Questions for Sermon Preparation

In the beginning of my sermon yesterday, I mentioned a list of questions that I work through with each passage to help me think through the text from a number of different angles.  I had a couple of people ask me for the list, so here they are:

1. What does the text tell me about God?

2. What does the text tell me about mankind (examples to follow/avoid, commands to obey, promises to believe)?

3. What key truth(s) is the author communicating in this text?

4. Where do our lives fail to conform to these key truths?  In other words, what areas of unbelief does the text expose or confront?

5. How does the text point to, deepen our understanding of, or flow from the gospel?  How does Jesus' work on the cross come to bear on the text?

6. How would our lives be different if the key truth(s) became explosively alive in our innermost being?

7. How does the text address the unbeliever?  How does it touch on unbelievers' common objections or difficulties with Christianity?

8. Why has God brought this text to us this week?

9. What are the missional implications of this text?

10. How does the text impact our corporate lives together as the church?

11. What aspects of the text highlight areas in which our church flourishing or excelling?

12. What other texts illuminate, expand on, or cross-reference this text?

13. What questions will the congregation have about this text upon the initial reading of the text?

14. Summarize the text's meaning in a sentence

Fuel for a Preacher's Heart

On average, I probably spend 20 hours preparing for a typical sermon. Last year I preached 32 times. My plan, if the Lord wills, is to do that for the flock of Joy Community Fellowship for around 25 more years, if they'll have me.

That totals 16,000 hours of my time devoted to preparing to preach God's Word. That's a lot of hours. This blog post from Trevin Wax provided some rich encouragement to me that all those hours are a worthwhile investment of time.

Seven Questions to Enter the Pulpit With

In his recent message at the Desiring God National Conference, Francis Chan mentioned seven questions that he asks himself in preparing to preach:

1. Am I worried about what people think of my message or what God thinks? (Teach with fear)
2. Do I genuinely love these people? (Teach with love)
3. Am I accurately presenting this passage? (Teach with accuracy)
4. Am I depending on the Holy Spirit's power or my own cleverness? (Teach with power)
5. Have I applied this message to my own life? (Teach with integrity)
6. Will this message draw attention to me or to God? (Teach with humility)
7. Do the people really need this message? (Teach with urgency)

I think I might well print these questions and place them in my binder, so I can be reminded of them as I prepare to preach God's Word to the congregation I have the privilege of serving.

The Blessings of Consecutive Expository Preaching

I introduced my sermon on 1 Corinthians 5 yesterday by explaining the value of consecutive expository preaching (that is, preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible). I mentioned one reason why this kind of preaching is so good for the church: it guards preachers from always getting on their own personal soapboxes, and pushes us to teach on the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture.

In Christopher Ash's book The Priority of Preaching, he lists seven blessings of consecutive expository preaching:

1. Consecutive expository preaching safeguards God’s agenda against being hijacked by ours.
2. Consecutive expository preaching makes it harder for us to abuse the Bible by reading it out of context.
3. Consecutive expository preaching dilutes the selectivity of the preacher.
4. Consecutive expository preaching keeps the content of the sermon fresh and surprising.
5. Consecutive expository preaching makes for variety in the style of the sermon.
6. Consecutive expository preaching models good nourishing Bible reading for the ordinary Christian.
7. Consecutive expository preaching helps us preach the whole Christ from the whole of Scripture.

Don't Waste Your Pulpit

A good reminder this morning as I prepared to stand before our congregation and preach from God's Word:

A Good Kind of Seeker-Sensitivity

The term "seeker-sensitive" is a pretty loathsome term for many people. It smells of compromising the truth of the gospel in order to win crowds by giving them what they want. And I admit, I loathe that kind of attitude myself.

But a couple of weeks ago I listened to a sermon by Mark Dever in which I saw a wonderful kind of "seeker-sensitivity" (you can listen to the sermon here). As you would imagine from a guy like Dever, this had nothing to do with selling out the truth. It had to do with a very small thing at the beginning of his sermon.

In asking the congregation to turn to Revelation 21 (the passage for the morning's sermon), Dever said something along the lines of:

"If you're not familiar with the Bible, just turn to very end and thumb a few pages backwards. The large numbers are the chapters, and the smaller numbers are the verse numbers. We are going to begin in chapter 21, verse 1 today..."

And then he went on to read the passage and preached for over an hour (not seeker-sensitive there!). I was really impressed by this small gesture, a simple statement to those present who were not Christians that Dever was thinking about them, and aware of and grateful for their presence in the congregation that day.

Now that is a positive way to be senstive to those investigating the Christian faith. As it is, many evangelical churches (most?) speak in only "churchish" language that leaves a non-believer feeling like he or she doesn't belong.

The message of the cross is a stumbling block; that we will not change! But churches need to do everything possible to remove all unneccessary stumbling blocks, which means having a constant awareness that non-believers are in your presence, and "coming down to their level" so that they can keep up with what is going on.

I was grateful for that reminder from Mark Dever.

