Finding Application for Preaching

“You will tend to preach to the people you listen to most during the week. . . . Application will naturally arise from your conversation partners. . . . The only way beyond this limitation is to deliberately diversity your people context.”  Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 180 -181.

Hipster Preacher

“So-called culture references—the use of quotes from films, popular music, newspapers, Web sites, social media outlets, journals, and books—can be made mostly to gain personal credibility for the speaker. You may do it to seem sophisticated or erudite or hip. . . . With that as your motivation you will choose cultural references to draw attention to yourself rather than to make visible and challenge the beliefs of the secular culture as well as lay bare your listeners’ own hearts. That should be the only goal.”  Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 277 n. 41

Motivation in Sermon Preparation

“The temptation will be to let the pulpit drive you to the Word, but instead you must let the Word drive you to the pulpit. Prepare the preacher more than you prepare the sermon.” Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 205.

Pathos in Preaching

“People get used to the same tone or tenor of voice. It is far more effective when a speaker can move from sweetness and sunshine to clouds and thunder! Let the biblical text control you, not your temperament. Learn to communicate ‘loud’ truth as loud; ‘hard’ truth as hard; ‘sweet’ truth as sweet.”   Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 186.

Advice To Preachers

“If you aren’t constantly astonished at God’s grace in your solitude, there’s no way it can happen in public.”   Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 168.

The Goal of Preaching Is More Than Just Informing God's People of Truth

“Change happens not just by giving the mind new arguments but also by feeding the imagination new beauties.”   Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 160.

Preacher's Exposing Their Own Unbelief, Past and Present

“Christian communicators must show that we remember (or at least understand) very well what it is like not to believe.”  Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 110.

How Reading the Bible Shapes Our Identity

How Reading the Bible Shapes Our Identity from Crossway on Vimeo.

Preaching Contextualization

“If you overcontextualize and compromise the actual content of the gospel, you will draw a crowd but no one will be changed. That is nothing less than a dereliction of the preacher’s duty. You will mainly just be confirming people in their present course of life. On the other hand, if you undercontextualize, so that your communication of the gospel is unnecessarily culturally alien and distant from the listeners, you will find that no one will be willing to hear you out.” Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 102-103

“Every time you expound a Bible text, you are not finished unless you demonstrate how it shows us that we cannot save ourselves and that only Jesus can.”  Timothy Keller, "Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism", p. 48.

How Our Culture Challenges Church

Interesting post by Scot McNight

Each of us is implicated in culture’s challenging the very idea of church and the way church is to function as church. The Western world, North America, the USA, and in particular Christians in that culture challenge church at its core. This is not about youth culture, this is not about the youthicization of the church, this is not about being relevant or being irrelevant.

This is about the ontology of Westerners squaring up to the ontology of the church, and church people and leaders squaring up to what we are facing.

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First, Western culture increasingly believes the fundamental problems of life are systemic and social, and are to be resolved through social progress and most especially through social engineering in public education. The Christian school movement, in other words, seems to be every bit the same theory: the way to “fix” society is by social engineering but through Christian education.

Second, Western culture tends to believe in the inherent goodness of humans and that society and systems corrupt that original goodness. The idea of original sin has fallen off the map for most social theorists, which implies as well that importance of regeneration unto transformation has as well.

Third, Western culture believes its laws are created by the people, they are for the people, and when the people shift the laws will need to shift with them. Laws then are not simply some kind of moral inscribing of what is proven to be true and right by nature but are instead the expressions of the will of the people, and their moral rightness is assumed but not questioned until the individual or the people decide the laws are in need of revision. “Laws” in the Bible are perceived as revelation from divine authority.

