suggesting is that immersing myself in that book is changing me to take on some of the characteristics of the literature... or one might say, of the author.

Now, it is odd to speak so bluntly about myself in this public forum, and I am sure that coupled with any good that is taking place in my life through this process there are truckloads of my sin. But I post this to ask of other preachers: Do you find that you “become like your text?” Maybe everybody else has already thought about this and I am must cluing in now!

The Bizarreness of Preaching: Some Monday Reflections on a Long-winded Sunday

I had received the question many times before, but never with such sincerity. After telling the 8 year old in the car beside me that I was a pastor, his perplexed face looked at mine and he queried. “Well, what do you do the rest of the week?” So much for bonding with my kids classmates!

I thought of that little guy today as I sat here in my study reading Mariano Di Gangi’s new book, “Great Themes in Puritan Preaching.” Di Gangi noted how many consider the Puritans to have been obnoxious bores... especially when you consider for how long they preached! I had to chuckle to myself. I found out Sunday night that my morning sermon had droned on for exactly 60 minutes. Sixty minutes of me speaking and others listening. It is a rather bizarre thing when you think of it. First of all, I need to say that I generally have a very precise “feeling” for time – as in down to the exact minute. But Sunday was different. There was a conspicuous fatigue in the air at GFC Sunday morning and a lot of our "regulars" were gone. That all made for a different experience, preaching wise, and somehow I thought I had preached for around 40 minutes. Twenty whole minutes off! Yowza! (Which is probably something close to what most of the parents of small children were saying around minute 43!)

Di Gangi writes of some long-winded Puritans, “Undoubtedly, some of their homilies would have benefited from sensitive editing. But such criticisms say more about the shortness of the average listener’s attention span today than they do about a Puritan pastor’s supposed prolixity [wordiness]” (p. 18).

It is remarkable to me that the folks of GFC stayed with me on Sunday morning when I was too long. I think it says much more about them than me (in one respect). There is a hunger for the Word in that lion’s den and whomever the pulpiteer, he had best deliver at least a little meat!

My text Sunday morning was John 3:16 and the love of God. It has been some time since I have laboured as much in preparation and preaching of a text. I felt like a schoolboy trying to describe the heavens or a spelunker shining his penlight around a massive underground cavern... there was so much to say! Yet, every word that tumbled out of my mouth felt like felt. It landed soft.

I think, I hope(!), we got a few good glances in on the love of God for the world... but I still felt such a lack. Even as I preached I thought, “Why aren’t you more affected by these things, Preacher!?”

Which leads me to this stunning observation – preaching is odd. Think of it! You are called to labour in the Word, study men’s hearts to figure out how best to get the Truth of that Word into them, then stand and talk (interestingly, not redundantly, but with passion) and your topic is... God! The ineffable, almighty, eternal, good, holy, transcendent yet immanent, Creator of all things – including you (and your voice and mind and heart, etc). And to top it all off, good Christian people sit and labour to listen – working hard to understand what God wants to say through their appointed “stammering tongue.”

I am so glad there is a Holy Spirit.

Sometimes while I preach my mind is praying to the Spirit, begging Him to come and work. Unbelievers were in my church Sunday – and there I was offering them life. If such a thing as a “salvation gun” existed, I would have shot them between the eyes! I want them to be in heaven. But, by God’s appointment and design, it all comes down to this:

“...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:9-17).

Preacher, take aim and fire off the Word. Regardless the skill or incompetence, that Word will not return void. It may be bizarre at one level, but isn’t it also so remarkably grand!