Reading the Whole Bible

In my current sermon series on the Bible's storyline, I have been speaking about God's plan for the whole creation a bit more than I normally do. I imagine there are some who might be wondering, though they haven't actually asked me, why I am doing that. This portion of The Gospel Coalition's vision for ministry explains my convictions well:

II. How should we read the Bible? (The hermeneutical issue)

1. Reading “along” the whole Bible. To read along the whole Bible is to discern the single basic plot–line of the Bible as God’s story of redemption (e.g., Luke 24:44) as well as the themes of the Bible (e.g., covenant, kingship, temple) that run through every stage of history and every part of the canon, climaxing in Jesus Christ. In this perspective, the gospel appears as creation, fall, redemption, restoration. It brings out the purpose of salvation, namely, a renewed creation. As we confess in CS–(1), [God] providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.
2. Reading “across” the whole Bible. To read across the whole Bible is to collect its declarations, summons, promises, and truth–claims into categories of thought (e.g., theology, Christology, eschatology) and arrive at a coherent understanding of what it teaches summarily (e.g., Luke 24:46–47). In this perspective, the gospel appears as God, sin, Christ, faith. It brings out the means of salvation, namely the substitutionary work of Christ and our responsibility to embrace it by faith. As we confess in CS–(7), Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

After discussing briefly how focusing only one of these two ways of reading the Bible can lead to serious imbalances, the document continues:

We do not believe that in best practice these two ways of reading the Bible are at all contradictory, even though today, many pit them against each other. We believe that on the contrary the two, at their best, are integral for grasping the meaning of the biblical gospel. The gospel is the declaration that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has come to reconcile individuals by his grace and renew the whole world by and for his glory.

The vast majority of my preaching fits into the "reading across the Bible" category. And I think this is right, because there is no salvation if we do not grasp this deeply. Seeing the Gospel as God-Sin-Christ-Response is absolutely imperative to any vital, biblical ministry.

But the "reading along the Bible" category is also important to see full the scope of what God has done, is doing and will do in the world. It seems that this gets talked about a lot less, though, which is why I am coming back frequently to that theme in these sermons.

Because I am eager for Jesus to receive all the glory that He is due as the Savior of man and the Redeemer and Lord of the whole cosmos, I think it's important to read both "along" and "across" the Bible. I hope my preaching ministry is marked by biblical faithfulness in both of these areas.

(You can read the rest of the Gospel Coalition document here).

What Penn State football fans have taught me about suffering for Jesus

What have these guys taught me about the way God uses our suffering and adversities to enable us to testify more powerfully to the surpassing value of Jesus Christ?

Here's the audio clip from last Sunday's sermon in which I try to explain.

(Thanks to my friend Gino for helping me to create this file.)

When the sermon's drawing to a close

Over at the 9 Marks blog, there's a discussion going on about how to end sermons. I appreciate such a discussion, because I have found that conclusions to the sermon are one of the toughest aspects of preparing. And while I know there are not many of you reading this blog who preach, there are many of you who listen to preaching. So maybe it would be helpful to understand what's happening at the end of a sermon. It sounds to me like that's a really good plan.

When I read these words from Michael McKinley, I found a great "Amen!" stirring within my soul. I think he encapsulates well what I'm trying to do as the sermon draws toward its close:

All through the sermon, I find myself intentionally with-holding something great, some wonderful way that this text shows them what they have in Christ. I want the listener to feel the weight of what they've been called to and their hopelessness apart from Jesus... then I conclude by exalting Christ and the glories of his salvation. That sends them out with Christ in their nostrils and his praises on their lips That's the plan, at least.

It sounds to me like that's a really good plan. Exalt Jesus; you can never go wrong with that, can you? May it be, Lord, that people would leave Sunday's worship service with Christ in their nostrils, and His praises on their lips.

C.J. Mahaney Videos Available

I'm thrilled to see that Sovereign Grace Ministries has posted some videos of various sermons preached by C.J. Mahaney over the years. It's a treat to hear Mahaney, but I think his passion for God and compassion for people is so much more powerful when viewed as opposed to listened to.

Especially exciting was seeing this message posted from the 2007 Leadership Conference titled Trinitarian Pastoral Ministry. I was in attendance when Mahaney preached this, and I have shared with many people how a certain portion of this message (beginning at 21:00, until 25:30) has changed my entire life and ministry from that night on.

One of the highlights of being at Worship God 09 earlier this month was having the chance to tell C.J. in person the dramatic impact his words have had on my life and ministry.

If you have a chance to watch this, I highly recommend it:

Trinitarian Pastoral Ministry from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

Few verses sober me more than this one...

I have the privilege of being the pastor who does the majority of preaching in my church. This is very humbling, as we have several gifted and capable men who are competent for this responsibility.

In light of my responsibility, few passages of Scripture humble me and drive me to my knees like this one in James 3:

"Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness."

Pray for me, friends. Teaching God's Word to God's people is no small matter.