Fourth, Western culture then increasingly locates authority in the people, in fact, all the way down to the individual person. The locus of authority is the people, not the truth and not the leaders and not the laws. Congregationalism then is an ecclesial mirror arrangement to the Western sense of “we the people.” The Bible does not know congregationalism. Neither Israel nor the church voted on its laws, the teachings of Jesus or the mandates of the apostles. Voting becomes the way to find the truth of “we the people” and the conclusion of the vote has moral authority (if one agrees with it) because it has been established as the people’s will. Because the will of the “we the people” is the law, all the people are equal. Equality, then, is inherent to Western culture — though universal sufferage took generations to establish in law and has yet to find its way into the soul of each person in the Western world. Equality then is an idea but not a conviction for many, if not most.

Authority, mind you, is not to be found in Scripture or in the authorized, patient, careful interpretation of Scripture but in the will of the people.

Fifth, one’s commitment to society, to state, to the authorities, to the institutions, or to the establishment is voluntary and the moral authority of the laws of that society is good only so long as the individual person can believe in and commit themselves to those institutions. This means people have “rights” on the basis of laws they have created and with which they agree.

Sixth, the leaders of Western societies are the will of the people and need to change if the will of the people changes. The authority of the leader is given to him/her by the people and for the people.

Now this leads me to say this about commitment to a church: since authority has shifted over time from monarchies to democracies and therefore to individuals in those democracies, individuals form their own commitment levels to churches on the basis of their own lights. Each individual then forms a kind of church contract based on whether or not and the degree to which the individual agrees with that church’s “laws.” Here’s what I mean: since laws are perceived in the Western world as agreements the people have made and chosen to live with or under, church people in the Western people perceive themselves as the authorities when it comes to their churches. This is not so much “rebellion” as it is Western.

Churches in the Western world then are largely comprehended by “we the people” to be something created by “we the people.” Churches are the choices of like-minded individuals to be in fellowship with one another on the basis of a common sense of authority residing in “we the people.”

Tell me, pastors and church leaders, is this your people?

The Western history of politics, if I may make a sweeping statement about the biggest drift of all, is a movement from monarchies to aristocracies (or oligarchies) to democracies. The church got its ontology in a world of monarchies and emperors and kings (ancient Israel, 1st Century Rome) and found expression in that context. The church’s very ontology is monarchy or, better yet, christocracy. Western culture is the drive to a more and more radical form of democracy as a form of resistance to monarchy, which makes the church ambivalent and culturally at least countercultural if not irrelevant if it wants to be Western.

In other words, American culture challenges the church at its deepest levels. In the church the authority is God in Christ through the Spirit but in culture authority resides in the individual and in the will of “we the people.”

In other words, Western culture is very much indebted to Montesquieu and probably more to Jean Jacques Rousseau, who were behind Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and are behind this post.

A Pattern Among Fallen Pastors – Lessons for Us All

Every pastor should read this article from the All THING for GOOD . . . 

During my time in seminary I took a leadership course taught by the late-great Dr. Howard Hendricks. As we studied the life of David, Prof shared a study he conducted with a group of men in full-time ministry who had fallen into a morally disqualifying sin.

At the time, I had only been a Christian for a few years, but unfortunately the subject was all too relevant. During my early days I had witnessed several men whom I loved and respected fall into serious sinful compromises. At one point in those days, the falls came so frequently I felt as if I was on the spiritual beach of Normandy watching buddies lives get blown apart all around me.

Prof’s study was of 246 men in full-time ministry who experienced moral failure within a two-year period of time. As far as he could discern, these full-time clergy were men who were born again followers of Jesus. Though they shared a common salvation, these men also shared a common feat of devastation; they had all, within 24 months of each other, been involved in an extra marital affair.

After interviewing each man, Dr. Hendricks compiled 4 common characteristics of their lives.

1. None of the men were involved in any kind of real personal accountability. 

2. Each of the men had all but ceased having a daily time of personal prayer, Bible reading, and worship. 

3. Over 80% of the men became sexually involved with the other woman after spending significant time with her, often in counseling situations.

4. Without exception, each of the 246 had been convinced that sort of fall “would never happen to me.”

As I reflect on this study, a few lessons come to mind. These are applicable for pastors, plumbers, stay at home moms, and anyone else who seeks to follow Christ.

1.  Sin thrives in isolation.

Satan lives in the darkness and longs to keep us there as well. He does this because lies live best in the darkness. God knows this, which is why when He calls us to Himself, He calls us into the church.

God has created the church to be many things, one of which is to be a community of people who help each other fight sin and love Him. He calls us into relationships where we speak truth to one another (Ephesians 4:15, 25), confess sins to one another (James 5:16), and love each other enough to chase after each other if we stray (Matthew 18:10-20;Galatians 6:1-2; James 5:19-20).

The question I want you to ponder is this: Who knows you? I mean who really knows you? Who not only has permission, but is currently acting upon the permission to ask you penetrating questions? Are you answering those questions honestly or are you hiding details and painting up your sin to guard your image?

Do not hide from God’s gracious aid of loving relationships.

2. If you flirt with sin, you will fall into sin.

Sin’s slope is a slippery one. The longer you walk along the edge of the abyss, the more certain that your foot will slip. The men in the study put themselves in dangerous situations again and again. They ignored the words of Solomon who warned his sons to “keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house” (Proverbs 5:8).

These men did not guard their hearts, or the hearts of the people they were supposed to be protecting. Instead, they became blinded by the deceitfulness of sin (Ephesians 4:22;Hebrews 3:13) and were led into the ditch of destruction (Matthew 15:14).

What ways are you flirting with sin? What provisions are you making for the flesh in regards to its lust (Romans 13:14)? What guards have you stepped over? What details are you hiding? What emails are you deleting? What search histories are you erasing?

Sin is crouching at your door (Genesis 4:7) and the tempter is looking for an opportunity to pounce (1 Peter 5:8). How are you making his aim easier?

Flee from sin, don’t flirt with it (Genesis 39:6-12; Proverbs 5-7, Romans 6:12-13; 2 Timothy 2:22; 1 Peter 2:11).

3. Pride blinds us to our weakness.

Many of us think this sort of serious sin would not happen to us, just as those fallen pastors thought. But 1 Corinthians 10:12 warns us “let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Let us not forget that Samson—the strongest man in the Bible, Solomon—the wisest man in the Bible, and David—the man after God’s own heart, were all overcome by the temptations of sexual sin (Judges 14-16; 1 Kings 11:1-8; 2 Samuel 11-12; Psalm 51). No one is above the temptation to sin in grievous ways. If you doubt this, you are on your way to a great fall.

Brothers, beware. Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”

4. Purity is cultivated by loving Jesus.

Somewhere along the line, each of the men in the study began to drift. Prayers became less passionate. The promises of God in His Word grew dusty. Love for Jesus became something spoken of in the past tense.

The seduction of sin and enticement to sacrifice all to satisfy inner longings became too strong to resist.

But Christ is stronger. Hear these words of promise afresh:

Hebrews 4:14–16 “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Brothers and sisters, there is no sweeter assurance of help than Christ Jesus the Lord. He stands ready at God’s right hand to supply the grace and mercy we are in such need of.

Do not allow your hearts to grow cold toward the Lord who loves you so. Draw near to Him daily, moment by moment, in hopeful expectation that He is better than any fleeting pleasure that might entice your heart. Do not seek Him only in days of desperation, but seek Him daily. Walk with Him. Rekindle passion. Plead with Him to help you. He is able to do it, and He delights to do it.

Jude 24-25 “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

Come Lord Jesus, come.

Ten Differences Between a Boss and a Leader

Great insight from Eric Geiger on the difference between a boss and a leader . . . 

Some bosses are leaders, but not all of them. It is possible to be a boss and not be a leader, or be a leader without being a boss. Someone may be in positional authority but not have influence, respect, or the ability to lead. And many people are able to lead and influence others without being in an official “leadership position.” Here are ten differences between a boss (someone who is only a boss) and a leader (who may also be a boss).

1. A boss holds only positional authority; a leader holds convictional authority.
   

2. A boss cares about the work getting done; a leader cares about the work getting done and the people doing the work.
   

3. A boss tells people to row harder while he or she stands on the shore; a leader rows the boat and invites others to join.
   

4. A boss gives orders; a leader listens and then gives direction.
   

5. A boss chronicles correction to build a case; a leader gives feedback to build a person.
   

6. A boss expects each team member to adjust to him/her; a leader adjusts to each team member.
   

7. A boss views a team as people to serve him/her; a leader views a team as people to serve.
   

8. A boss has to remind everyone he or she is in charge; a leader never does.
   

9. A boss points out a problem; a leader helps you solve it.
   

10. People follow a boss to keep their jobs; people follow a leader out of trust and respect.
    

The next Billy Graham might be drunk

Saw this on preaching today . . . speaking about the power of Christ to redeem sinners and build his church, Russell Moore recently wrote:

The next Billy Graham might be drunk right now. The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with the Darwin Fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might currently be a misogynistic, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist. The next Charles Spurgeon might be managing an abortion clinic today. The next Mother Teresa might be a heroin-addicted porn star this week. The next Augustine of Hippo might be a sexually promiscuous cult member right now, just like, come to think of it, the first Augustine of Hippo was.
But the Spirit of God can turn all that around. And seems to delight to do so. The new birth doesn't just transform lives, creating repentance and faith; it also provides new leadership to the church, and fulfills Jesus' promise to gift his church with everything needed for her onward march through space and time (Eph. 4:8-16).

The First Doctrine Ever Denied

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. (Gen 3:4) The first doctrine to be denied in the bible is the doctrine of judgement. If you can get rid of that one teaching, then rebellion has no adverse consequences, and so you are free to do anything. DA Carson, God Who Is There, p. 33.

You Can’t Serve God and Entertainment

Here is an article worth reading slowly and meditatively that I found posted on FB from Desiring God blog.  This is one of the reasons I am ambivalent towards technology.

You love entertainment. On-demand streaming, live television, video-sharing websites, and social media are all at your fingertips. Your ability to access entertainment swiftly and effortlessly has encroached on every aspect of your life. Research recently revealed that you’re tempted to check Facebook every thirty-one seconds.

Are your friends boring you with dull conversation? Grab your iPhone. Is your wife annoying you? Turn on your television. Is your professor uninteresting? Sign into Facebook. Entertainment is your means of escape from the inconveniences of life into a comfortable world of fantasy. And your means of escape has made you a slave.

Confessions of a Slave

If I’m honest, I’ve had an unbridled love for frivolous entertainment — over the years I’ve used it primarily as a means of escape. Entertainment was used to distract me from the guilt of sin, friction in relationships, or anxiety about work. It became what daily prayer and Bible reading should have been — a safe haven to retreat for rest and comfort.

I failed to recognize that my never-ending pursuit to be entertained had turned me into a slave. My love for my new master was subtly causing contempt towards God and reticence in my duty to delight in him.

A Tale of Two Masters

In Matthew 6:24, Jesus reveals that when we gravitate towards entertainment as a means of comfort, we’re moving further and further away from our Creator. The notion of two masters is, in fact, a fictitious tale. It’s impossible to have more than one. Jesus exposes an insightful reality: Love for one will cause hatred toward the other.

If we devote inordinate amounts of time, money, and affection to anything, including entertainment, we will despise whatever draws us away. We’ve all been faced with the choice between spending time in prayer and God’s word or spending time with entertainment. At the crux of these crossroads, the all-satisfying gift of Jesus is pit against the temporal promises of entertainment. Whichever road is chosen increases hatred for the path denied.

When we choose the broad path to careless entertainment, seeds of contempt are planted for Christ. Likewise, when we choose the narrow road to Jesus, seeds of hatred are planted, not only for mindless entertainment, but all of our indwelling sin. This path reveals that endless entertainment is a cruel master that seeks to devour our true joy and lead us away from Christ, our source.

The Cruel Master

Entertainment over-promises but under-delivers. It is unable to satisfy what our hearts truly long for. We want rest. We want comfort. But entertainment can only offer a temporary fix. As soon as we wake up from hours of binging on Netflix or scrolling through social media, our problems remain, still waiting to be confronted. And we’re faced with the truth that all we’ve done is put off the inevitable.

Endless entertainment is a cruel master that seeks to devour our true joy and lead us away from Christ.

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Chasing joy in entertainment is like “chasing the dragon.” The term is a slang phrase, which refers to the continuous pursuit of an ultimate high previously obtained at the initial use of drugs.

For example, a drug user tries heroin for the first time and has an amazing experience. But when he returns to the drug, he can’t get that same experience. Instead, the experience gets weaker, so the user takes more and stronger heroin to reach that same feeling. As he “chases the dragon” the user’s body decays inside and out. This decay usually manifests itself in extreme itching, unwanted weight loss, slurred speech, kidney or liver disease, and more.

Addiction to entertainment is similar. The physical and health effects may not be as striking as heroin, but the spiritual effects are costly. We chase mindless entertainment hoping for relief for our souls, but instead all it really can promise is death. It distracts us from the highest and ultimate good with a mirage of happiness and comfort.

Jesus Is the Good Master

In Matthew 11:28–30, Jesus invites all who labor and are burdened to come to him, promising to provide rest for our weary souls. This promise is not empty. In the gospel, he fulfills his promise by taking up our burden on the cross for our rest and joy in him.

I have never walked away disappointed when I’ve pursued my joy in God through prayer and Bible reading, reminded myself of his promises in the gospel, repented of my sin, and cried out to God for comfort. Were all of my problems solved? No. But my joy was restored, and my soul had feasted on his promises. Likewise, every time I’ve used entertainment as a means of relief for my soul, I was left wanting and unsatisfied.

Even still, when I find myself at that proverbial crossroad between communion with Christ and frivolous entertainment, I’m tempted to say yes to entertainment and no to God.

As we walk through life, we will be tempted to continue to engage entertainment carelessly and ignore our bondage. Some will continue to live like slaves, binging on entertainment and neglecting spiritual nourishment. But you don’t have to live in bondage.

The gospel supplies the power to say yes to God and no to endless entertainment. Here we uncover the beauty of our wonderful master and realize that Jesus is better. In communion with him, we experience lasting joy that entertainment can only promise but never provide.

The next time you find yourself at this familiar crossroad, cling to Jesus. Remember that he alone is your highest good. He died and rose so that we can experience communion with him, which provides the supreme joy that an escape to entertainment simply cannot compete with.

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Related Articles

• What Is the Highest Good? (article)
• Smartphone Addiction and Our Spiritual ADD (article)
• Six Wrong Reasons to Check Your Phone in the Morning (article)

Phillip Holmes is a staff writer and content strategist at desiringGod.org. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Jasmine.

The Storyline of the Bible

I am doing research for my Christmas series that will follow the unifying theme of Redemptive History in Scripture.  I found this short film that lays out he storyline of the bible well. 

The Story Short Film from The Story (ViewTheStory.com) on Vimeo.

What I Learned from My Gay Co-Worker

An honest article on one's own blindness to how they see and treat others from Gospel Coalition. 

I have a friend (we’ll call him Mark) who can quote more Scripture than many pastors and rarely misses a worship service at his church. And he’s no passive participant, either. He often peppers his Facebook page with testimonials about the “Spirit’s work” during Sunday services. But on Monday mornings, back at work, Mark sports another testimony. With equal passion, Mark will plainly tell you he’s gay.

On most days when we worked together, Mark wore a Cheshire cat grin, looked in my direction, and made crude references to his private life. For months, I didn’t bite. Some might call my refusal to engage him cowardice, but snarky one-line comments were the only things that came to mind. Besides, I didn’t see the point in talking to someone who was so closed.

Though Mark had never taken the time to talk with me about anything not work-related, he knew I didn’t approve of his homosexuality. He saw me as the epitome of self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and bigotry. And in his eyes, my obvious but unspoken condemnation made me pathetic, bankrupt of “true” Christian love, the quintessential closed mind filled with hate. No point in talking with her.

Our standoff didn’t seem right, but I didn’t know what else to do but pray.

A number of things about Mark impressed me almost as much as the obvious offended me. A gifted medical clinician, he was front and center handling emergencies, relieving suffering, and restoring health. I frequently caught him holding a hand and singing a hymn to quell a patient’s anxiety. I struggled to reconcile the person I’d grown to admire and like with the wounded soul hidden inside. As I continued to pray for Mark, my concern for him grew, as did my patience for his goading me.

Unexpected Moment 

One day, as several of us sat in the break room together, the television news blared out a story about a hate crime. The victim, a gay man, had been brutally beaten and murdered. Mark glanced around the room, then looked down and shook his head.

At that moment, a vague unease about my normal no-comment stance prompted me to pray, Lord, if you want me to speak, make it perfectly clear what I’m supposed to say. Amen.

One millisecond later, another co-worker, Emily pointed to the television and asked, What do you make of that, Gaye? Is that a hate crime?

Mark’s grin had vanished.

Emily pressed me for an answer.

Surprising Sermon Application 

What rolled off my tongue wasn’t something I formulated in my head before speaking: Every human being has intrinsic value, because God made people in his image. Harming any human being, gay or otherwise, is always wrong. Always.

Mark looked stunned but grateful. He smiled, touched me on the shoulder, then returned to work. No sarcasm. No crass commentary. His emotional vulnerability helped me glance beyond his sin. Underneath all the crude jokes was a human being I’d failed to see before now.

Mark, too, began to view me in a different light. My response to the news didn’t square with his idea of a hate-filled closed mind. Instead he saw a person capable of caring for someone she didn’t agree with.

Normally I’m the sort of person who thinks of just the right thing to say immediately after the window of opportunity closes. But this time part of a sermon I’d heard on Sunday came out of my mouth on Tuesday. My pastor had made frequent references to the importance of seeing men and women as image bearers. Until that moment at lunch, though, I hadn’t fully grasped how that theology applied to my current circumstances. J. I. Packer writes:

We still bear the image of God formally—we still have in us the abilities, that if rightly harnessed, would achieve a fully righteous, Godlike life—and so the unique dignity of each human being must still be recognized and respected (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9), as a gesture of honor to our Maker.

What I’d offered Mark in the break room wasn’t false assurance. Several follow-up conversations revealed he remained keenly aware we didn’t agree on the subject of homosexuality. But from that moment on he seemed to grasp that, even in our disagreement, he was loved as an image bearer. He could see I cared for him. Important ground rules in our relating to one another, then, had been proposed and approved. We could now have a safe conversation.

The Real Obstacle 

When we find our identity in something apart from Christ, an attack on that idol feels like an assault on all that we are. Mark believed his in-your-face admissions about his behavior made him “real, authentic, and genuine.” Yet what he finally placed his trust in wasn’t the finished work of Christ but his emotional preferences and cherished identity as a gay man. So Mark’s deepest obstacle wasn’t his homosexuality; it was his unbelief. He had exchanged the truth for a lie—even believing the lie to be a virtue. No wonder having a frank conversation felt like I’d been asked to defuse a bomb.

But Mark wasn’t the only one with a blind spot. Without realizing it, I had looked at him through the lens of his sexual sin. And in so doing, I had failed to point him to Christ the Savior. Mark’s sin loomed in front of me and clouded my sight of the gospel. But it also clouded my sight of a person. He’d been an unmovable viewpoint, a thorn in my flesh, an enemy, but not an infinitely valuable human being. That’s why I had opted for silence. 

When we encounter anyone—Christian or not—we needn’t be intimidated or overwhelmed by their faults. We’re filled with them too. What we need is God’s grace to see sinners as far more than their sins.

​Gaye Clark works as a cardiac nurse at University Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, and writes in her free time. She has two adult children, Anna and Nathan. You can follow her on Twitter: @clarkgaye.